Top 10 Actionable Local SEO Tips: Grow Your Business from Google Local Search

Google Local Search is the process of increasing a business’s presence in its local area to attract more customers and clients through increased traffic, leads, and brand awareness.

Finding local keywords, optimising the Google My Business profile and building ‘’NAP’’ citations are everyday tasks associated with local SEO strategy. There are plenty of guides related to the Google local search engine, but in this article, we will go through the top 10 tips to grow your business from Google local search. 

Why is Local SEO Important?

Local search significantly impacts search engines, where almost half of the investigations in Google have local intent. In addition, it has been statistically proven that local SEO plays a massive role for small businesses. 

A statistical research study found that about 74% of the customers would visit a store that searched for something local on their phone. Hence, local search makes a considerable contribution to the SEO world, and you may get massive success in business once you optimise your business with local SEO. 

How Does Local SEO Work?

Local SEO is unique as it doesn’t work like usual Google searches. Google uses a different set of ranking factors to rank the local search results, which may include:

• Location of the search quarry
• Name, Address and Phone number, i.e., NAP citations
• GMB listing
• Keywords used in GMB listing
• Online review statements as well as keywords used in online reviews
• Check-ins at the location
• Social media share
• Google map’s star rating for that business

In this article, we will discuss optimising Google’s local search to boost business.

• Create a GBM profile
• Claiming and Reclaiming Your Business
• Local Keyword Research
• Optimising Local Landing Pages
• Get Local Citations And Links
• Reclaiming Lost Links
• Getting More Reviews
• Local Content
• Get Featured on The Local Listing Posts
• Keep Your Site Healthy.

1.0 Create a GMB Profile

Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool or service from Google that lets you manage your business and appear in Google searches and maps. Any small business owner can create a GMB profile. 

A GMB profile usually deals with the local listing along with information about your business, such as 

1.1 Creating a Business Profile 

You can easily create a free Google Business Profile. Here is how you can claim your GMB profile by following a few simple steps:

Step 1: Log in to the Google account associated with your business. 

Step 2: Enter your business name

Step 3: Enter your business address 

Step 4: Choose your business category

Step 5: add your business phone number and website.

1.2 Verifying your business

There are several ways where you can verify your GMB listing, such as

• By postcard
• By phone
• By email
• Instant verification
• Bulk verification

1.3 Optimise your Business Listings 

After claiming and verifying your business, you may want to optimise your business listing. There are several details and optimisation you can make in the GMB listing, but here, we have discussed five important ones which you should have a look at:

1.3.1 Choosing The Right Type

You need to choose the right business type from the GMB dashboard for Google local rankings. But first, you must define whether your business provides services on-site or off-site.

1.3.2 Choose the Right Category

With numerous options, you can choose your business category here. You may take a few minutes to walk through different options and select the one appropriate for your business.

1.3.3 Adding Business Hours

It is essential to add opening & closing hours as many customers might call or walk into your working premises thanking you for being open to business. You may also add holiday hours so that your customers know if you are available during holidays. 

1.3.4 Add Photos

According to stats, a business receives more than 40% of requests once adding photos for driving directions. Adding images also boosts your business for local search so adding appropriate pictures to the dashboard will produce gains for your business.

1.3.5 Add your website: 

You may also add your website to the GBM dashboard. However, many businesses don’t count their website to Google without a website for their business.

2.0 Claiming & Reclaiming a Business on Google Local Search

When you search your business name on Google, you may see that your business is not claimed or claimed by someone else.  You won’t be able to edit or add new information without having ownership of your GBM listing so this is why it is important to claim and/or reclaim your business.

2.1 Claim Your GMB Listing

Claiming the business controls all the information once a company is added to Google. Here is a quick guide on claiming your business:

 

Step-1: Find your business on Google Maps:

Search for your business on Google or Maps. Once you have identified your venture on Google Maps, select that business listing. On the right side of the page, select claim this business.

Step 2: Request access to manage your business after providing the necessary information.

Step:3: After filling out the necessary information and verification, you must request to manage the business account. 

Step: 4: After a particular time of the verification process, you will have to enter the code to transfer ownership of the business. 

3.0 Local Keyword Research

Local keyword research is finding the keywords that local audiences search for when looking for products and services. Therefore, understanding local customers’ search for products and services is the foundation of local SEO strategy. 

Many business owners assume and guess what people search for in their business. Unfortunately, this often leads to targeting the wrong keywords or completely neglecting the keywords that could create a positive impact on their business.

Hence, it would be best if you did proper keyword research, and below, we have outlined a few pointers that you may follow when performing local keyword research, such as:

3.1 List of services that you offer

Many fail to understand the business’s services before even looking for the keywords. Therefore, you should list all keywords and the benefits of those keywords before local keyword research.

3.2 Check for the local intention

Local SEO is all about ranking keywords with local intentions, i.e., people searching with those keywords are explicitly looking to buy those services. Google uses the location to personalise the search results so that you may check the local intention by checking the two things such as:

• Local ranking in the organic results
• Map Pack.

3.3 Check for search volumes 

It is essential to understand the search volume to grow your business on Google local search. 

Getting accurate local search volumes for local keywords helps to strategise your business for further development.

4.0 Optimise Local Landing Pages

A landing page is a web page that attracts customers using location-specific SEO strategies. For example, if you find people’s interests and search for specific products or services, you need to create a dedicated landing page for those services. 

The contents of the local landing page should follow the business’s geographical area, i.e., they should relate to the specific location where the service is served. 

You should also optimise your local landing pages following the location. For example, you may include your location in the SEO-critical places such as the landing page title, URL, meta tags, and descriptions. In addition, your landing page must have specific discoverable URLs. 

5.0 Get Local Citations and Links

Local citations mention your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) online on the different listing portals, including local chamber of commerce and reputable online directories.

Local Citations are essential for two main reasons such as:

5.1) Local Citations help customers find your business on Google and other search engines and platforms like Bing, Facebook, Yelp, Maps and other industry-specific directories.

5.2) Local Citations may not be as crucial as before, but they still help rank on Google and other search engines.

6.0 Reclaiming Broken Links 

It is well-known that backlinks are the cornerstone of Google’s algorithm. Therefore, to rank highly in the Google search engine, a website needs links, but it can be harder to get new links as reclaiming lost connections can be an excellent option for your website. 

Finding lost and broken links and fixing and re-claiming those links are said to be link reclamation. There are different methods to reclaim lost connections, such as

As links break with age, you need to reclaim hard-earned external links as well as internal links as well.

6.1 Reclaiming Internal Links

Apart from website optimisation, reclaiming broken internal links allows us to better serve the user who enters the website. 

Finding the broken links is the most straightforward process. There are various tools with such features as Screaming Frog, Ahrefs’ site explorer etc. 

After finding those broken links, you may now update, replace or even remove those broken links.

6.2 Reclaim External Links

External links are hard-earned as they depend on other Webmasters and sites that will give us those backlinks. Therefore, finding and fixing broken external links is vital since reclaiming the lost link value helps improve the backlinks profile.

Finding broken external links is the most uncomplicated process. You may use tools from Ahrefs or SemRush, or other SEO tools explorer to find the broken backlinks quickly. 

After collecting those backlinks, the next task is reaching out to the website owner of those specific websites from whom you have collected those backlinks. Ask the owner to fix those broken links on their website. 

7.0 Getting More Reviews

It is well-known that high-quality positive reviews from customers improve business visibility. They are also a critical map pack ranking factor in Google’s local search.

There is no magical formula for getting more positive reviews, but here are a few tips and tricks to gain more positive reviews from your customers and clients, such as:

• Asking after completion of a job
• Ask the latest customer you have interacted with to provide a reviews
• Ask through an email to give a review
• Ask when you send a bill for providing a review of your service.

You must be wary of providing incentives to customers in exchange for positive reviews as they are against Google’s terms of service. You should also respond to studies from the user as they show that you value your customers and their feedback. 

8.0 Local Content

Writing unique content for every location must grow your business from Google’s local search. In addition, you can produce and publish relevant content for your local community to improve your local search ranking. The users and Google always appreciate relevant, relatable, community and location-based content. 

Local content such as blog post, news pieces, articles, videos, graphics, and events announcements related to the local area rank higher and can significantly improve local visibility for your business.

9.0 Getting Featured on the Local Listing Posts 

Getting featured on the local listing posts helps grow your business from Google’s local search. In addition, you will always find the ‘’best-of’’ listings for almost every product and service. 

Getting featured on those listings helps to reach more potential customers and clients. In addition, more positive reviews on those local listings will make your customers try you more likely. 

They also help get more backlinks to your website from those local listing posts. They also help to rank higher on Google direct search as well as Google map search. 

10.0 Finally, Keep your Site Healthy

An unhealthy website can lead to numerous SEO issues and hence fall ranking. In addition, with a harmful side effect, Google can’t efficiently find, crawl, understand and index your content and thus significantly affects your website ranking. 

There are a variety of tools available for your site inspections, such as Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Semrush etc. here are a few errors you should be aware of:

• Broken Links/Pages
• Missing or Empty Title Tags
• External Broken Links 
• Orphan Pages, i.e., pages Without Internal Links 
• Core Web Vitals 
• Mobile Usability Issue

You should see the complete error list and issues affecting your site and work on them to keep it healthy.

Helping to Grow your Business

If you’re looking to improve your local SEO, make sure you are using all of the ranking factors that Google takes into account. Our team at Aus Asia Online can help you get started and ensure that your business is getting the most out of its online presence. Contact us today to learn more about our local SEO services and how we can help you reach more customers in your area!