![12 Local SEO Tips for Boosting Business [2024]](https://www.commercepundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/CP-12-Local-SEO-Tips-for-Businesses-415x315.jpg)
Table of Content
Search engine optimization is a linchpin for a successful business in 2022 and is even more critical for local businesses. Local businesses have a more centralized market than national or international companies, and your success can hinge on ranking higher on the search engine results page than larger competitors. Local businesses have an opening, though. 46% of all Google searches are local searches. Customers want to support local businesses, it’s just a matter of finding businesses to support. These 12 local search engine optimization strategies can help your company climb to the top of the results page and make it easy for your customers to find you.
Google My Business
If you do nothing else to shore up your digital presence, you need to have a Google My Business profile and keep the information up to date. Google My Business profiles are free to set up and help Google identify important information about your business, such as the NAP: name, address, and phone number. The profile is an essential part of local search engine optimization. It makes everything easy to find for Google and customers looking for your company or services through Google search or maps. Oh, and according to Moz, the Google My Business page is the most significant factor in determining search engine rankings.
For help setting up a Google My Business profile and other local search engine optimization services, set up a meeting today to see how we can help your organic traffic thrive.
The Google My Business profile makes it easy for Google to provide customers with the most relevant results and give them the information they need. Just by setting up and completing a Google My Business profile, your customers will easily be able to find:
- Your address
- Hours of operation
- Phone number
- Website
- Services
- Reviews
- Business and product photos
- Attributes describing your business
Benefits of A Google My Business Profile
Including your information, hours, services, and contact methods are vital for local search engine optimization. These are the first factors many customers look for in local businesses. Customers want to support local businesses, but they still want convenience. They want to know how close you are, when they can reach you, how they can reach you, and what specific services or products you provide. If you are a bakery located just around the corner from them and open later than your competitors, a customer might rush over to get last-minute cupcakes for a birthday party.
Why Online Reviews Matter for Local SEO
Reading online reviews can give customers a better sense of what a business is like. While an overall rating gives them a general idea of what your business is like, customers want to see the context for the rating. Do you have excellent customer service? How long do your products last? How quick is your delivery service?
Responding to Reviews Helps Local SEO
A recent local search engine optimization trend is recognizing and responding to online reviews. It shows that you listen and want to give customers the best experience possible. Customers want to see companies engage with them wherever possible. They want to know that you care.
Transparency Is Key for Online Review
Not every review is going to be good. Some will be downright nasty and sometimes baseless, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore or sweep the reviews under the rug. 62% of customers don’t buy from brands that hide online reviews. Your customers are local, after all. If you hide a review, it’s easy for the word to spread.
Zero Click Searches
Google and other search engines are always looking for ways to make the experience for their users better. They’ve improved the experience recently by making it, so users get answers to their questions without clicking a link.
Are Zero Click Results Bad for Local SEO
While this is frustrating, the users who want one quick answer and never click on a business’s link probably wouldn’t have stayed on your site long anyway. They would have looked around your website for the one answer they wanted, and if they didn’t find it, they’d leave. Ultimately you aren’t losing out on customers; they weren’t going to subscribe to anything or make a purchase today.
How Do I Use Zero Click Results
Creating information-rich snippets of content based on relevant questions will help optimize your local SEO ranking and that your snippet, not a competitor’s, gets to be featured. Even if your rich snippet isn’t clicked on, your brand name and website will still be shown, so you’ll stick in the user’s mind and become a trusted source of information in the future.
Tracking Stock Online
Issues with product supply are no longer news with how well covered the supply chain disruption has been. A trend that affects local search engine optimization is the 800% increase in searches for “in stock” items. Customers know the strain businesses are under and don’t want the frustration of showing up to buy something and finding that it’s gone.
How Does Showing Available Stock Help Local SEO
This tool helps local businesses have a leg up over the competitor on the other side of town and online retailers. Product availability on stores like Amazon and Etsy shows you the stock of items in real-time because they can’t ship products to you that aren’t available and create a sense of urgency by clearly showing that there are “Only three left in stock.”
User Experience
Speaking of convenience for customers, a local SEO trend that’s become more important every day is enhancing the user experience. Search engines want their users to have a great experience on their platform. If they recommend websites and content for their users that are frustrating and give them a bad experience, it reflects poorly on the search engine.
Page Speed
A massive factor in webpage experience is site speed. Customers and Google want to see web pages load smoothly for a seamless experience entering your website and moving from page to page. Over 40% of customers will leave a website if it doesn’t load within just 3 seconds. The longer a page takes to load, the more frustrated the user becomes. Luckily, there are some quick and easy ways to speed up your website.
Compress Large Files
Large media files are the most common offender of page loading speed. Compressing those files can drastically speed up your page without reducing quality.
Simplify Website Code
Simplifying your webpage’s code can also improve your speed. If your code gives the page four commands to complete an action that could be done with one command, it’ll take longer to complete the task and load.
Caching
Caching is the process of saving website information on a customer’s browser. When they return to the website, most of the data will already be there, so they won’t have to wait for the whole web page to download a few pieces.
Navigation
Having easy-to-follow website navigation is crucial to succeeding in local search engine optimization. Your website navigation is the map of your website, and if customers can’t read it, they won’t get anywhere.
Mobile-Friendly Website
Having a great user experience isn’t limited to computers, though. It’s becoming more important for websites to have a great mobile browsing experience by the day.
Why Does Mobile Optimization Matter for Local SEO
Over 63% of online traffic is through mobile devices now, and search engines recognize that. Google has started using mobile-first indexing on websites, meaning that when a bot crawls through and catalogs your website to determine your ranking, they are looking at the mobile version.
Making Purchases on Mobile Devices
Users aren’t just conducting searches on mobile devices, though. They are looking through websites, looking for businesses near them, and even making purchases.
Voice Search
So not only are customers conducting searches on mobile devices, but they are searching through voice commands. A local SEO trend gaining more traction than people realize is customers conducting searches through Siri, Alexa, and other voice command technologies.
Do People Actually Use Voice Search
It wasn’t long ago that voice command technology couldn’t get a single word right. Now, it’s common for devices to be accurate 95% of the time, making them much more convenient.
How Voice Search Affects Local SEO
The most significant difference between typed and voice searches? With typed queries, you can see many different results. When you ask a Google Home for a nearby paint store, it only reads you the TOP result. Ranking number two or three doesn’t matter. You get passed over.
Sustainability
As Mother Earth has made clear in the last few years, between record-breaking storms, ice storms in Texas, and heatwaves in Portland, being environmentally conscious is necessary. We can’t put it off any longer, and consumers realize that.
How Does Shopping Locally Support Sustainability
Customers have happily bought products from large retailers for many years because of their low prices but are learning that many of these products involve oversea shipping, the sixth-largest CO 2 emitter in the world behind China, the United States, India, Japan, and Russia.
How Do I Boost Local SEO Through Sustainability?
Explain your sustainability practices; whether you recycle used denim or conduct your own composting, dedicate space to it on your website. Engage with environmentally conscious groups and non-profits that have ties to your industry.
Video
Want a local SEO trend that’s more than a trend? Video content is on the rise, as it has been for a while, and is an easy way to boost your search engine ranking. Search engines love to push up video content, and customers trust it.
How Does Video Help Local SEO?
Alright, you get it. Video is big, growing, and beloved by users and search engines alike. But why is it worth the investment? Well, branded videos are crucial to the buyer’s journey.
Search Intent
Quite possibly the most crucial local SEO trend, which is at the heart of what search engine optimization is all about, is more focus on user intent. Search engine users are more specific with their searches, emphasizing whether they want an answer to a question or are ready to buy.
How DO I Use Search Intent to Improve My Local SEO Ranking
A key aspect of local search engine optimization is emphasizing what you stand for and your mission.
Local Content
You are a local business, after all! Including content focusing on your local will help you rank higher in your city or neighborhood searches.
Omnichannel Approach
In a world of digital convenience, it’s vital to make things as easy for the customer as possible. They want to be able to find you, learn about your business, and communicate with you in the first place they can pull up. Utilizing an omnichannel marketing strategy will help unify your messaging and make it easy for customers to reach out to you.
A Unified Message
Omnichannel marketing is a strategy for keeping your messages consistent across multiple media channels.
How Does Omnichannel Marketing Help Local SEO?
Consistent messaging is crucial because many customers won’t just look at your business in one place.
Easier Communication
Using an omnichannel approach also gives your customers many ways to contact you. There are still email and phone calls, but an omnichannel strategy makes things easier because if they are looking you up on Facebook and have a question, they can send you a message right then and there.
Local SEO trends are constantly changing, and to keep up with the changes, it takes a full, dedicated team. If you are ready to set up local search engine optimization services, reach out and set up a meeting with us today!
