You know the importance of SEO. It is the main weapon in your arsenal to bring organic traffic to your site. However, let’s assume you have a physical store or a service area business. You want your local customers to come in and visit or contact you.
And as it’s your local business, you don’t want to waste your effort and money to get website visitors from another country or another state. How would you plan for acquiring your local customers instead of getting traffic from around the world?
That’s where Local SEO comes in, and it’s by far the most targeted and effective way of using search engines to boost traffic and sales for your local business.
If you’re a local online business owner and wondering how to optimize your business for local SEO, you don’t need to be panicked.
In this guide, we are going to discuss anything and everything about local SEO. Keep reading this guide on local SEO tips to optimize your online presence for reaching your local customers.
Local SEO and How It Works
Local SEO is the process of optimizing your online presence so that people can easily find you through relevant local searches. Google and other search engine use the users’ geolocation and search keywords to determine what to show the users.
When a user searches, the search engines rely on signals such as local content, social profile pages, links, and citations to provide the most relevant local results to the user.
If a user searches for a product or service + location, the search engine knows that the search has local intent. Having said that if you don’t mention the location, even then search engines can assume it has local intent. Search engines use your IP address to find your location.
If you focus on the search bar, no location hasn’t been mentioned there, however, the search engine suggested the coffee shop with a physical address by tracking the IP address and geolocation.
Local SEO Tips
Local SEO is somewhat critical for beginners. Then again if you follow the appropriate set of local SEO tips given by the experts, you’ll be able to improve local SEO all by yourself.
1. Prepare Your Business for Google Business Profile, Bing Places, and Apple Maps
In terms of SEO or global SEO, usually, we don’t need to optimize our site for Google and Bing separately. But for Local SEO, claiming positions for Google, Bing, and Apple separately are crucial. Because Local SEO is heavily influenced by each search engine’s individual place listings.
So, at first, we will show you how you can optimize your business for Google, Bing, and Apple in the most convenient way. Let’s start with Google Business Profile.
1.1 Optimize Your Business for Google Business Profile
To optimize your business for local SEO, you need to create an account to Google Business Profile. It’s a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps.
Follow the below steps to create a GBP account for your local business.
2. Optimize Your NAP Citations
When someone mentions your business online that is called a citation.
Usually, these citations are shown including your business Name, Address, and Phone number which is called NAP. NAP citations are like backlinks. If you can build NAP citation correctly, you’ll be benefited hugely.
In the same way, if your citations show wrong information, you’ll be losing your potential customers. Your NAP citations could be inconsistent in many ways. E.g.,
- Changing business address and not updating previously built citations, directory listings, etc.
- Having a different store address to the company registered address and using both online.
- Using different phone numbers for attribution tracking purposes.
So, you need to make sure your existing citations are correct and consistent.
3. Research Local Keywords for Your Business
Keyword research for local SEO optimization is not the same as keyword research for blog posts. Here it’s kind of done and forget job.
That means you don’t need to find new keywords all the time. In most cases, all you need to get started is a shortlist of keywords that people use to find your local business.
Keyword research for local SEO is typically simpler and more straightforward than non-local keyword research.
While some locations and cities are more competitive than others, there’s generally a much smaller competitor pool for local keywords relative to the pool for keywords that aren’t bound by geography.
4. Optimize Your Business for Local Voice Search
Voice search is slightly different from the usual Google search. Because they’re more natural, voice searches also tend to be longer than text-based queries.
Let’s assume, you want to search for a washing machine. When you search it on Google, you just write “washing machine” and press enter button to see the results.
On the contrary, when you go for voice search, it usually becomes “suggest me some of the best washing machines beside me”. That’s the basic difference between normal Google search and voice search.
That is why now we are going to show you how you can effortlessly optimize your local business for voice search.
4.1- Create Scannable Content
Scannable means your content should be easily readable. To create scannable content use simple sentences, short paragraphs, and bold headers to break up your content as much as possible.
People who are searching the internet on their mobile devices are looking for content that’s been optimized for this platform.
Make sure your content is easily readable, scannable, and doesn’t have any annoying pop-ups or ads that could hinder them from getting the information they need.
4.2- Claim Google Business Profile Listing
We have already discussed how to optimize your local business for the Google Business Profile listing. Not only Google Business Profile, but we have also shown you the ways to optimize your business for Apple Maps and Bing Places. So, see that section to get your job done.
4.3- Focus on Long-Tail Keywords
As we have discussed earlier that people use more “natural” keywords when using voice search, so targeting long-tail keywords is a must.
To do this, you must “think how people speak.” How would you ask particular questions? Or what kind of spoken questions might bring others to your site?
This might be a different kind of long-tail than you’re used to. It’s more about real speech and less about keyword variations. You need to know and target as many variations as possible.
If you’re wondering how would you find those long-tail keywords, don’t worry. There are free web tools to help you out. Answer the Public is one of them. Just enter your main keyword there, it will give you lots of long-tail keywords related to your search term.
4.4- Create FAQ Page
Another great way you can use the customer and SEO data you’ve collected is to create FAQ pages that focus on those long-tail key phrases.
Try to group common questions on the same page, and write as naturally as possible. If you need to create multiple pages to sound more natural, go with that approach.
You should also add some quick questions and answers to your blog to satisfy Google’s rich snippet requirements. It’s another technique to optimize your content for voice search.
5. Get Regular Reviews from Happy Customers
Getting your customers to write glowing reviews for your business doesn’t just optimize your Google My Business presence; it also encourages more local customers to buy from you.
BrightLocal’s 2017 Local Consumer Review Survey reveals that 85% of customers believe online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Here are some tips to encourage customers to leave reviews:
- Ask for a review in person after the close of a sale
- Send a post-purchase email or text asking customers to write a review (but only after you’ve screened them via an internal survey to ensure you’re not approaching dissatisfied customers)
- Respond to existing reviews in a professional way, thanking reviewers and addressing complaints in not-so-favorable reviews
Note: Google says it’s okay to ask your customers for reviews while Yelp actively discourages it.
6. Create Content Based on Local News Stories or Events
There’s nothing quite like authoring content that speaks or relates directly to a local issue to grab your local customers’ attention. Some strategies include:
- Writing blog posts around local news stories, activities, or events
- Creating videos about local charities or causes that your business supports
- Setting up location-specific webpages on your website with high-quality local content if you serve different parts of a region
Let’s say you’re a local real estate business. You can create different pages, one for each of your locations, where you can feature hyperlocal content around news events or changes in the local real-estate market. This strategy could also help you get ranked for each specific location.
7. Optimize Your Website for Mobile
A 2018 Stone Temple study that looked at 2017’s mobile vs. desktop trends found that the shift to mobile is occurring faster than expected.
Mobile visits to websites grew from 57% in 2016 to 63% in 2017, and the overall visits to websites from desktop shrunk from 43% in 2016 to just 37% in 2017.
Another 2017 study from Acquisio determined that traffic from local searches can be especially lucrative, with a remarkable 75% of all mobile searches that exhibit local intent actually producing in-store, offline visits within 24 hours.
This confirms that you have to optimize your website for mobile to be a player in local SEO (and, really, for good SEO period). Here are some tips to achieve this:
- Ensure your website loads quickly (no more than three seconds)
- Use bigger fonts that are easy to read
- Use images and copy sparingly, conveying only the information you need (no room for filler on a mobile screen!)
- Ensure intuitive UI for great UX
8. Use Location Pages or a Location-Specific “About Us” Page
Location pages are a must if your business has more than one location in an area. These pages need to provide the following, at a minimum:
- Store hours
- Name, address, and phone number
- Individualized descriptions
- Testimonials
- Promotions
- Parking availability
- Google Maps attached to each location page
Take care when you have multiple locations, because you need to create unique content for each page. If you only have one location, creating an “About Us” page that focuses on local, relevant information is essential.
For example, if you have a florist shop, your “About Us” page is the perfect spot to mention your shop’s involvement in supplying the flowers for any parades in your town or city.
9. Take Advantage of Online Business Directories
Online business directories are websites like Yelp, Foursquare, MapQuest, and YellowPages, just to name a few. There are many more. Not only will getting your business name, address, and phone number into these directories help visibility, but it’ll also boost your local SEO.
Your company listing should include the following basics:
- Business name (creative business name ideas here!)
- Address and phone number
- A backlink to your website
- A thorough description of your business
These should be consistent across all directories.
10. Focus on Link Signals (Get High-Quality Backlinks)
According to Moz’s 2017 Local Search Ranking Factors study, link signals are the first- and second-most important factors for local pack (or snack pack) results and for localized organic results, respectively. Link signals are backlinks pointing to your site.
It’s vital to get links to boost your local SEO, but their quality is important. Here are some tips on getting high-quality backlinks:
- Create high-quality content on your site so others want to link to your content
- Guest blog on reputable sites with a high domain authority
- Engage with local influencers on social media or by email to get them to link back to you
11. Create a Dedicated Webpage for Each Product/Service You Offer
While it can be tempting to just lump all of your products or services together in one big page, resist doing so. Instead, dedicate one page to each unique product or service you offer.
Your local SEO juice isn’t as powerful if you lump everything into one page because search engines tend not to see your brand as an authority in one specific area. This lowers your ranking possibilities.
If you’re a business without different products or services, but have various locations, simply utilize location-based copy for each page. For instance, “dental marketing” will become “New York dental marketing” or “Buffalo dental marketing.”
Side notes
SEO changes quite rapidly. You never know when Google will introduce new features on its SERPs for local searches, but you can count on these changes coming. That’s why it’s essential to always stay on top of local SEO.
By implementing these actionable items, you will ensure that your business doesn’t just take advantage of lucrative local searches but also has a solid foundation when new SEO features are introduced.
And if you don’t have the bandwidth to make these adjustments, you may want to try a local seo audit, or look into a small business SEO service provider.
