Local search is powerful for small businesses: 46% of all Google searches are looking for local information.
If your business isn’t optimized for local search, you could miss out on potential customers ready to shop in your area. In short, local SEO is critical if you want your business to stay relevant.
To help you optimize your business for local SEO, we’ve created a comprehensive guide covering local SEO tips and tools.
By the end of the guide, you’ll have a firm understanding on how to optimize your business to reach potential consumers who use local search to choose which products or services they’re going to buy.
Local SEO
Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of improving search engine visibility for local businesses, primarily those with brick-and-mortar locations. By following local SEO best practices, businesses can improve organic traffic from searches performed by customers in nearby areas.
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 to gather information for local search.
With local SEO, businesses can use this to position their products and services to local prospects and customers searching for them.
Local keyword research is the process of understanding how people search for the local services you offer. It’s important because you want to optimize for what people search for.
Let’s go through how to do this.
1. Find service-based keywords
Most people don’t think about the different ways that others may search for what they do.
For example, if you’re a plumber, some customers will find you by typing “plumber” into Google. But others will search for queries relating to specific services like “drain unblocking.”
For that reason, you should begin by brainstorming and listing the services you offer. This will help you maximize your presence for queries your customers are searching for.
Here’s what that can look like for a plumber:
- Drain unblocking
- Boiler repair
- Boiler installation
- Boiler servicing
- Radiator installation
- Burst pipe repair
To expand this list, use the service keywords as “seeds” to find more services people are searching for. For example, if we plug the services above into Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer and check the Matching terms report, we see keywords like:
- gas boiler installation
- combi boiler installation
- electric boiler installation
If you offer those services, you may also want to consider targeting these keywords. Here’s another way to find “missed” keywords:
Plug a competing business into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, go to the Top pages report, and look for URLs that map to services.
2. Check search volumes
??Keyword research tools show you national search volumes. If you want search volumes for your state, city, or town, you’ll have to use Google Keyword Planner.
Unfortunately, Keyword Planner has its issues:
- It shows broad search volume ranges (e.g., 1K-10K), not absolute numbers.
- It groups keywords and shows a combined rounded search volume.
For that reason, checking the relative popularity of keywords at the national level tends to be more productive. This is because what happens in one city is likely to be similar in the next.
You can do this with a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. For example, the tool tells us that more people search for “boiler repair” than “boiler installation” in the U.K.:
This is probably the case whichever city we’re in, so it’s an excellent way to prioritize keywords.
3. Check for local intent
Local intent means that searchers want to shop nearby. If that isn’t the case for your services, it’s not a local SEO opportunity. To check a query for local intent, Google it and check the results.
If there’s a map pack and/or some local “blue link” results, it has local intent. If there are no map pack and local “blue link” results, it doesn’t have local intent.
You can still target keywords without local intent, but it’s not a job for local SEO.
4. Assign keywords to pages
Your homepage is unlikely to rank for all your service keywords. So you’ll need to target some with separate pages. To assign keywords to URLs, think about which services they map to.
If they map to very different services, such as “boiler installation” and “burst pipe repair,” assign them to separate pages. If they map to the same service, such as “drain unblocking” and “drain unclogging,” assign them to the same page.
Local SEO Tips
1. Optimize for Google My Business
Google My Business has become the creme de la creme of local search. Since Google supports, verifies, and shares its own content generously, Google My Business is an ideal tool to help your business meet Google’s needs.
To ensure you’re optimized for Google My Business, you’ll want to:
- Create and verify a Google My Business page.
- Use Google Posts within your account.
- Encourage your customers to share reviews online.
- Respond authentically to reviews, specifying location. For example, “We appreciate your feedback on [product/service] in [city, state]. We value your input and look forward to working with you again. Thank you from the [full company name] team.”
If Google can verify your business as authentic, the search engine could potentially reward your business with a coveted sidebar space in Google’s local search.
Don’t just do this for the SEO, either. By having reviews and keeping your contact information and operating hours up-to-date, you’re improving the experience for potential customers to find you.
Finding current data is essential to consumers, now more than ever, due to 2020’s disruption in consumer shopping behavior and business operation.
2. Engage on social media and add posts to Google My Business
Google considers content shared on social media more important now than ever before. Now that you’ve carved out a beautiful Google My Business page, share it on social media, further aligning social and search.
3. Ensure your name, address, and phone number are consistent online
You’ve got to make it easy for people and search engines to find you, and to do this you have to set up your NAP.
The acronym, NAP, stands for the name, address, and phone number (with area code) of a business. Your NAP should be considered crawlable HTML text on your site for Google to display it better according to location-based search results.
Pro Tip: Avoid the common mistake of only including the NAP within an image — images can’t be crawled from search engines like HTML text.
The most common location for the NAP is in the footer or header of the site. Additionally, you should include your NAP on a “Contact Us” page, too.
4. Optimize online directories and citations
For United States companies, these four map data aggregators provide many map data for Apple, Yelp, Bing, Google, Trip Advisor, and more:
Consistency is key: verify that your citations are consistent and complete across these four data aggregators. Discrepancies like misspellings, abbreviations, lack of suite number, or wrong phone number can be problematic.
If Google can’t determine which information about your business is correct, it may not show your business at all in search results.
Pro Tip: Remove any duplicate listings you find in online directories. And while you’re at it, get a Chamber of Commerce membership in your community to gain an external inbound link specific to your area.
5. Perform a local SEO audit
Once you have the fundamentals down, it may be tempting to put your foot on the brake. However, SEO is an ongoing and intuitive process.
Instead of stopping there or simply making changes and seeing what sticks, it helps to perform a comprehensive audit to see where your website stands and what you need to work on to achieve your goals. A local SEO audit may include the following:
- Google My Business Audit – How does your Google My Business appear in the SERPs? Is the information accurate?
- Google Search Console Audit – Is your site crawlable? Does it have any errors that would hinder indexing?
- On-Page SEO Audit – Does your site accommodate all the on-page SEO elements that help ranking?
- Citation Audit – Are all of your citations correct in the top business directories?
- Competitor Analysis – How does your site match up with your competition’s? Are there any gaps that you need to close? How do you match up in terms of inbound links, content, design, and positioning?
- Website Audit – How well is your website performing?
6. Improve your internal linking structure
Although external links pointing to your site are ideal, adjusting your internal linking structure will also boost your SEO rankings. Why does internal linking matter? It does the following:
- Supports website navigation
- Assists with information architecture and website hierarchy
- Distributes page authority and ranking power among pages
If you want to improve your internal linking structure but aren’t sure where to start, check out Kissmetrics’ The Seven Commandments of Internal Linking for Top-Notch SEO.
7. Optimize URL, title tags, headers, meta description, and content
When it comes to content, every new blog post is a new indexed page for your site, a new page on which to target a geographic search phrase, and a new opportunity to get found in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Every time you write a piece of content, you need to optimize the content for search engines by using high-volume keywords in the URL, title, header, meta description, and body. If you’re having trouble coming up with geo-targeted content, consider highlighting customer success stories and case studies.
Pro Tip: The more specifications you add to these assets (especially for each location of your business), the better you’ll be able to optimize “near me” local searches.
8. Create local content
Google continues to get smarter, which means content creators can now write more for users and less to appease search engines.
And while writing about general topics will attract a vast crowd, sometimes it’s more important to hone your focus and write about local or industry news to attract a local audience.
Be the local authority for your industry by promoting local industry gatherings, news, employees, and other educational content on your blog. Think of top-of-the-funnel content that goes beyond what your business sells.
For example, if you’re a local security company and trying to attract businesses new to the area, create a helpful resource to get these businesses well-acquainted with your city.
A map of local service providers or a calendar of city-wide events could both provide value for your persona and contain highly relevant on-page local signals.
9. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly
Local and mobile search go hand in hand (61% of all Google searches are performed on mobile).
Some of the most common ways people will use your site in a mobile environment are to look up reviews, find directions to your location, and search for contact information. In fact, “near me” searches on mobile have increased 250% since 2017.
Make it easy for your prospects and customers by making your site mobile-friendly.
10. On-page
On-page SEO is where you make changes to the content of a page to help it rank higher on organic search results.
BrightLocal’s study shows that 34% of SEOs think on-page signals are the most important factor for regular organic search. And 16% believe they’re the most important factor for map pack rankings.
On-page signals are also growing in their perceived importance for local SEO. You can see this from the results of BrightLocal’s previous surveys.
Best practices
- Tailor your pages for search intent
- Include your NAP information on your website
- Write compelling meta titles and descriptions
- Use descriptive, SEO-friendly URLs
- Optimize your images
- Internally link to and from pages where relevant
- Include details that matter to searchers
One way to find details that matter to searchers is to check what top-ranking pages in your area talk about. You can do this by looking at the pages. Or you can use Keywords Explorer to find keywords mentioned on the top-ranking pages.
Let’s bring things to a close with a few local SEO tools you may find useful.
Google Business Manager
Google Business Manager, formerly Google My Business, is how you manage your Google Business Profile. Signing up for it is completely free and is something every local business owner should use.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool for monitoring your website’s search performance. It tells you how much search traffic you’re getting, where it’s going, and what keywords it’s coming from.
Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker
Rank Tracker lets you track up to 10,000 keyword rankings for “regular” organic search by country, state, city, and even ZIP/postal code.
Ahrefs Link Intersect
Our Link Intersect tool lets you find websites that link to multiple competitors. This is useful for finding relevant local and industry-specific citations.
Grid My Business
Grid My Business shows map pack ranking positions for a keyword in the area around your business. It’s freemium and is useful for understanding if and where local searchers are likely to see your business.
Yext
Yext is a tool for syncing and managing business information across multiple listings. It’s useful for keeping citations consistent, although you can do this manually.
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a free keyword research tool from Google. It’s a useful source of search volume ranges at the local level.
