Local business owners face a multitude of challenges when it comes to digital marketing, especially when they're competing for online visibility against big brands with huge marketing budgets.
However, there's one area of digital marketing where businesses of any size can excel: local search engine optimization, or local SEO.
When done right, doing local SEO for small businesses can have an outsized impact, helping them remain competitive in the hyper-competitive local search market and, ultimately, attract more leads and customers.
Why Local SEO Is Important for Small Businesses
What Does Small Business Local SEO Involve?
Local SEO is the practice of optimizing a business's online assets, including its website, Google Business Profile, and other business listings, for location-specific search queries.
Local search engine optimization helps businesses promote their products and services to nearby customers at the exact time they're looking for them via Google Search or Google Maps or other search engines and navigation apps, like Bing and Apple Maps.
Local SEO strategies focus on increasing a business's visibility in local search engine results pages (SERPs), which are tailored to specific geographic areas based on the search terms people use and their actual location when performing a search.
Searches like "gym near me," "best pizza in [City]," and "emergency plumber in [Neighborhood]" are all examples of the types of searches that local SEO is concerned with helping businesses show up in.
Benefits of Local SEO for Small Business Owners
Any type of local business with a brick-and-mortar location or a service area can benefit from implementing local SEO to improve their rankings in local search results, outrank competitors, and attract more local leads and customers.
When someone searches for a business near them, they're almost always going to choose one of the top results on Google to call, message, visit, or book an appointment with. This is because we've been conditioned over the years to put trust in the top results we see in SERPs.
Google aims to provide users with the most relevant results for their searches, as well as offering them credible, trustworthy businesses to choose from, which is why reviews matter for local SEO.
So, by implementing effective local search engine optimization strategies to improve their rankings on Google, businesses are naturally going to attract more business from people looking for nearby goods and services like those they offer.
Doing local SEO can even help small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) compete with large chains and enterprise organizations, since it makes it possible for even the smallest mom-and-pop store to show up at the top of local search results.
5 Key Components of Local SEO Strategies for Small Businesses:
1. Google Business Profile (GBP) Optimization
Google accounts for approximately 90% of all global search traffic, making Google the search engine to optimize for if you want your business to get found in local search.
Google even provides businesses with a free tool for promoting themselves on Google — Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business).
When someone searches for goods or services near them on Google, the top three results they see are almost always three Google Business Profile listings, known as Google's 3-Pack or the local pack.
If you want your local business to show up in the local pack, claiming and optimizing your Google Business Profile is crucial.
2. Local Citations
Listings in other relevant online business directories, such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Tripadvisor, can also help improve local search visibility.
Not only does listing your business on other relevant directories help people who prefer to use those platforms over Google find it, but it also improves your overall local SEO by building something called local citations, which are essentially online mentions of your business info.
In order for local citations to be effective, it's important to maintain consistency in NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) information and business hours across all listings.
3. On-Page SEO
Including local keywords in your website's content, title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and image alt texts can improve its local search rankings. Creating location-specific pages or content can also be beneficial.
While no amount of local SEO can make your website appear above Google Business Profile results in local searches, a well-optimized site can appear high up in the organic results right below the local pack.
4. Reviews and Ratings
Positive customer reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, Tripadvisor, and industry-specific sites can help boost your local search rankings and attract more customers. Responding to reviews, both positive and negative, is also important.
Google Business Profile reviews have a direct impact on local rankings, meaning businesses with higher numbers of reviews and better average review scores tend to outrank businesses with fewer positive reviews.
5. Local Backlinks
Earning backlinks (links to a page on your business's site) from other local websites, blogs, news outlets, and industry-specific directories can further contribute to your local SEO efforts. These local backlinks signal to search engines that your business is relevant to local searches and can help your site rank higher.
Conclusion
Local search engine optimization offers businesses of all sizes the opportunity to improve their online visibility and attract more local customers without breaking the bank.
Local SEO is important not only because it levels the playing field for small and medium-sized businesses competing against larger brands, but also because it helps them get found by people who are looking for goods or services nearby and are ready to make an appointment or drop by right away.
In short, embracing local SEO for small businesses is essential for any brick-and-mortar or service-area business looking to succeed in attracting local customers online!