9 Local SEO Tips for Small Business

How do you get more customers to visit or shop at your small business? Well, if you don’t know the answer, turn to Google.

That’s what potential customers are doing when they need a local service or product. 88% of people searching for local business information on their phones will end up calling or visiting a firm within 24 hours.

Many small businesses still do not have a local SEO strategy to help their business appear on Google search results. In this helpful article, we will share 9 local SEO tips small businesses can use to show up at the top of Google search results.

Table of Contents:

1. Claim Your Google My Business Page
2. Make Sure NAP is Consistent in Business Directories
3. Create Location Pages
4. Create Unique Local Content
5. Get More Customer Reviews
6. Identify Local-Intent Keywords
7. Connect and Get Links From Local Websites
8. Share Your Content on Social Media
9. Implement Local SEO Best Practices

Watch this video to learn about the Digital Authority Partners approach to local SEO!

1. Claim Your Google My Business Page

The first thing you should do to help your business show up on Google is to claim your Google My Business (GMB) page. This profile is free to create but can provide significant ROI for your business with just a few minutes of effort.

Google My Business listings will typically show up at the top when a potential customer Googles something with local intent, such as “near me” or “in my city”. More specifically, the GMB listings will show up at the top of mobile results and on the sidebar of Google’s desktop search results when you search for a business name.

The benefits don’t stop there; it will also help your business appear when people search for your type of business or if they are searching locations on Google Maps. For example, this shows what you see when you Google “best roofing company las vegas.”

These map listings pull their information directly from Google Business profiles. If you’re in that area and want to learn more about optimizing your GMB profile, you could contact a Las Vegas Local SEO Agency to help you rank higher for these types of local searches.

2. Make Sure NAP is Consistent in Business Directories

People use Google to find answers to their questions. But what would happen if Google began to consistently show the wrong information? What if Google gave people the wrong phone number for a business or sent them to the completely incorrect address on the map?

That scenario is exactly what Google is trying to avoid. To make sure the answers are consistent, Google checks the information about a business with all the other information they can find online. The primary sources of this data are other online directories and local profiles, such as Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, Yellow Pages, Bing Businesses, and more.

If the critical information for your business, Name, Address, and Phone Number isn’t consistent across these platforms, Google will be less likely to show your business in the search results. That is why keeping this information, commonly called NAP in the local SEO world, consistent across every website is vital for small businesses that want to show up in local search results.

3. Create Location Pages

If you want to get more people to visit your website for local searches, you should build web pages designed for those places. By creating a webpage for every location your business serves, you can address the unique interests, concerns, and questions people in that area might have about your business.

4. Create Unique Local Content

Creating location pages can be effective, but only when paired with uniquely valuable content for those website visitors. If one location page says the same thing as another, it doesn’t provide any additional value to searchers. Google does not like this; it considers duplicate content unworthy of showing and will often hide it from the search results entirely.

So, if you create location-specific pages, you fill them with unique local content. Provide value to the people in that area with FAQs, adding directions to your closest brick and mortar location, including galleries of projects you’ve completed in that city, or reviews from customers who live there. This local SEO tip only works if you are committed to adding value to your website visitors through local SEO content.  

5. Get More Customer Reviews

Search engines and online review websites reward businesses that offer an excellent experience for customers. Reviews are a signal of trust for many people looking at products and services online. The more positive reviews a business can get on Yelp, Trip Advisor, Google Reviews, and other online review sites, the higher your business will show for local search results.

Encourage customers who have had a positive experience with your company to leave you an excellent review online. More online reviews will help your business shine.

To get the most out of your company’s online reviews, work with a Las Vegas SEO agency to help set up schema on your website. Proper schema tags will help Google understand the information on your website. In addition, this helpful technical SEO feature will allow Google to show additional features on your search results listing, such as your business’s reviews and star rating.

6. Identify Local-Intent Keywords

If you don’t know how your customers search for your products and services, you won’t effectively target those keywords. By performing keyword research, you can find the different local search queries that people are using to find businesses, products, and services like the ones offered by your company.

In addition to identifying the phrases people are using, many SEO tools can also provide valuable metrics like keyword volume (how many searches a query gets each month) or how difficult it would be to outrank your competitors. With these pieces of information in hand, you can effectively prioritize the keywords you want to target on your website with new pages and content.

7. Connect and Get Links From Local Websites

Backlinks from trusted websites are among the most significant factors that help websites rank higher. Google considers backlinks from other websites to be a sign of trust, authority, popularity, and relevance for a website. So, by getting more connections and links from other websites in that local area, you are improving Google’s trust in your website.

If you’ve been a local business for a while, you may have built connections and partnerships with other local businesses, organizations, and charities. You can drastically improve your local SEO by contacting these connections and asking them to consider linking to your website.

8. Share Your Content on Social Media

Staying in front of your audience is critical for staying top of mind. You can build a stronger bond with your customers when your business has an active presence on social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, and others). Plus, these social signals help tell search engines that you are actively engaging with your audience. Google might take the hint that people in your area want to see your brand higher on search results.

9. Implement Local SEO Best Practices

SEO best practices can seem like common sense when put in a list of tips for helping your small business show up for local search results. However, it is still worth listing a few local SEO recommendations to ensure you haven’t skipped any of these bullet points.  

• In 2022, every website should be designed for mobile users first.
• Websites need to load quickly. If your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, more than half of your visitors could hit the back button and leave your site.
• Provide a good user experience so that visitors don’t get lost when clicking through your website’s pages or become overwhelmed by pop-ups and ads.
• Have a good page title and meta description so that users want to click on your page from the search results.
• Users came to your website to find something.  Help them consume your content with logical headings and relevant content.

With these 9 local SEO tips, you can get your small business to rank at the top of Google. When potential customers in your area search for products, services, or information related to your business, you’ll show up. Contact us today if you have any questions, want more information, or want an expert SEO agency to handle your local SEO!