This article is for both businesses that are not super familiar with Local SEO, but have heard they need to do it, or perhaps they have dabbled in it with a consultant and want to better understand what they are paying for.
Local SEO: The Basics
Local SEO (aka “Local Search Engine Optimization”) is the art and science of optimizing your online presence to attract more business from prospective customers searching the Web for a service or product like yours - typically via Google. I don’t know how many people search for local businesses, but let’s assume it’s pretty much everyone on the planet. So it might be good for your business to stay up on Local SEO.
Types of Local Search Results
Let’s keep it simple for now. There are basically two types of “Local” search results:
Local Pack/Google Maps Results
These are the results that appear in Google and other search engines when they consider a query has “local intent” (i.e., the searcher is looking for a local business, local information, etc.). Any search with the phrase “near me” probably has local intent. In these cases, Google will often show a “Local Pack” - a collection of local business listings (aka “Google Business Profiles”) connected to a Google Map of the area. For example:
Local Packs typically show at the top of search results, right beneath the ads of course, for most local intent search queries. Needless to say, if you want to get leads from these searches, it’s pretty helpful to be listed in the top 3 in the Local Packs for the topics your prospects are searching.
Local Organic Results
The Local Organic Results are those links that show up for most search results, but in this case, they are showing up for local intent searches and they typically are localized themselves - as in they may contain information about the city you are searching. These often show up below the Local Packs and look like this:
Depending on the search, these might be “national” sites like those above, or they could be truly local business sites such as the website for one of the restaurants listed in the Local Pack. Studying which types of sites Google ranks for a specific topic can give you insight into how to approach ranking better for it. But that’s for another article :).
Key Local SEO Theories
There are four primary factors to consider when it comes to how a business can rank well in both the Local Packs and the Local Organic Search Results:
Proximity
Your business’ physical location in relation to the searcher’s and the topics they are searching is perhaps the most important factor to ranking well in Local Packs & Google Maps. This is why “Service-Area Businesses” (aka SABs), like plumbers or roofers, can have a hard time ranking well in markets they serve but have no physical presence.
Prominence
This is SEO lingo for how popular your business is. For example, do you have a lot of positive reviews on Google and other sites relevant to your type of business and your location (e.g. Yelp, Facebook, Angi.com, etc.)? Are you mentioned on other sites that appear in Google for topics you want to rank for (e.g. your local newspaper site, an association for your industry, etc.)? Do a lot of people search for your brand v the competitions? This may be perhaps one of the more important factors as it’s relatively easy for Google to track.Another way of thinking about “prominence” is links. Search engines can treat links from other sites to your site like votes. The more links you get from relevant sites, the more likely you are to rank better in search. That said, links are a very complicated part of the equation, and can actually harm your SEO performance if you are not careful. So you need some links, but it also could be helpful to have someone who has experience with these help you. Again, this is for another article. In the meantime, just ask your friends with websites for links to your site and ask them to use the name of your business plus either your city’s name or your business category as the text of the link (e.g. “Local SEO Guide Pleasanton” or “Local SEO Guide SEO Agency”).
Relevance
If someone is looking for a sushi restaurant in your city and you are an electrician, you are likely not going to rank for the query. Making it clear to Google that you are relevant for the searches you want to show up for is critical. Google can be very smart, but it’s still a machine and it helps to spoon-feed the machine so it doesn’t mess things up, which it does often. In order to ensure Google understands your business’ relevance, at a minimum do the following:
Make sure your website names and describes all of the products and services you provide. Make sure it also mentions all of the cities where you provide them. There’s a lot more detail than this, but if you can get this done, you are way ahead of most.
Make sure your Google Business Profile (more on this in a sec) is categorized correctly and add a list of all your services.
Engagement
Engagement is perhaps the fuzziest of all the key ranking factors. Think of this as how satisfied searchers are with your website. When someone clicks on your site from a search result, do they quickly go back to Google and click on another, or do another search? If so, this may send a signal to Google that your site is not what searchers want. Regardless of whether you are doing SEO or not, you should want your prospects to be able to find what they want on your site.
Things You Can Do Without Paying a Fancy SEO Consultant
Now that you have the basic theories about how to succeed at Local SEO down, you can start applying them to your business. Here are a few things you can easily do own your own:
Claim and Optimize Your Google Business Profile
If you haven’t done so already, go to How To Add of Claim Your Google Business Profile and follow the instructions. There are definitely some hoops you’ll have to jump through so read the instructions thoroughly. Once you’ve verified your profile, fill it out as completely as possible. Follow this article for a lot of helpful tips.
Update Your Website For “Local”
Check your website and make sure it has pages that target the types of searches you want to rank for. For example, if you are a dentist in Pleasanton, CA, make sure your homepage says something like “Dentist serving Pleasanton, CA”. You’ll want to put something like this in the title tag of your homepage. The title tag is the text that often shows up as the words in the blue links in search results. See “what is a title tag” for more detail. If you are not sure what to use in the title tag of a page, look at the title tag of the URL for the number one ranking webpage and try something like they are using.
Add pages for the locations you serve, such as neighboring cities, and the services you provide. For example, if you are a dentist, you could create a page for each major service such as “Dental Exams”, “Teeth Whitening”, “Teeth Straightening”, etc. and add the city name to the title tags of the page (e.g. “Teeth Whitening in Pleasanton, CA”).
It’s not always clear how many of these pages you should create. Again, look at the search results and see what types of pages Google is showing. Just copy the types of pages that are ranking well. Warning: Don’t just copy all of the content on these pages. This might not work in your favor. Copy the style of page and create content (text, images, etc.) that is similar. That said, if you can make the page “better”, whatever that means to you and your customers, then you should absolutely do that. Google won’t always rank the best pages at the top, but a better page will, in theory, send Google better signals.
Get Positive Reviews & Get Them Regularly
This goes without saying. Review “velocity” and review “sentiment” can affect what you show up for and how your site appears in the results. Get reviews on your Google Business Profile, your Yelp profile, your Facebook profile, and anywhere else your potential customers might be.
Publish Relevant Content
One of the challenges with SEO is it forces businesses to act like media publishers. Publishing articles on your site that “answer the questions people search” can help you rank for topics related to the articles. That said, I would be wary of focusing on content that doesn’t target “local” topics.
What do I mean by this?
For example, a veterinarian in Pleasanton might write an article on how you can tell if your dog has “doggie dementia”. Yes, this is a thing. But the odds that someone searching for “doggie dementia symptoms” and landing on the vet’s site is anywhere near Pleasanton are very small. If the vet had written an article on “pet-friendly restaurants in Pleasanton”, odds are the person searching that and landing on their site would be a local, and much more likely to engage with the vet.
This doesn’t mean you should forsake all non-local informational content. I just wouldn’t expect it to be as useful for SEO as it might be just sharing with your current customers.
Get Links & PR!
Find everyone you know with a website and ask them for a link to your site. Whenever possible try to ensure the page linking to you has something relevant about your business on it (e.g. your city, your business type, your services, etc.) and use the advice above about the link text. Do local PR to try to get links from local media. Hold events and get them listed on the big event sites like Eventbrite.com - they all usually link to you. Get in the habit of doing things that get people to link to you and mention you. Better yet get people to Google you. A while ago, Wayfair.com did a TV campaign that told people to go to Google and type “wayfair couch”. Thousands did it and Wayfair quickly started ranking well for “couch” queries. A defense attorney we work with posted a job online and suddenly got a lot of people in nearby cities searching for them. Their rankings went up considerably over the next few days.
Always Be Learning
Like every other marketing channel SEO is a constantly evolving discipline. It can be daunting to keep up with it all, but if you just stick to the basics above and keep up to date with industry trends - LocalSearchForum.com is a good place to start - you’ll be way ahead of your competition!
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