From “Near Me” to New Customers: Mastering Local SEO for Small Businesses
For any small business, a website is the cornerstone of a good marketing strategy. On the positive side, potential customers can find your business 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Of course, the downside can be that positioning your website so they can find it takes time and effort from you. Much of that work is centered around search engine optimization (SEO)—the strategy that generates the organic search traffic you need to expand your customer base. Whether you have a marketing company helping you or not, the competition around the keywords you want to rank for can sometimes feel impossible to beat. So, what if there were a different path to the top?
Research conducted by Google shows that 30% of searches on their platform are location-specific. Further research shows that 76% of these local searches on mobile result in a visit to a business within a day. On 28% of those visits, a purchase is made.
When you do the math, that’s quite a bit of business being generated not just from Google searches, but specifically from searches that are focused locally. To capture that business, and to ensure you’re taking full advantage of the power of your website, you need a local SEO strategy
What is Local SEO for Small Businesses?
Local SEO is exactly what it sounds like—a component of your overall keyword strategy that targets your ideal audience in your specific geographic area. Potential customers often start their customer journey by looking for a small business “near me.” To take advantage of these local searches, incorporating local indicators into your keywords has the potential to improve your position on the search engine results page (SERP).
Typically, local search SEO is used by businesses that have a physical location where customers can visit and make purchases. A brick-and-mortar shop isn’t required for local SEO, though. Even businesses whose locations aren’t open to the public, but who still serve a specific geographic area, will benefit from a local SEO strategy.
Why Local SEO? The exact statistics vary based on the source, but all SEO researchers agree that the first organic search result on the SERP receives the vast majority of clicks. The number of clicks on search results decreases dramatically for lower ranking results. This means the basic objective of a local SEO strategy is the same as traditional SEO. You want your business to be displayed as high as possible, preferably one of the first three to five results, on the SERP rankings when search terms like “[your product] near me” or “[your service] open now” are used. But the benefits of local SEO don’t end there.
The ultimate goal is for your business to be featured in Google’s Local Pack. This is the display that is shown to the left of the map at the top of the search page. These coveted top spots are reserved for businesses that most closely match the searchers’ intent.
Local SEO can be particularly important for small businesses that compete with national chains. While large corporations may have huge budgets dedicated to optimizing their websites and advertising online, they don’t always hold the top rank for local search. Local search is a way for local small businesses to promote themselves above national chains.
How to Optimize for Local SEO
Search engines gather information from online directories, website content, social media pages, and local citations to decide what results to return on the SERP for a specific query. Usually, the algorithm that evaluates this information and decides where to rank your website is a closely guarded secret. Surprisingly, Google is fairly transparent about what factors are used to evaluate local search queries. They have publicly shared that there are three main local ranking factors: relevance, distance, and prominence.
The first two factors are straightforward. For relevance, Google looks at how well your business matches the parameters of the search query. The second factor, distance, is simply how far your business is from the location of the person searching. Both relevance and distance are refreshingly simple concepts when it comes to optimizing your website for local SEO.
Prominence, the third factor of local SEO, is more similar to traditional SEO. Understanding how Google uses prominence can be more difficult, because many different aspects of your business are considered. In this case, Google doesn’t share the specifics of what is used to evaluate prominence. SEO researchers have found evidence that a complete Google Business Profile (GBP), along with:
- the business categories you choose,
- your physical address,
- the listing title keywords,
- your business star ratings,
- the keywords used in those reviews of your business, and
- the quality and authority of inbound links to your website
may have an impact on your local search ranking.
To optimize your website for local SEO, the work you do on traditional SEO matters. This includes making sure your website is mobile friendly, has a user friendly interface, loads quickly, and has a modern, attractive design.
1. Google Business Profile (GPB): Based on the three factors Google considers for local search results, your GBP profile is one of the most important pieces of a local SEO strategy. Creating, optimizing, and most importantly, updating your GBP profile is one of the most effective ways to rank higher in local search. Without an approved GBP profile, your business won’t be shown on either Google Maps or Local Packs. You can find Google’s guidelines for your GBP profile here.
2. NAP Listings: Unfortunately, your NAP listings have nothing to do with scheduling regular afternoon rest breaks, although there’s certainly scientific evidence to support the cognitive benefits of naps. NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. Search engines look for this information to confirm business location, so check in regularly wherever you’ve posted your NAP to confirm your listing remains accurate and consistent. The data used by the most popular map apps in the U.S. comes from Express Update, Neustar Localeze, Foursquare, or Factual, so be sure to check your listings with these four companies.
3. Online Directories: Your GBP profile is most important, but don’t forget other online listings in local business directories like Yelp and Bing Places for Business. Listing your business in all available directories can help boost your credibility and improve local search rankings. In fact, online directories are so important there are even local listing checker services to help you make sure you’ve listed your business everywhere available.
4. Customer Reviews: Encouraging positive customer reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, and Facebook is essential for local SEO as these help build trust, improve rankings, and can affect how Google evaluates your prominence. Just remember to always follow the platform rules on asking for reviews from customers!
One item missing from this list is the place we started: your business website. To take full advantage of local SEO, your business should have a website with local keywords integrated organically throughout. Search engines will use those keywords to associate your business with local intent and improve your rank. This is the best course of action to promote your business, but there’s one caveat. The Local Pack listings are almost exclusively based on the information provided in your GBP profile. So, it may seem counterintuitive, but to be featured in the coveted top spots in a local search, you’re not actually required to have a business website.
The Role of Quality Content in Local SEO
Whether your goal is to rank in organic or local search results, quality content is a must-have. How you present your business in your website copy and the articles you publish on your blog have an impact on how your target audience perceives your company, understands your brand, and engages with your products or services. Search engines do evaluate the content you publish for quality, relevance, freshness, and readability. Then, based on the algorithm’s evaluation, your website can move up or down on the SERP. Quality content clearly impacts your organic SEO, but it’s actually even more important for local SEO!
Content your audience finds valuable is more likely to be shared with others. Creating helpful resources for your industry can result in other sites linking to you. Participating in events like conferences, podcasts, or guest articles automatically means there will be links to your business website. These links from other sites to yours are called backlinks and they can be difficult to get when your target audience is national or international.
When you’re working on local SEO, backlinks can be much easier to achieve. You should still consider creating industry resources and taking part in industry events, but there are additional avenues for getting local backlinks. If your business is well known in your geographic area, supportive of community events, or provides information relevant to where your target audience is, you may suddenly find you have a high number of local backlinks. As the number of backlinks to your site grows, search engines will see you as an authority in your industry, and your website will move up the SERP. Your ranking on the SERP is improved with far less effort.
There’s no denying that improving your business website’s rank on the SERP can be challenging. With the right tools and assistance, local SEO can give you access to a completely untapped market with less effort and more success. If you haven’t yet made local SEO part of your marketing strategy, now is the time! Not sure where to start? Talk with one of our marketing experts today.
