If your small business serves customers in your city or region and you’re not using local search engine optimization (SEO), you’re missing out on invaluable opportunities to connect and grow your business.
In this guide, you’ll learn the difference between SEO and local SEO, and the importance of local SEO for small businesses. You’ll also find free tools to boost your business’s search results rankings and, ultimately, increase the number of customers who engage with your business.
What is SEO?
Before you understand local SEO, let’s break down SEO, or search engine optimization, in general. If you’re not yet familiar with it – or if you have a vague idea of what it is but don’t actively use it in your online profiles and content – then this is essential to help you understand how local SEO can be a game-changer for your business.
Think of SEO as the process of making your business more visible when people search online. When people type words or phrases into Google, Bing, or social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram, they look for relevant information, products, or services.
Search engines use complex formulas, called algorithms, to decide which websites appear first in search results, based on the information found in the digital content. These algorithms look at many factors, including:
- Keywords (specific words and phrases) on your website that match the words or phrases someone uses in their search. This tells the search engine that your business or online information could be a good match.
- How well your content answers a searcher’s questions or needs. This tells the search engine that your website offers relevant information.
- If your website is user-friendly and updated regularly. This tells a search engine that a potential customer may have a better experience on your website (as opposed to, for example, a website that loads too slowly or has outdated information).
All of this occurs within about a second or less!
How SEO benefits your business
When someone searches – whether through Google, Bing, or any other search engine, or while on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, TikTok, or anywhere else – they start by entering words or phrases that they’re interested in learning more about.
To achieve higher ranks in search results, you must include relevant keywords or phrases that your customers use to find businesses like yours. These can appear in your website content, for example, but they can also be in any of your online marketing and content, such as a blog or tags for your videos and images.
SEO algorithms and guidelines are constantly changing, and every search engine has its own algorithms for how its search finds results. However, as long as you have well-written content with relevant information, using keywords to help build SEO results will pay off.
An example
Let’s say you own a pet grooming business in Albany, NY. You have a basic website that tells people about your services and hours as well as shares your phone number.
- When dog owners in your area need grooming services, they might search “dog groomer near me” or “pet grooming in Albany.” Your website may end up in the search results, and this type of visibility through search is called “organic” results, because you didn’t pay for the placement directly – unlike paid ads that appear at the top of search results.
While gaining traction through organic search results can be a boost to your business, it can also be difficult, given that you’re essentially competing with businesses around the world. Even still, while organic SEO takes time and consistent effort, two key advantages are that it’s free and builds lasting visibility that doesn’t disappear when you stop paying for ads.
For businesses focused on building local clientele, though, there’s an even better way to boost SEO’s effectiveness.
- Let’s say that you update your website to include your business address and a map so that it’s easy to find. You also sprinkle in keywords and phrases, like “pet grooming in Albany,” that dog owners in your area may use to find businesses like yours.
If you use these phrases throughout your digital marketing channels, such as your website and other online profiles, search engines will recognize that your business matches what local people are looking for – and the better the match, the higher your business appears in search results.
Why is local SEO important?
Here is the beauty of local SEO for small businesses – while general SEO helps your business compete online, local SEO narrows the focus to customers in your specific geographic area.
Local SEO gives small businesses significant advantages because:
- There’s less competition: Instead of competing with large corporations and businesses worldwide, you’re only competing with businesses in your area. This levels the playing field significantly.
- There are higher conversion rates: People searching locally often have immediate needs or wants. Someone Googling “emergency plumber near me” needs help now, for example, and from someone around the corner, not across the country.
- You achieve better targeting: Local SEO reaches people who can actually visit your store or use your services, making your marketing more efficient.
General SEO vs local SEO
Not all local businesses optimize local SEO opportunities. Those who do tend to rank highest in the search results because the search engine knows they meet most or all of the searcher’s criteria. That’s because a search engine is only as good as the relevant results it offers. It does what it can to ensure that someone it knows is located in a specific area gets results close to that area. In a nutshell:
- General SEO aims to rank websites for keywords among all other businesses that are active online, including large corporations with millions in their marketing budgets that can pay to optimize their rankings – as well as pay skilled digital marketers to rank them higher.
- Local SEO is focused on searches within a specific geographic area, which significantly narrows down the search results – and for businesses that primarily draw customers from your surrounding neighborhood, city, or region, this is a huge benefit.
So, if you have a business whose target market is primarily local, then incorporating local SEO can be a tremendous win for your business.
How to incorporate local SEO
Using local SEO can help you rank better in searches, which means that more of your target customers are more likely to find your business. It’s also one of the most cost-effective ways to reach your target clientele because many tactics are free!
To see how effective a few updates and tweaks can be, try this free tool from Moz to see how your business’s digital profile is doing – use it before you implement the following steps and again after to see how much you’ve improved.
Here are the steps to incorporate local SEO into your existing website and other digital media, as well as specific tools to boost your local SEO presence:
1. Optimize your Google Business Profile: This free tool is the cornerstone of local SEO – if you only have time to do one thing, do this. Simply create and verify your profile at Google Business Profile. Then, complete every section of your profile, including:
- Your business’s name, address, and phone number
- A brief but detailed description of your business with relevant keywords
- Your business category and subcategories, that are relevant for your business
- A list of the services or products your business offers
- High-quality photos of your business, your products, and you and your team
- Updated news about special events or offerings
When you use tools like Google My Business, you’ll also have access to analytic insights that can help you further hone SEO optimization.
2. Use relevant local keywords in your website and digital media: Identify and use keywords specific to your location and services to drive traffic to your website, such as:
- “[service] in [city]” (e.g., “hair salon in Philadelphia”)
- “[city] [service]” (e.g., “Stamford pizza delivery”)
- Neighborhood-specific terms (e.g., “Harlem fitness studio”)
Include these naturally throughout your website content, business descriptions, and social media posts. In addition, if your business serves multiple areas in your region (or if you have several locations), consider creating a separate page for each location within your website. This hyper-local information can be an additional boost.
3. Ensure your information is correct and consistent: “Name, address, and phone number” information, or NAP, is essential for search engines, and if yours isn’t accurate and consistent, it will result in a lower ranking. If your business moves or has changes to other key information, be sure to update this throughout your digital channels.
4. List your business on local directories: This boosts your location-based SEO. For example, listing your business on Yelp.
5. Encourage customers to leave reviews: In addition to Google, customers can leave reviews on sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and other websites that recommend local businesses. Try to respond to reviews, too, whether they’re positive or negative.
6. Use geo-tagging in photos and content: When you upload images to your social media and website, geo-tagging lets search engines identify your location.
Any and all of these tactics will help your business gain local recognition and rank higher in search results.
Local SEO for small business: A great way to boost engagement
Local SEO can be one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your business, improve search results, and, ultimately, increase foot traffic to your business. It’s a great tool to add to your digital-marketing toolbox.
If you need financing to implement your marketing plans or for any other business need, Pursuit can help. With loans from $10,000 to $5.5 million, Pursuit can help you secure financing for working capital, equipment, the purchase or construction of commercial real estate, to refinance business debt, and more for businesses in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Nevada, Illinois, and Washington.
Apply today to learn more.
