June 24, 2022

Discover 6 SEO tips to help your small business get found online by motivated local customers.

If you want to drive more local customers to visit your business, you must invest in local search engine optimization (SEO). Doing Local SEO will help more local leads find your business and visit you, and it’s the best way for your business to grow online.

Online search is more often than not the starting point in a local consumers’ quest for products and services nearby. 78% of people use the internet to find information about local businesses in their local area, and 21% are searching locally every day.

In this blog, you’ll find 6 of the best SEO practices to build a local presence using SEO.

1. Google Business

Google business is a free feature from Google that helps business owners manage their online presence across the search engine and its growing portfolio of utilities, including Google Maps.

While Google brings your business information from a wide variety of sites, directories, and networks around the web, it does look to its profiles as a single source of truth about your local business.

Previously known as the Google My Business program, these profiles have grown richer and more interactive in the past years. And with these updates, they’ve become more useful for local searchers, too.

Google My Business does not only provide basic information such as your location and pone number but also enable you to:

• Shows different features like health and safety information, payment methods, etc.
• Interact with via messaging, Q&A and reviews.
• Portray your business with photos and videos.

2. Local Listings

Google values searcher experience above all else. Inaccurate, outdated information that negatively impacts searcher experience is, therefore, a liability and can hinder your local visibility in a big way.

Wherever a searcher encounters your business listing online – whether on Facebook, in a local directory, in Yellow Pages, or on review sites like Trip Advisor – the information they find there should enable them to easily convert.

Having the wrong phone number, address, hours of operation, or other key business information listed can result in a searcher showing up at a closed store, for example. Or being sent by their GPS system to your former location.

Given that Google wants to give each searcher the best possible answer to their query, you do not want the algorithm questioning whether your business information is trustworthy.

3. Link Building

Links are the currency of the web. They’re an important trust signal to search engines like Google and suggest that others endorse your content.

John McAlpin explains, “Local links are done with the intention to show that others with relevance to the local area trust or endorse your business.”

From there, I highly recommend you read this column from Kevin Rowe, in which he shares 50 types of links and what you need to do to attract each one.

Links to other websites are really important as they will make Google understand that these trustworthy websites linking to yours are vouching for you.

4. Website Indexing

That is the basis of SEO. You can’t be found if Google can’t index your website. Indexing is where the ranking process begins after a website has been crawled.

Indexing essentially refers to the adding of a webpage’s content into Google to be considered for rankings. When you create a new page on your site, there are several ways it can be indexed. The simplest method of getting a page indexed is to do absolutely nothing.

Google has crawlers following links and thus, provided your site is in the index already and that the new content is linked to from within your site, Google will eventually discover it and add it to its index.

You can index your zebsite faster with tools like XML Sitemaps, Google Search Console, Bing’s IndexNow.

You can find more about it here https://www.searchenginejournal.com/search-engines/crawling-indexing/.

5. Content Creation

Content is the transport by which all messaging, offers, and calls to action will be delivered to your audience.

But your small business isn’t just competing against other businesses like yours in the search results. You’re also up against media publications, informational websites, big brands, local review sites, and all kinds of other sources that create content relevant to your products and services.

Content on your Website is important. Create FAQs, blogs, local events, etc.

6. Google Review Monitoring

Reviews have a huge impact on the local search experience and in 2021, 77% of local consumers said they always or regularly read reviews when searching for local businesses. (I sure do!)

Google’s local ranking algorithms are not much a mystery than their organic counterparts. Google openly tells us there are three main local ranking factors: Relevance, Distance, and Prominence.

Reviews are part of the Prominence factor, and Google states:

“Google review count and review score factor into local search ranking. More reviews and positive ratings can improve your business’ local ranking.”

What Should I Do Now?

Starting on local SEO as a small business can seem terrifying. You won’t have a dedicated marketing department and it is common for a small business owner to feel overwhelmed by all administrative and marketing tasks.

I hope these tips will help you gather enough information to make your business perform as best as it could.

Using an agency or consultant to teach you more marketing-related skills is very good but you must understand what these professionals are doing.

Local SEO is not a one-time thing, It is an important part of your marketing and often mixes with customer service.

This guide is just the tip of the iceberg, a lot can be done to increase your traffic and bring more leads. At Kelowna Website Design we are offering two marketing services at low cost.

For more inofrmmation click on the link below.

Categorized in: SEO