How Local SEO Brings Traffic to Your San Diego Small Business

San Diego, one of America’s Finest Cities. It is one of the best places to call home on the West Coast for families and veterans. This city has fabulous beaches, exceptional cuisine, modest neighborhoods, and warm weather. These are also reasons why small businesses and startups love San Diego.

With a San Diego local SEO agency, you can promote your small business, products, or services. This guide is about how local search engine optimization (SEO) boosts traffic to small businesses.

• Help people locate your business
• Reduce marketing expenses
• Promote your ranking on local searches
• Show your expertise

Let’s go!

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

Helping People Locate Your Business

If your business belongs to a competitive industry in San Diego, like healthcare, technical or accommodation, and food services, you need ways to stay relevant and visible both online and offline. Local SEO strategies can optimize your site and improve your chances of ranking higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). People can find you effortlessly, and search engines can rank you higher.

One of the most crucial steps to optimizing your small business website for local SEO is to claim your Google Business Profile (GBP). Your GBP is your dedicated listing on search results that shows every time people look for your business.

GBP is an accessible business listing similar to online local citations for businesses with a local shop or headquarters. It is connected to Google Maps; therefore, if you have multiple locations or branches each of these gets a profile. Optimizing your GBP leads your customers to your doors and helps them learn more about your company.

Aside from your business name, address, phone number (NAP), and website, you must complete your profile as soon as you claim your listing. Remember these GBP sections and tips to manage each.

• Create an engaging description. Mention your primary business category and include your high-value services and products. Add your area of focus and have a unique selling proposition (USPs). This makes your business appear better than your competitors, by offering "more advanced" products or "new and improved" services.
• Use the correct business category. The category you select affects your visibility and searcher engagement. Select a category that ranks and choose the category that best describes your business. Some variables can influence your primary category, like service menus, food menus, booking for appointments or reservations, verification requirements, etc.
• Include your hours of operation. Doing so increases your online visibility because you prove that you are an authentic and trustworthy business, aside from your regular hours, including holidays.
• Upload many photos and videos. This completes your GBP and attracts more customers. You may include pictures of your storefront, amenities, services, products, staff, etc. A 360-view of your location helps your customers find your business.
• Create a question-and-answer section. Include questions your customers are more likely to ask, like how to get to your store and order your products or services. The Q&A section automates customer service.
• Add your social media profiles. Your social pages further enhance brand recognition and promote online visibility. Ensure your profiles are updated and consistent with your website, blog, and GBP data.

Promote Your Ranks on Local Searches

People who use search engines to look for information prefer results at the top of SERPs. They regard the top-ranking results as the most credible answer to their query. By using SEO strategies, you can get your site on top of search results and be visible to your audience. You can show them your expertise and offer your products or services.

And local SEO is more than using keyword-rich articles and blogs to rank. It’s a combination of on-page, off-page, and technical SEO tactics to promote your ranks. You need the following.

• Focus on on-page SEO. These are optimization strategies performed within your website. Good on-page techniques include using keywords in your metadata, adding alt text to images, including correct schema markup, and publishing relevant, optimized content.
• Improve off-page SEO. These strategies performed outside your site include link building, social media marketing, podcasting, guest posts, and video marketing.
• Optimize for technical SEO. These strategies improve website ranking, allowing search engines to index your pages efficiently. Techniques like boosting site speed, creating and optimizing your XML sitemap, fixing webpage errors and warnings, and gathering internal links.

Reduce Marketing Expenses

You can advertise your products or services on traditional mediums like television, radio, newspaper, and billboards, but these techniques are costly. For example, placing your ads in a local newspaper like the San Diego Union Tribune starts at $15.99 for 30 days, while print rates for The San Diego Voice & Viewpoint cost around $50 a week for a 6.375 in x 3.75-in ad.

Meanwhile, the cost of television commercials depends on your ad's length and the broadcast time. If your ads are for the local market, expect to pay as little as $50 for a 30-second ad! And this is just for airtime.

Add your ad creation expenses, like equipment, software, and professional editing, and you're spending a small fortune with no guarantee that you are reaching the right market.

On the other hand, local SEO strategies save you money, time, and effort. Optimizing your local presence using GBP is free. Putting a lot of effort into managing and improving your listing will surely get great results.

Also, SEO allows you to fine-tune your marketing strategies to target your specific market or audience. It may take time for SEO to take effect, but there's no time wasted investing in this strategy.

Summing Up

Even a small business can enjoy better site traffic and foot traffic through local SEO. This marketing strategy helps people locate your business, promote your ranking on local searches and reduce marketing expenses. SEO should be part of your digital marketing arsenal to place your business on the online map.

Do you want to learn more about how localized SEO promotes small businesses? Find out today. Call Digital Authority Partners.