How To Optimize Your Local Business For Search

According to Google’s 2022 Retail Marketing Guide, searches for “shops near me” or “open now near me” continue to grow tremendously year on year. This trend means that more people are relying on search to find local businesses nearby. So, if your local business isn’t visible to searchers, you might be missing out on a chunk of potential customers. 

Local SEO ensures that your small business shows up at the top of the search results for relevant local searches, driving ready-to-buy customers through your door. This post will cover some key strategies to help get your local business noticed on search. 

But first, some basics…

What Is Local SEO?

Local SEO is a subset of SEO that helps local businesses appear prominently for location-based searches in places like Google Search and Maps. 

It focuses on optimizing your online presence by helping the search engine understand your business, location and offerings so it can recommend you for relevant queries around your location.

Do a quick search for “swim school Cincinnati” / your local area on Google or even “swim school near me.” You’ll probably find a local pack (also called a map pack), with three places you can visit, complete with all the information you need to find them, at the top of the search engine results page. Like this:

Down the page, in the regular blue links results, you might find one of the businesses from the local pack as the number one result, too. In this example, “Bear Paddle Swim School”. 

This is possible because of local SEO.

How Does Local SEO Work?

Google showcases local results in the SERPs when it detects that people are looking for products or services nearby or in a specific area. Every month, the search engine delivers billions of local search results, and it uses three criteria to determine which local business to rank for each query: Relevance, Distance and Prominence.

Relevance: This is how well the local business matches what a searcher is looking for. Having a complete and detailed Google Business Profile (we’ll get into that soon) will help the search engine determine how relevant your business is to a query.

Distance: How far is a business from the location term used in the search?

Prominence: This is how well-known a local business is online and offline. Google looks at information available about a business in directories, articles, and reviews. Your regular SEO efforts and positioning in search results also contribute to influencing your local search ranking.

Why Is Local SEO Important?

Local SEO focuses on helping people in specific locations, such as districts and cities. It drives foot traffic for businesses with physical locations (auto repair shops, restaurants, salons, etc.) and puts local service providers (electricians, tutors, etc.) in contact with ready-to-buy customers. 

But apart from improving conversion and revenue, local SEO also:

• Improves your general online visibility: If you’re already investing in SEO, optimizing for local customers will significantly boost your efforts.

• Helps build credibility: As people depend more and more on Google to find places to go, being recommended speaks to the credibility of your business and improves your chances of getting referrals. 

• Is cost-effective compared to other forms of advertising like print, television or radio. 

How To Optimize Your Business With Local SEO

Now that you’ve seen how local SEO works and why it’s important let’s look at the steps you need to take to optimize your local business. 

1. Do keyword research for your website: 

If you’ve built a website for your local business, you should optimize it to maximize its full potential, beginning with keyword research.

Keyword research for local SEO involves curating a list of phrases and queries people use to find local businesses. These phrases and queries are usually variations of “best (your type of business) (city)” or “(your type of business) near me” or “(your type of business) (city),” and you can quickly come up with a list by brainstorming.

Alternatively, you can use Google Autocomplete to save time and find more long-tail keyword ideas around your location. Since Autocomplete predicts search based on location, start typing in your service or product into Google to see local keyword suggestions. Like this: 

Adding some modifiers from the suggestions will reveal even more keyword ideas you’ve not considered. For instance:

You can keep typing different phrase combinations until you get a list of potential, relevant keywords your business could target. 

2. Create quality localized content:

Once you have a list of keywords, the next step is to create high-quality, optimized content that addresses the needs of local searchers. The benefit of this is profound. You’ll answer the questions local searchers have and thus appear more credible to Google, which will, in turn, improve your overall search performance and even earn you more backlinks from other local websites.

To start creating content, you need to know the topics local searchers looking for your product or service are interested in, including those other local businesses around you are writing about. And you can discover that with the InLinks content tool. 

Here’s how.

Tip: If you do not have an InLinks account, sign up here to follow along with the steps.

Log into your InLinks account and go to content brief. 

Click the green “create a brief” button to start a brief for any keyword on your list.

Choose your target country and enter the keyword for which you want to create a brief. Then, select local optimization to narrow the target location to the state and city where your business is located. Click Ok.

This specification guides the InLinks algorithm to retrieve only local businesses around the same location. 

Next, you’ll see a list of the top-ranking URLs for your keyword in your location. These are the websites you’ll be competing against. Click “load more URLs” to add more competitors to the list. Or click the gear button to change a URL to a specific competitor you want the InLinks tool to analyze. 

When you’re happy with the list, click OK so InLinks can start analyzing those URLs to extract content ideas. Once the analysis is complete, it’ll open the content editor. 

From the left panel, navigate to keyword research.

In the next screen, you’ll see the keywords and questions local searchers are interested in, grouped into clusters and ranked by their priority/relevance. 

Those with high relevance are essential questions your target audience has that you should consider writing about. After reviewing all the keyword clusters and questions, you should have a good list of content ideas to start with. 

Clicking the user intent tab at the top of your screen will show you the exact desire local searchers have while searching. This insight will help you align your content to match their search intent and improve your chances of ranking. 

If you need help creating the content, navigate to the left panel and click AI assistant to call the AI writing tool. 

Clarify your content type, audience, and other instructions then click “generate structure” to get a detailed outline for your article. 

You can edit each section of the outline by selecting “edit structure.” Or if everything is to your liking, go ahead and click “write with AI” or “write all sections” to generate relevant, helpful content. 

After generating the content, click “add to editor” to bring it into the content editor for editing. 

3. Set up your Google business profile: 

Your Google business profile is a free online listing that controls how your local business appears across Google Maps and Search. Here’s what it looks like:

It’s like your digital storefront, and the information you share on your Google business profile is visible to anyone searching for businesses like yours in the local area. Setting up your profile correctly improves your chances of appearing in the local pack and attracting customers through local search.

To get started, add or verify your business on Google Business. Then, provide comprehensive information about your business, from contact details to photos and videos, hours of operation, and business attributes, e.g., Wi-Fi, wheelchair accessible, family-friendly, etc.

4. Keep your business profile active: 

Setting up your business profile is important, but it doesn’t stop there. Keeping the profile active is essential to attract customers and boost your ranking. 

For starters, make sure your business information is always up to date. Update contact details, opening hours and holidays whenever they change so customers can always access accurate information. Use high-quality pictures, videos and captivating descriptions to showcase your offerings.

Encourage customers to leave reviews on your profile after patronizing your business. Then, make sure to respond to those reviews (both positive and negative), as it shows Google that your business is active. Plus, having more reviews and higher ratings than your competitors can help you outrank them and convince searchers to choose you. 

In addition, publish regular updates about your business on your profile. Post about events, promotions or new products to keep your business fresh in the minds of local searchers. You can also set up an FAQ section to answer regular questions customers have about your business. 

With the InLinks social media tool, you can easily schedule posts weeks and months ahead.

5. Create localized pages for your website:

Creating localized pages, which are web pages tailored to the unique needs and interests of customers in different locations, will help you dominate local SEO if you serve customers in multiple locations.

For instance, if you are a dental practice with branches in Manhanttan and Woodbridge, New Jersey, you could create different pages targeting busy professionals and young adults in Manhanttan and another for the family-oriented community in Woodbridge, NJ. This will allow you to incorporate location-specific keywords, information and content on your website.

Examples of keywords your pages could target include “Manhattan cosmetic dentist” “and Family dentist Woodbridge” to propel them higher in local search.

6. Manage local citations: 

Citations are mentions of your business name, address and phone number (NAP) online.  Managing citations means ensuring your NAP listings are accurate and consistent across different platforms, including directories and social media.

This is important because Google may reference them for verification purposes, and the more consistent your citations are, the more credible and trustworthy your business will appear. 

7. Add local business schema: 

Schema markup will give search engines more context about your business, reviews, working hours and contact information. This improved understanding can translate to better ranking in local search and enhanced visibility in the standard SERPs. 

With InLinks, adding schema markup to your website is easy. InLinks will add About and FAQ schema to your web pages to give them an instant SEO boost.

8. Invest in link building:

Like regular SEO, link building will benefit your local SEO efforts in many ways. Links from other authoritative websites signal trust to the search engine, contribute to a positive online reputation and boost your position in the search results. With local link building, your focus is on forging relationships and building links from reputable directories and organizations within your target location. 

To do that, you can:

• collaborate with more authoritative businesses for cross-promotion
• sponsor local events in your area
• publish guest posts in popular local publications. 

The mentions and backlinks you gain from these efforts serve as votes of confidence, which ultimately improves your performance in local search.

Grow Your Business with Local SEO

As more people rely on Google to find the things they need nearby, optimizing for local SEO is no longer an option. It’s now a necessity. With local SEO, you’re not just making your business visible; you’re ensuring it thrives. By implementing the strategies in this post, you can transform your local business into a digital powerhouse that consistently attracts customers and outshines the competition.