For many small businesses, their target audience is often the local community. Local SEO helps your small business become more visible to potential customers by increasing your website’s ranking in local search results. At New Wine Digital, we help small businesses attract more customers through SEO and other online marketing services. Continue reading to learn more about local SEO and how to make your business start appearing in more local search results.
What Is Local SEO?
The process of optimizing your website to improve visibility in search results is known as search engine optimization (SEO). Local SEO is the process of specifically optimizing for searches in your area. Standard SEO can help you reach a large, national audience, while local SEO helps focus your marketing efforts on a smaller, more specific audience.
The Importance of Local SEO for Small Businesses
Convert More Customers
Even if word-of-mouth marketing is bringing in most of your customers, clients, or patients, you still need to implement a local SEO strategy. When someone hears about your business through a friend or family member, they’re likely to explore your website and read your reviews before they decide to contact you, despite the recommendation. Optimizing your website creates a good first impression and leads to more customer conversions.
Improve Your Search Result Rankings
Another important benefit of local SEO is that it improves your website’s rankings for relevant search results. Local SEO helps search engines like Google understand your content and how it relates to search queries. High rankings don’t just increase your visibility, they also show potential customers that your business is trustworthy.
Three Tips for Improving Local SEO
1: Optimize Your Google Business Profile
If you haven’t already claimed your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business), it’s important to do so as soon as possible. On Google, your business listing is the box of information next to the list of Google search results, or included with a pin in a Google Maps result. Claiming your Google Business Profile allows you to optimize your listing to help Google understand your business and boost your visibility with a local audience.
Follow these steps to optimize your Google Business Profile listing:
- Claim and verify your listing with the Google Business Profile manager.
- Choose relevant categories that describe your business.
- Include your phone number, address, hours of operation, and any other important information that will help customers easily find and contact your business.
- Target main industry and location keywords in your profile description.
- Upload high-resolution photos of your business.
- Respond to positive and negative reviews.
2: Target Specific Keywords
When getting started with SEO, it’s important to offer detailed and optimized content that explains your products and services and answers specific questions. This helps you establish credibility and trustworthiness online. In order to create and optimize valuable content, you need to research keywords that relate to your services, products, or industry and will lead web users to your business. To target a local audience using SEO, you also need to incorporate keywords related to your physical location and the surrounding areas.
For example, if you own a dental practice in Denver, you might create a web page discussing dental implants. To optimize the page for local searches, you would target the keyword “dental implants in Denver,” use it sparingly throughout your content, and include it in some headers as well as the page title, URL, and meta description. Google will then be more likely to recommend your web page when someone searches for “dental implants in Denver” in the future.
3: Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
According to Google, 94% of people in the United States conduct local searches on their smartphones. Because so much web traffic comes from mobile devices, Google prioritizes mobile-friendly web pages. Optimizing your website to load quickly and format correctly on mobile devices is essential for increasing your Google rankings and it also offers a better user experience.
Local SEO Services for Small Businesses
If you’re looking to improve your search rankings and attract more customers, contact the expert online marketing team at New Wine Digital. We have a wide range of digital marketing services to help small businesses implement a successful local SEO strategy. For more information, give us a call at 480-516-1819 today.
Images used under creative commons license – commercial use (6/10/2022). Photo by Mike Petrucci on Unsplash