How to Improve Your Local Business SEO

If you have a business with a physical location, then you should take advantage of local SEO. It will help you get found and turn you into a respected resource in your community.

Local SEO works exactly like normal SEO does. The one exception is that you are targeting local keywords that relate to your physical business location.

What is Local SEO?

Local search engine optimization (SEO) focuses on optimizing your presence in the search engines to earn more views in certain physical locations.

That way, you will lead your potential clients to your business when they make location-related searches.

Think about the last time you tried to find something local, say an ice cream shop. You probably Googled something along the lines of “ice cream shops near me”.

And you would get some results similar to this:

The results featured are the highly-coveted local 3-pack. Getting your business featured in these results can drive large amounts of organic traffic.

The importance of local SEO has been growing over the years because more people are using search by voice. Generally, these kinds of searches are more specific and include location keywords. The use of long tail keyword SEO is necessary as they become more related to the user’s location.

Techniques to Improve Your Local SEO

There are a few ways that you can improve your local SEO so that you show up high in organic searches related to your physical location. Take the time to optimize your website, online listings, and build your citations.

Register Your Business in Google My Business

Google My Business is a Google service that allows local businesses to create a free profile in their search results. It allows you to feature all of your different locations, which is helpful if you have multiple.

To achieve better results, you should take into consideration the following:

• Give complete and precise information about your business. This helps you to be considered relevant in different searches.
• Add updated schedules so your potential clients know when your work hours are.
• Include the most relevant keywords in your business’ description without falling into keyword stuffing.
• Verify your business’ location with Google My Business so they can show up in the search results.
• Encourage your clients to leave positive reviews on Google, because this improves local positioning.
• Use consistent name, address, and phone number (NAP) information across all of your citations and listings. Using different NAP information will confuse search engines and lower your rankings.

Perform Local Keyword Research

Improving your local SEO rankings starts with performing appropriate keyword research.

Start by brainstorming a list of keywords related to your business along with your target locations. Think in conversational terms to answer to searches by voice, for example: “Ice cream shops in Orlando”.

Include a variety of locations that people may be searching for related to your business. Combinations could include specific towns, boroughs, or counties within your region.

If you operate multiple locations, include variations of your target keywords for each physical location. For example, you might include:

• Ice cream shops in Orlando
• Orlando ice cream parlor
• Ice cream store in Orlando
• Ice cream shops Orange County, FL
• Disney ice cream shops
• Ice cream shops Lake Buena Vista
• etc…

After you’ve built your list of local keywords, do some research to determine monthly search volume for each keyword.

Google’s Keyword Planner can give you some great insights into which keywords have the highest search volumes and lowest competition. You can then prioritize your keyword list to focus on those first as you optimize your website.

Here are another 7 free SEO tools that you can use to get higher rankings.

Optimize Your On-Page Local SEO

When it’s time to create content for your website or blog, don’t forget to include your local keywords you just identified. Build out multiple pages and blog posts with useful content that include your target keywords.

Here are a few more recommendations to help you to get a better position in local searches:

• Focus on the local keywords that have the highest monthly search volumes first. This will help to give you the fastest results and then you can continue to build out other long-tail keywords over time.
• Include conversational keywords related to both your business and physical location in the body of your content.
• Make sure you’re including the name of your business and its location in the title page, the URL, and headings.
• Remember that a large amount of local searches are done through mobile devices, which means that you need a mobile responsive website.
• Include your phone number in an accessible place so the users can easily call you.
• Include relevant pictures that use alt tags with your local keywords.

Build Your Off-Page Local SEO Funnel

Finally, you can also improve your local positioning through an off-page SEO strategy. The purpose of this is to generate relevant backlinks to funnel visitors to your website.

Similar to normal SEO, having more backlinks to your main website helps to boost your domain authority and traffic. Search engines will rank you higher and take your content more seriously, if you have quality backlinks.

Local backlinks come from your community, which helps to boost your local SEO authority. They are more powerful than if you get linked by a generalist media publication in a different niche.

Because of that, we recommend searching for local directories, blogs, and newspapers that you can feature your business in. Reach out to them to see if you can provide an article or interview in return for a link to your site.

Local and niche directories are extremely important for local SEO, as well. Think Yelp, Yellow Pages, Zillow, and BBB, as examples. Fill out your profiles with consistent information across them all and it’ll expand your organic reach.

Think of your local SEO strategy as a funnel to get people in your geographic area into your business. Consistently create useful content on other websites that drives traffic to your main website to start to see better results.