How to Use Local SEO to Grow Your Small Business

Local Search Engine Optimization (local SEO) is the process of optimizing your website in order to appear in local search results for target search terms.

Local SEO mainly targets two types of searches:

• Searches for a business in a specific location using location-based keywords: “Pet shop Colorado”
• Searches using a users’ location at the time of searching: “Pet shops near me”

The picture above shows a “local pack” or a “map pack”. This comprises the Google map and business listings that appear at the top of the SERP (search engine results page) when users search with local intent. The businesses in these spots receive 126% more traffic than the fourth to tenth search rankings, and the best part is, they’re using a form of totally free advertising: a Google Business Profile (GBP).

It’s no surprise that these spots are in high demand. While I can’t guarantee your GBP will achieve position number one, improving your ranking at any rate will make your site more visible and increase its traffic.

Want to get started? Let’s get into local SEO!

Now that you understand what local SEO is and why it’s important, let’s take a look at how to improve local SEO. Key steps to include in your local SEO strategy are:

1. Conduct Local Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of finding the phrases and terms that users are entering into search engines, then analyzing which ones you should use in your site’s written content to boost your visibility on search engine results pages.

Local keyword research is exactly the same, focusing on the terms and keywords that users input into search engines when looking for a business near them or in a specific area.

For the initial finding stage, brainstorm the terms associated with your business and the different ways they could be phrased – someone searching for a running store might instead search for sneakers, athletic shoes. You can input these into a keyword research tool to find even more related suggestions. A great free SEO tool for keywords is Google Keyword Planner, but we’d recommend a more powerful tool like Semrush for more advanced analytics.

When it comes to analyzing these keywords, there are three main elements to consider: relevance, competition, and search volume.

Relevance refers to how relevant the keyword is to both your business and your aims. Ask yourself not only can my website answer this search query, but what is the intent behind the query? If your goal is to make sales, you should be targeting keywords and search terms where the user intent is to make a purchase.

Competition, meanwhile, refers to how many other websites are targeting that same search term, while search volume looks at how many users are searching it. After all, what would be the point in targeting keywords that nobody is searching for? These details can be found in the keyword research tool you use.

2. Set Up a Google Business Profile

A Google Business Profile controls how your business is displayed on relevant Google search results pages, and it’s a key part of Google’s local SEO algorithm. Setting up a page is a way for Google to authenticate your business’ website, which could even result in a sidebar slot on search results pages. But to stand a chance of showing in the top spots, you need to optimize your GBP – the more information you can add to it, the better.

Your GBP should feature all the key information about your business such as reviews, location, and contact information. Make sure you include the most accurate and current details, since all of these aspects will help Google to determine if and where you should be ranked for your target local SEO search terms.

3. Collect and Respond To Google Reviews

We mentioned them briefly before, but collecting positive Google Reviews can have a major impact on the success of your local SEO strategy.

In fact, Google uses three key ranking factors when ranking websites for local SEO search terms: relevance, distance, and prominence.

While relevance and distance refer to how closely your website matches the initial search query and how far away you are from the search “zone,” prominence looks at your online reviews, particularly Google Reviews, and how good they are.

Customers often don’t think to provide positive feedback, which makes sourcing reviews challenging.

Some ways you can encourage positive Google reviews are:

• Send a polite follow up email asking past customers to leave you a review, usually a few weeks after their customer experience. If you express how the review would benefit your business and show gratitude without being pushy, chances are they’ll be happy to provide one.
• Offer incentives in exchange for reviews – this could be a discount off their next visit or purchase, or entry into a giveaway

When you receive them, you need to remember to respond to both positive and negative Google Reviews. They’ll be one of the first things people look at when Googling your business, so it’s important to show you care by using a polite and professional tone.

4. Optimize Your Site’s URL, Meta Data, and Headers

Optimizing your website content is the bread and butter of SEO. Each textual element of your site helps search engines to understand your content, categorize it, and introduce it to the right people.

The same principles apply to local SEO, so it’s important to familiarize yourself with these key tips if you want to be discovered in local search.

The keywords you sourced in step one should be embedded in your URL, meta data, and headers. As well as this, there are other local SEO best practices to remember for these elements:

• URL: your URL should clearly and concisely describe its page. It shouldn’t be changed unless necessary, so don’t include any numbers like dates or years
• Meta title (the page title that shows in the search results): you should aim for between 30 and 60 characters, and include your keywords, which Google prefers to be at the start of the title
• Meta description (what appears in the search results below your page title): this should be between 120 and 160 characters
• Headers: when used well throughout your content, these tell search engines and your visitors what your page is about, so they should be descriptive and contain appropriate keywords

5. Add Location Pages to Your Website

If you have one or more bricks and mortar locations for your business then location pages are a great way of improving your SEO.

Location pages provide users with all the information they need about your in-person location such as an address, contact details, opening hours, and even customer reviews.

Location pages are a great way of adding local search terms to your website content, just make sure you don’t duplicate content and each location page is unique.

It’s also a good idea to include your location, history, and contact details on your About Us page too, to have all information accessible in one place. You can find more About Us Page Tips for Local Businesses in our full guide!

6. Build Local Citations and Listings

Citations are mentions of your company name, address, website, and contact details on a website that’s not your own, such as local directories or listing websites.

Local citations are not only a great way to drive traffic to your website, but they also act as another way of telling Google where your business is located and which local search results you should be appearing in.

Make sure that all mentions of your website across local citations and listings are the same. Your details, such as your contact information or address, should be identical everywhere that they appear online.

7. Prioritize Linking

Strengthening links is a surefire way to increase your site’s SEO visibility score, which in turn makes it more discoverable. There are two types of links to focus on – backlinks and internal links.

Backlinks are links on other websites that point towards your webpages. If other local businesses are referencing yours, this signals your site’s expertise and authority to Google – key factors that determine your local search ranking.

To build up your local backlinks:

• Publish link-worthy content – firstly, it’s important to prime your site for backlinks – the more sharable your content, the more local businesses will want to link to your site. Community polls and infographics are great ways to make your content unique, digestible, and valuable to your local community.
• Contact local businesses – approach local online businesses via email and ask them to link to your page. Make sure you personalize your correspondence and highlight the relevance and value your link would bring to their site.
• Other link-building strategies such as sponsoring local events and partnering with local influencers are simple, mutually beneficial ways to get your site linked to.

Internal linking, on the other hand, is the process of linking pages on your site to other pages – you guessed it – on your site. It strengthens your ecommerce architecture by creating a navigation web that encourages users to stay on your website for longer.

Take this article, for instance. If you have a read through, you’ll see we’ve included some external links to statistics, which act as backlinks for the source site, but we’ve also included internal links to other relevant pages on our site.

Anchor text is the blue text that differentiates your regular copy from clickable links. It’s also the only context a user gets as to the destination of the link, so best practice is to keep it descriptive and stick closely to the keywords the link destination page is targeting – that way your site visitors will have a positive browsing experience.

8. Leverage Social Media

While social media doesn’t directly impact your local SEO, leveraging your social media strategy can help to boost your wider local brand awareness, which in turn can impact how well you rank for local search terms.

Sharing your content in location-specific social media groups and targeting social media audiences based on their location will help to raise your brand awareness in your target area.

Doing so will drive more local traffic to your website, which in turn may lead to more local customers and those all-important Google Reviews.

Linking to your website from high-authority platforms such as Facebook and Instagram is also a great way to boost your online citations and overall backlink profile – which can in turn increase your domain authority, which has its own SEO benefits.

So while social media may not have a direct impact on local SEO, it can certainly help key factors to get even better results.

9. Create Local Content

They say that content is King when it comes to SEO and it’s pretty important for local SEO too.

Creating and publishing local content on your website is not only a great way to include your local search terms and keywords, but it’s also the perfect way to attract local visitors and show Google the value you provide to local searchers.

Local content can be anything, just make sure it has a focus on the local aspect of your business. Use your content to be the industry authority in your target area.

For example, if you run a pet shop and want to attract more local pet owners to your website and business, you could create a content series on all the best local pet establishments such as dog-friendly restaurants, vets, and pet-themed events.

10. Ensure Your Website Is Mobile Friendly

One of THE most important things you can do to improve your local SEO is to ensure that your website is mobile friendly.

Local search and mobile websites are like two peas in a pod. Why? Because most local searchers do so on a mobile device. When someone is looking for a business “near me” or for a result in a specific location, chances are, they are out and about in that location already and therefore using a cell phone.

By ensuring your website is fully optimized for mobile, you’ll be providing those searchers with the best possible experience when they land on your website as well as giving yourself the best possible chance to rank in local results.

11. Track Your Local SEO Performance

And finally, the last task on our how to improve local SEO checklist is to keep track of your online performance.

Tracking how your website is performing for your target local search terms is the best way to understand if what you’re doing is working, or if you need to make some changes to your local SEO strategy.

Keep a close eye on things such as where your website is ranking and whether or not you’re achieving the coveted sidebar position on Google’s SERPs as well as how much local traffic you are driving to your website.

Good to know…

We recommend setting up GA4 on your website so that you have the latest version of Google Analytics for staying on top of your data such as traffic and what devices visitors are using to access your site. The old version, Universal Analytics, is no longer in use (since July 1st 2023).

The answer to the question, why is local SEO important? is simple – if you want to attract customers in a specific location to your website and business, you need to be optimized to catch local searchers.

96% of customers hear about new local businesses online, which means you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to grow your customer base until you know how to do local SEO efficiency. Not only are you not seeing customers, but you may be actively pushing them away – a further study shows that 62% of people ignore businesses without some form of online presence. 

Find Out More

Some website builders are better for SEO than others, and it’s important to pick a good one to give yourself the best chance against your competitors. Check out our list of the Best Website Builders for SEO for more advice!

Local SEO can cost anywhere between $0 and $3,000 per month, depending on how you implement it.

You could take it on in-house, which, in theory, can be free. However, you need to take into account the amount of time and effort required to achieve local SEO success, which includes training staff on SEO software and local SEO best practices.

If you decide you don’t have the internal resources and choose to outsource to an agency or freelance local SEO expert, your fee will be on the higher end of the scale.

Factors that will alter the fees you incur are:

• The size of your business
• The experience level of the SEO expert you choose
• The current state of your website’s local SEO and how much you want them to change
• The amount of locations your business has – each location will have to be optimized separately

Local SEO is a crucial part of the online strategy for any business hoping to attract customers from specific locations to their online store.

Establishing a local SEO strategy using the tips we’ve laid out in this article will help you whether your goal is to drive local traffic to your website or encourage more customers to your in-person store or services.

Now that we’ve answered the question, what is local SEO, and given you plenty of tips to improve your website’s local SEO, it’s time to start implementing your own local SEO strategy. Make sure to let us know in the comments what you found most useful from this article and what you’d like to see next!