Everyone wants to support small businesses. As COVID-19 urges you to avoid megastores and support the people around you, overall sales for local businesses should increase.

If this hasn’t happened to your small business, there’s probably a very simple reason: people can’t find you. Even if you’ve put up an ad here and there and have a great sign on your door inviting people in, the truth is if they don’t know you’re even there, they won’t come and support you.

As a local business owner, you probably know the best strategies for turning a profit, providing the best customer service, and hiring the best employees. But when you’re working on your digital marketing campaign, are you incorporating local search engine optimization (SEO) to help your business stand out?

If you’re not sure what local SEO means and what it looks like, keep reading. We’ll tell you what local SEO is and the top 10 ways to improve your local SEO right now.

What is local SEO
Local Search Engine Optimization is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that helps your business appear better in local search results. Basically, it makes your business stand out to those around you.

In life you always want to be first – especially in search engine optimization. If you have a good SEO strategy, you should rank in the first three places on search engine pages. Good, local SEO is the only way to achieve one of the coveted top positions in the search results.

For example, say someone wants to go for coffee at a local business. He opens Google on his phone and types _best coffee in Atlanta. If you’ve invested in local SEO to stand out as one of Atlanta’s best coffee shops, you’ll be one of the first search results a person sees.

How to improve your local SEO tips
Nothing in life is free or comes without hard work, which definitely applies to local search engine optimization as well. Achieving good rankings and standing out from other companies is only possible after hard work.

Let’s explore the top 10 ways to improve your local SEO right now.

1 Make it mobile friendly

If you look around, you’ll probably notice that more than half of the people around you are looking at their phones. According to a study conducted in May 2023, up to 51.52 percent of all online traffic will come via mobile phones.

So if you haven’t yet analyzed your company’s website and made sure it’s mobile-friendly, now is the time to do so. Open your website on your phone and see if the images load correctly, if anything looks distorted or out of place, and if you can navigate the website easily on your mobile.

If something feels wrong, now is the time to fix it. Creating a mobile-friendly website should be one of the top goals of all business owners, especially those looking to improve their local SEO.

2 Personalize your ad

When working on ad campaigns, find a way to include the local community in your ads. Instead of just using generic photos, take pictures of people who have visited your store or local places nearby. Whatever you do, keep your ad close to home. You want potential customers to feel the need to visit your business and support the local community.

3 Create a Google Business Profile

Creating a Google Business profile – formerly known as a Google My Business account – is one of the most important things you should do to help your business stand out to local customers. Research shows that 24.4 percent of all clicks are on the first results of local business searches, so if you have a Google Business Profile, you should be among that 24 percent.

Google Business Profile is free and gives you a lot of exposure to local customers. In addition, it allows customers to share reviews of your business, which greatly improves visibility.

4 Leverage Your Backlinking Game

Backlinking is the art of including links to other pages on your site or another site using anchor text. The stronger your backlinking game, the better your search engine ranking. Google and other search engines rank pages with lots of relevant links higher in the organic search engines than pages with no links.

Unfortunately, more than 66 percent of the pages have no links pointing to them at all. This means that 66 percent of sites are missing out on a huge opportunity.

As a local business, you should embrace the backlinking game and set yourself up for success as a small business owner.

5 Stake Your Claim on Online Business Directories

An online agency directory is a list of businesses and a link to their website. To create an online business directory, you should have great pictures of your business, an interesting description of your business, and the right information about your business location and contact information.

Experts know that 82 percent of buyers have done a close search, so if your name is listed in multiple online directories, you should be one of the first businesses a potential customer sees.

These two law firms are an example of how local SEO and online business directories help them.

The first, FVF Law Injury Attorneys in Austin, Texas, should focus on keywords and SEO in Austin. Another, Anderson Injury Lawyers, a Dallas, Texas-based firm, should instead focus on Dallas. Although both firms are personal injury attorneys, their services only stand out to those around them. So when a potential client is looking for a personal injury lawyer near me, he gets a targeted answer about which of the injury lawyers is closest to him.

6 Encourage customer reviews

People want to buy products they can trust. One of the best ways to build trust is to allow and encourage customer reviews. Negative reviews are nothing to worry about if you offer a great product or service. Yes, you might eventually get one, but it should be overshadowed by all the great reviews other people are giving your business.

When people are going to buy a product, they want to know that it’s a good thing, so they check out reviews made by others. When potential customers see all the great reviews, they will prefer to buy from your local business.

7 Check your NAP

NAP is a commonly used abbreviation in the SEO world that stands for name, address and phone number. Your company’s NAP should be consistent across all platforms. When Google crawls your website and listings, it will increase your rankings if the information is consistent.

If the information is inconsistent, Google and potential customers will be confused about where they should go or who they should call.

Consistency is key in SEO, and contact information is no exception.

8 Optimize your site speed

Patience is a virtue, unless you’re waiting for a web page to load (or so it may seem). Almost 70 percent of consumers admit that page speed affects their willingness to buy from an online store.

So, if your online business page takes too long to load, you will surely lose the opportunity to attract new customers. Always check that your site loads within a reasonable amount of time.

9 Interact with your customers online

Customers love a brand that interacts with them online. A good example of this is the candy company Skittles. To get people to vote for them in the #BestOfTweet war, they promised to follow 50 people who voted for them.

10 Site inspection

A key factor in ensuring that your customers have a great user experience is to conduct site audits and experience your website as a potential customer would. Take some time out of your day every two weeks or so and navigate your website or use Ranktracker’s website audit feature. If you find any problems, fix them immediately. Navigating your own website can also inspire you to generate new ideas and

Final thoughts on improving your local SEO
Implementing and following these local SEO tips will help your business succeed in your community. Once users know how to find your business and start seeing your targeted ads everywhere, they’re bound to stop and learn more about who you are, what you do, and what you offer to your local community.