With more consumers using the internet to find businesses in their area, having an effective local SEO strategy is critical for reaching your target demographic. Many small business owners are intimidated by SEO or assume it is too expensive. The truth is, with the right local SEO company, small businesses unlock the full potential of local SEO at a reasonable cost.
Local SEO is optimizing your website and online listings so your business shows up in local search results. When someone searches for terms related to your products or services plus a location, local SEO helps your website rank higher in the search engine results pages. The goal is to get your business website and information to appear prominently when potential customers are searching for businesses like yours in your geographic area.
Benefits for small businesses
There are many advantages small businesses realize through local SEO services.
- Website traffic – Higher local search rankings will drive more qualified website visitors to your site. These inbound visitors already have an interest in your business type and location. local SEO services near me bring your website highly targeted traffic rather than relying solely on generic web surfers.
- Boost your local presence – Local SEO establishes and reinforces your business location and brand in your geographic area. Effective use of schema markup and citations in directories/listing sites associates your business name, address, and phone number together in search results. This strengthens the perception that your business is the go-to provider in your area.
- Cost-effective – Local SEO provides a very cost-efficient way for small businesses to market themselves and acquire customers compared to other traditional advertising methods. While delivering a great ROI, your cost is mostly just the monthly service fee to your SEO agency, and your time investment.
- Compete with big brands – Local SEO levels the online playing field, so small businesses compete head-to-head with national brands that may outspend them on advertising. Hyper-local relevancy trumps big marketing budgets in local search results many times.
Key local SEO tactics
- Optimizing your website for local keyphrases inclusive of your city, state, or geographic identifiers. It helps search engines understand your business scope and audience.
- Building local-focused links from directory listings, profiles, and business sites to signal your business is prominent in your area.
- Creating schema markup for your address, phone number, and business info like operating hours. This makes your NAP (name, address, phone) appear prominently in searches.
- Producing geo-targeted content on your website focusing on your service area like city pages. It establishes your relevance for customer searches.
- Ensuring your Google My Business listing is filled out and optimized with photos, posts, and customer reviews. This listing is often the top result in local search.
- Registering with 50+ popular local business directories and citation sites consistently citing your NAP and linking back to your website. This helps reinforce your local relevance signals.
- Encouraging customer reviews on your website, social media pages, and local business profile listings. More positive reviews build trust and credibility.
- Creating unique, locally-focused landing pages optimized for specific customer search queries. These provide relevant entry points into your website.
