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Localized SEO Strategy For Local Business

To Increase Visibility On Google Local Searches And Get Access to a bigger audience.

Following this SEO strategy will help you design and optimize your web presence to attract more customers who are searching locally.

In it, we discuss which key elements to prioritize and share a template that can be used as an example of how these elements are incorporated so your business will rank higher on local searches.

This strategy drives to improve on 4 principles proven by data to increase your business’s visibility.

Table of Contents

  1. Listings and Links Management
  2. Google Business Profile
  3. Local Landing Page Optimization
  4. Reputation Management
  5. Bonus: Outreach
  6. Example of an Optimized Page

Overview

Organic traffic from search engines is easily what yields the highest long-term return on investment for local business owners.  It is how local businesses maximize their exposure within a search result without having to pay for ads. In other words, free traffic is the most profitable traffic. And the best way to achieve that is by ranking effectively on search engines by optimizing to send the best signals.

Google Maps and the Local Pack

The way to grow organic traffic for your business is by showing up on Google Maps searches and in the Local Pack.  That’s prime real estate when it comes in local search.  Having your business information show up there more often for searchers to discover you is key to driving more business.

Data from research here are the major local search ranking factors that matter the most when optimizing for local searches. Below are focal points and corresponding actions you can take to improve upon all of these ranking factors and increase your visibility.

Listings and Links Management

Visibility on local search starts with a foundation of accurate and up-to-date information about your business that shows up accurately, consistently and in more instances online. Each of these instances is also known as a citation.

More citations means more ways for more people to find your business. Yes its true that most people search on Google.  That doesn’t mean you should ignore everyone else. After all, you are in business to make money.  As of January 2022, Google had 88% of searches in the United States. Which means the remaining 12% of people are searching elsewhere.

Citations give search engines confidence in your business information by seeing it consistently across many places on the web. This is why it is a major ranking factor.

Create and claim your listings at these data aggregators

  • Data-Axle
  • Foursquare
  • Neustar-Localeze

Create or Claim Major Listing Profiles

Build Organic Back Links

Similar to a referral in real life,  back-links act like referrals that build authority and credibility for your web page online.  Furthermore, the more back-links you have from high quality sites, the more relevant and prominent your business will be viewed and the more traffic you will receive. 

Some of the most valuable links you can earn are from nearby businesses who have authoritative site.  Reach out to these businesses and find opportunities to collaborate. Cross promote around discounts, events and giveaways on your webpages and include links back and forth.

Arrange interviews, features or write ups on authoritative publications and websites in your field. Some of your customers could have prominent businesses that you can collaborate with. There are so many opportunities because everyone has a website nowadays.

And since outreach is often neglected by businesses, it’s the best way for your business to get ahead of the competition. Keep in mind that more is not always better with back-links.  Rather it is more valuable to have quality links over quantity.  Earning a citation from the local news station website is more valuable than 10 citations from sites with poor reputation.

Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile is the number #1 ranking factor that determines who shows up in the local pack part of the Google search results page.  Set up, claim, optimize and manage your Google Business Profile.

Optimizing your Business Profile can help your business to rank higher on Google and be on top of local search results. Getting your business in front of all that web traffic is how you find customers.

This site details the biggest factors for ranking on local searches. Here’s what you can do.

Choose The Right Categories

Sounds simple, but this one can make or break you. Google needs to know what category your business belongs to so it can find relevant search matches.

Keyword in your business title

This one is tricky because it’s the easiest fix and brings almost instant results. But not so fast. Google wants you to use your real offline business name. So don’t go stuffing keywords in your business profile name. You can get tagged for spam and be penalized by Google.

Add your Menu items

Listing menu items on your Google Business Profile helps customers learn about your food and also helps Google understand more about your business so it can match you with relevant searches.

Manage Reviews

The content here carries more weight because it’s generated by customers. Teach your community.  When customers leave more detailed reviews you, it increases visibility for your business. Additionally, business listings that display engagement and communication between the business owner/manager and its’ customers clearly convert better.

Utilize Posts

Another opportunity to let your visitors AND Google know about all the products and services that you offer so that you can improve on your relevancy score. Having posts that display recent posting dates help with conversions.

Create Google Site

This is an under utilized feature of Google. As a general rule, we know that Google wants searchers to stay on their pages. So they will show preference some way towards profiles with the business website built.

Local Landing Page Optimization

Search engines like Google strive to display the most useful content for their searchers. Google determines how useful your content is based on what visitors do when they land on your site AND based on what their technology understands about your site digitally.

A visitor who lands on your page and then 2 clicks later is getting directions demonstrates a useful experience. Compare that to a site with repeated visitors who land and bounce(leave immediately). This is one type of way Google learns.

Optimize For Behavior

Optimizing your website’s landing page for user behavior is equally as important to consider if you’re a business owner.  That means, thinking about all the information that the user, who has just landed on your page, could possibly be looking for.  The last thing you want is a user to land on your page, find it useless and then click back to search results(aka bounce).  Too many of those click backs will cause a loss in your SEO ranking over time.

As you can see, based on Moz the number 1 and third most important factor for local search is “on-page” and behavioral.  That means it’s what’s on your page and what the users do when they get there that matters most.  Make sure to display what your searchers are looking for and make it easy to find.

Based on data taken from other websites that have performed well, we found the following elements to be the most effective at impacting user consideration, action and sticking.

  • Clear title of product/menu/service item
  • Coupons and offers
  • Google Maps (or Apple) directions button
  • Easy to find click-to-call phone numbers
  • Hours of operation
  • Hyper local content
  • Displaying customer reviews and ratings
  • Website speed/performance
  • Click to make reservation button
  • Any allergy details/dietary restrictions

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is important because site speed, performance and legal compliance are all important ranking factors. In it’s entirety, technical SEO also comes with reports 30 pages long that is best left for developers. If you insist though, you can learn about most of the important factors below.

Reputation Management

Because no one is going to click on a one-star business.

Manage Negative Reviews

Even the best intended business can suffer from the occasional negative experience.  You need a system that gets in front of these negative experiences before they end up online somewhere.  You can do this by asking every customer about their experience and give them an opportunity to share with you directly first.  This can sound like a lot of work but there is software available out there that can automate most of this for you. 

ManyChat, Ovation and Ekomi all have their own version of this service available to businesses. By getting to these negative experiences first, you have the opportunity to “make it up” to your customers and deter them from posting them online.

Enroll Positive Reviews

The same software mentioned above also comes with tools that make it easier for customers to share their positive experiences at your desired sites. You can use this technology to build some rapport with your customers which gives you a better chance at them leaving positive reviews for your business.

Learn From The Feedback

One of the most underrated values of customer feedback is the content itself. Customers are sharing what they love and what they hate about your business so use this as an opportunity to learn and improve your product/service to better serve them.

Local Business Landing Page Template

Here’s an excellent info-graph created by the SEO specialists over at Wiideman Consulting Group. It serves as a template that you can follow when designing and optimizing your web site/pages.

landing page example for restaurants