As a small local business, ranking in search engine results can feel challenging. However, incorporating local SEO tactics into your strategy gives you a better chance of being found by people in your area of service.
In this article, we cover what local SEO entails, how it works, and how small businesses can optimize their websites for local search.
What Is Local SEO?
Local SEO is all about helping your business show up when people in your area search for products or services you offer.
Think of it as making sure your coffee shop pops up when someone types “coffee near me” or “coffee in Asheville” into Google. It’s about putting your business on the map — literally!
Local SEO focuses on things like optimizing your Google Business Profile, gathering great reviews, and showing up in local directories so people nearby can easily find you.
It’s a smart way to connect with your community, get more foot traffic, and turn local searches into loyal customers.
How Does Local SEO Work?
With local SEO, it’s important to focus on keywords that include your physical location. After all, your potential customers are looking for businesses in their area, so it doesn’t make sense to target people outside of the region you serve.
Let’s say you own a coffee shop in Asheville. While you might write blog posts on general topics like “how to brew the perfect latte” or “health benefits of coffee,” those won’t necessarily help you connect with local customers.
That’s where local SEO comes into play. To attract people in your area, you’d want to incorporate keywords like:
- coffee shop asheville
- best coffee asheville
- latte asheville
- cafe asheville
You could even include nearby neighborhoods or towns, like “coffee shop Biltmore” or “coffee near Black Mountain,” to draw in customers from a wider local area.
Adding these keywords to your website’s metadata or creating dedicated pages for specific drinks, services, or locations can significantly boost your visibility. And with tools like Durable, it’s a breeze to make these updates!
If you have a Durable website, log into your dashboard, click the Website tab on the left-hand sidebar, then click the Optimize tab at the top of your screen. Here, you’ll see an area to manually add keywords, or you can have Durable’s AI do it for you (or a combination of both).
Durable’s AI Website Builder can also help you create additional landing pages that satisfy these local SEO keywords — more on that later.
Top 5 Local SEO Tips
Want to get even more out of your local SEO strategy? Here are a few tips to help you out.
#1. Create a Google Business Profile
The first thing every local business should do — after getting their own website squared away, of course — is to create a Google Business Profile.
This helps you appear in search results on Google and on Google Maps, plus it provides up-to-date information about your business, like:
- Address
- Hours of operation
- Contact information
- Website link
- Popular times
- Ratings and reviews
To create yours, head to the Google Business page and sign up with your company’s admin email address by clicking Manage now.
Setting up your Google Business Profile is a must if you want to show up in local search results.
It’s like putting your business on the digital map. Once you’ve followed the steps to set up your Google Business Profile, the next few tips will help you stay at the top of search results so customers find you before your competitors.
#2. Keep an Active Google Business Presence
Once you create your Google Business listing, you need to keep up with it. Make necessary changes to your business information, input special holiday hours, and respond to customer reviews.
This lets Google know that you’re an active business and keeps your customers up-to-date on your hours, no matter if it’s a holiday or not. You can also share photos and create posts to let your customers know about upcoming events and special offers.
#3. Do Local Keyword Research
First, start by making a list of all the local towns you are close enough to service. You’ll want to add those locations to the end of your business-centric keywords.
For the coffee shop, think about the various ways people might describe what you offer. In addition to general terms like “coffee shop,” include specific services or specialties you provide. Your list might include keywords like:
- coffee shop asheville
- best coffee asheville
- espresso asheville
- local cafe asheville
If you offer additional perks like free Wi-Fi or a coworking space, you’ll want to incorporate keywords like “coffee shop with Wi-Fi Asheville”, “laptop-friendly cafe Asheville”. Don’t forget to mix in nearby towns or neighborhoods, such as “coffee shop Biltmore” or “cafe Black Mountain.”
To find the best local keywords, you have a few options:
- Use an SEO tool: Platforms like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Google Keyword Planner can help you uncover popular search terms to include in your metadata.
- Check out competitors: See what keywords other coffee shops in your area are ranking for and add those to your list.
- Try Google Autocomplete: Start typing keywords like “coffee shop” into Google’s search bar and see what suggestions come up.
- Let AI do the work: Use Durable to generate keyword suggestions tailored to your coffee shop and location.
#4. Create Local-friendly Landing Pages and Blog Posts
One of the best ways to target a specific keyword is by creating landing pages specifically for the keyword you’re targeting.
For example, the coffee company would create different landing pages for “best coffee asheville and “laptop-friendly coffee shop asheville” to fully ensure they’re reaching the right audience.
Durable’s AI Website Builder can easily create these landing pages for you. Create a new service page for a specific service, then duplicate that page to use as a basis for each different location.
Change the copy and switch out the images so they aren’t identical, then input your location-specific keywords, and publish the page.
Another way to generate more local traffic is by consistently publishing blog content optimized for local SEO.
With Durable, you don't need to write or publish any articles yourself — we do it for you. Durable's AI Content Strategist uses your website business description and SEO keywords to automatically generate blog posts that are relevant to your business. The AI Content Strategist publishes a new blog for you every three days. You can review and edit the blogs before they're published.
If you have a specific local SEO topic in mind, you can generate an article yourself using Durable's AI Blog Builder. Share what you want the article to be about and watch Durable write it for you. Here's the article it generated when prompted to write an article for the local coffee shop in Asheville:
#5. Get Customer Reviews
Getting customer reviews on your review pages — especially your Google Business Profile — is another great way to improve your local SEO. Reviews help show that your business is active and they also provide insights into how customers feel about your business.
To increase your customer reviews, use the following tactics:
- Post signage in your store or place of business that asks for reviews
- Offer an incentive in exchange for a review
- Ask customers directly to leave you a review
- Post on social media asking for reviews
As reviews come in, make sure you’re responding to each one — even the negative reviews. Being thankful for reviews and being receptive to feedback or criticism shows potential customers that your business is one worth working with.
Leaving your own comments on reviews can also help boost your rankings.
With Durable, it’s easier than ever to highlight your Google Reviews. To add reviews to your website, press Add Section, select Google Reviews, and type in your business name.
If you have a Google Business Profile, your Google Reviews will automatically appear and generate on your website.
Start improving your local SEO rankings today so people in your area can find your business more easily.
Keep these tips in mind and let Durable’s AI Website Builder, AI Content Strategist, and built-in SEO tools help make the process even more simple.
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