Top 12 Local SEO Tips for Small Businesses

A common concern revolves around ranking on the top search engine result pages for every small business. This is often difficult as more resourced companies target those same terms on search engines. Then, how are the small, locally focussed businesses expected to rank on SERPs? Are you one of them hovering around for the same concern? If yes, then you must tap into the power of local search. But before you move ahead with the best local SEO implemented by experts, you need to know about the effectiveness of local SEO.

According to recent research, around 60-70% of small businesses do not have SEO strategies. If all those small businesses can put both strong comprehensive SEO and complete local SEO in place, they can surely gain a competitive edge over their competitors. Also, they can win new clients and appear in search.

And guess what? Implementing local SEO is not that difficult once you know what to do.

Are you excited to know more about local SEO? Take a sigh of relief and start reading. You will explore the significance of local SEO and top tips for dominating local SEO for your small business.

What do you mean by local SEO for small businesses?

Search engine optimization (SEO) improves any website’s performance to increase the chances of being visible online when people search terms related to that business. Local SEO is a similar scheme. However, it moves forward with a particular focus on local keyword terms.

If your small business isn’t optimized for its local search, you could lose out on potential customers willing to shop in your area.

In a nutshell, local SEO is significant if you want your business to stay relevant and do more business.

What is the significance of local SEO for small businesses?

Optimize your website for local SEO, including the opportunity to build your website up as a brand and educate the target audience on your products and services.

• Users Direct to Online search for Better Results

At present, more and more people are switching to online search. Sitting at home, people can search for appropriate information before buying something locally. They prefer to do-pre-search (that’s Google Local Business) to find better options in their city or area rather than going to market directly and searching for them.

• Local SEO helps in Business Extensions

Local SEO can help your corporation with several extensions like business listings, promotions, and marketing. Using Local SEO, it is easy interact with clients and provide reviews on the products or services you offer. Customer Reviews play a crucial role in Local SEO, which helps users look for customer reviews before purchasing any product.

• Keywords to Target Local Areas and High Conversation Rate

Most businesses increase their visibility through Local SEO by ranking for geographical-related searches. Local SEO has a high conversation rate compared to other advertising tactics. It will assist people in your area find you on search engines quickly.

• Mobile Internet is Growing

Customers use mobile phones and tablets to find local businesses. Most people worldwide use mobile phones or tablets compared to the desktop for searching for any product or service. Local SEO also covers from mobile to desktop internet access.

List of Best Local SEO tips for small businesses 

1. Create Google My Business Listing

Google My Business (GMB) is a business directory owned and operated by Google. The platform’s goal is to provide the most accurate business information for local businesses to searchers. GMB listings are the #1 prompting factor for local SEO.

Setting up a GMB listing is not difficult. You need to ensure that you fill out your profile in full. Google will itself indicate how complete your profile is. Get this parameter to 100% by filling in all the fields.

Moreover, ensure you list your products, services, and a secondary business category. Specify the primary type from a pre-set list of options. Then you can also select a secondary category, which is something many businesses fail to do and which gives a more dedicated framework to your services. Utilizing the subcategories will also help you rank better on Google Maps even.

Once you are done with your business listing up, another top local SEO tip is to use the Google Posts feature. In this feature, you can create mini-posts for your clients and display to Google that you are dynamically managing your listing. To make this feature on an advanced level, share these posts on social media.

Google is giving prominence to the social media presence of any business. If you are getting organic traffic to your Google Posts page, this will prove to Google that you are engaged in offering valuable content and updates.

2. List Your Business in Other Business Directories as well.

Besides forming a Google My Business listing, you need to list your business online in other business directories. This tip is present in almost all local SEO guides, as it’s a decisive SEO factor.

Some main directories you can target are:

• Yelp
• Bing Places
• HotFrog
• FourSquare
• Angie’s List
• Best of the Web
• About Us

Besides these national and global business directories, you should also look for any online business directories specific to your area. Listings on these will send other local SEO signals to Google.

3. Keep Your NAP Information Correct

While creating business listings, you must keep your NAP (name and place) information correct. If all of your listings have accurate particulars, Google will trust you. If there is any change in the info, Google has no way of understanding the precise information.

An incorrect address or telephone number is a red flag. Google then may stop displaying your GMB listing as they don’t know if your business is legitimate.

What’s more, your NAP info must be correct, but it must also be consistent. Besides this, it is advised to keep an eagle eye on your NAP info in the future. If your business shifts its address, you should update this across all platforms as soon as possible. Additionally, you must regularly check your Google My Business listing’s NAP info.

4. Target local keywords

This step is essential for local optimization. For example, for a local flower shop with a website naturally containing all high-volume keywords, like “florist,” “flower shop,” and “flowers for sale”, it is essential to find locally searched keywords unlikely to beat out national flower providers. Instead, the aim should be to optimize the website with local keywords. They must be cautious of keyword stuffing, however, should change most of these instances to more specific, local terms, like:

“Flowers for sale [city or zip code]”

“[city or zip code] flowers for sale.”

“Flowers for sale in [city or zip code]”

There is no need to target only the specific town and zip code. Instead, consider nearby business areas and target those local keywords, which is good practice if the business exists in a smaller city outside of a larger town or metro area.

5. Optimize the site with local keywords 

Site optimization is in itself a detailed topic that should be known by all business owners, but here are mentioned some local SEO basics for a website.

Firstly, you must make sure that your home page and any service pages must contain the local keywords in the following areas you want to rank for:

• Headings
• Title tags
• Meta description
• Body
• Footer

You should also try to put your main local keyword into the URL when possible. Take care of keyword proximity and avoid keyword stuffing.

6. Create more natural local content 

If you want to optimize your website with your content marketing efforts for enhanced lead generation, it’s good to create local content.

Your Local content could be

• Blog post,
• News release
• Static web page

Use these different content types to highlight local events related to your business (past and upcoming), local discounts, offerings, local business roundups (e.g., local businesses that complement but don’t compete with yours), or even make the public aware of the product or service you offer.

The more general content you put on your website, the more quickly you can target local keywords.

7. Make your website mobile-friendly

Making your website mobile-friendly is the best option to do good SEO in general. However, it’s specifically crucial for local SEO; let us explain why:

According to research, 30-40% of all mobile searches are location-based, which is a number and means that many consumers who find you on local searches are likely on their mobile devices.

If your site is not presentable or displays good on mobile, or stands with navigation issues, this won’t look good to your potential customers. They will likely move off to another site of a competitor whose online presence looks more professional.

What is a mobile-friendly site? The four essential components that every mobile-friendly site has to consist of:

• Proper text formatting
• Responsive page display
• Readable fonts
• Optimized media display

Not just a mobile-friendly website, you also have to produce mobile-friendly content. The excellent news about mobile-friendly content is that it’s also readable to desktop readers.

What does mobile-friendly content consist of?

• subheadings
• short paragraphs
• white space
• a summary
• images
• lists
• styling (e.g., bold, italics)

8. Pay attention to customer reviews. 

Customer reviews are the lifeline of any business present online, particularly true for new and small businesses.

How do you obtain positive online customer reviews?

First of all, your product and service should be convincing enough. Then ensure there must be a space for customers to leave reviews.

If you’ve started your Google My Business profile and Yelp business listing, then you are on a great start.

Second, present gratitude to customers who leave reviews, whether by word of mouth or with in-store receipts. You can even let customers know to receive a discount or a complimentary item for the best rating and review.

Your job doesn’t end here, though. You will have to respond to all reviews, negative and positive. This lets you engage your customers and instil faith in your brand who have yet to purchase.

9. Get inbound links for seeking relevance and trust.

Inbound links are interesting and appealing opportunities to enhance your local SEO. Every link build-up tells Google that you have a legitimate company, and inbound links can also upsurge your domain authority. A few ways to get inbound links are:

• Sponsorships or Partnerships
• Guest Blog Posting
• Scholarships

Start with your own personal network, including the business improvement districts, Chamber of Commerce, licensing bureaus, trade associations, resellers, dealers, and/or manufacturers and other affiliates.

You can also go for

• hosting a community event,
• promoting something local you love,
• sponsoring a webinar or meet-up, and
• building relationships with noteworthy people and online influencers.

Furthermore, learn to feel comfortable reaching out to associates to see if they can feature you on their partner directory.

10. Optimize your URL, title tags, headers, meta description, and content.

When you present content, then every new blog post is a new indexed page for the site. This is a new page where to target a geographic search phrase and a new prospect to get visible in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Every time a piece of content is posted on the website, you need to optimize it for search engines using high-volume keywords in the

• URL
• Title
• Header
• Meta description
• Body

If you face trouble coming up with geo-targeted content, consider highlighting customer success stories and case studies.

11. Form a more visible social media presence 

Social media is not a platform for big brands and influencers only. Instead, it is a productive place for businesses that want to set up their online presence. Actually, this is the most active page from where you can make your potential customers updated about the latest releases, events, offers, charges, timings, etc.

Actually, a social media profile is a live version of your business. The benefits of forming a social media page include relationship building, trend tracking and analysis, and social commerce.

12. Don’t forget to invest in google ads.

Google Ads is a well-known and trusted paid advertising platform that lets you appear in prominent places on the SERPs. Starting with Google Ads can indeed be daunting. Still, fortunately, you have the option to invest in an advertising agency to help you set up and manage your account and keywords.

If you think your business can never compete against the big companies, you are wrong. Google paid ads can help highlight your local status, targeting your local keywords.

Conclusion:

Local SEO is an undeniable part of the basic as well as Local SEO strategy for local businesses. Local SEO will benefit you, and your audience will find you when they search online if you have a storefront or service area.

Consider all these tips and enjoy the success ahead.