Local SEO for Business: Step by Step Guide for Owners (2022)
Being a small business owner, you may have heard or read somewhere else on the Internet that SEO is crucial for business growth and helps in more bring traffic. You have heard which is true.
I know that most of your small business website’s owner has a concern about actually how to SEO for small local business to boost.
That’s the reason, I have written this article to help you in the best way.
In this article, I will precisely answer the question and it will certainly make you better in SEO.
“SEO can help win the desired achievement and turn the business into a brand”
But let me clear one thing before!
Now, SEO is not as simple task as we assume as it demands dedication and passion to overcome any challenge. It is time to stay awake with Google’s latest algorithm and stay ready to optimize the website as per that.
Hence, I always recommend every business that SEO should be done by true devotion. You must have a passion to fight out the transformation to get the most favorable outcome and return on investment (ROI).
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is the best practice of optimizing a website to convey the business to your local customers. You might have a question about how the business will reach the local audience.
Ok! Let me give you one example!
As I am living in Rajkot at Gujarat from India. I need to find the best “skin hospital in Rajkot”, it is called a local search term.
Have a look at the screenshot.
As you saw when I search the query on Google, it will show me the result of those hospitals only which are in Rajkot. So when it comes to doing SEO for small local business, your SEO title tag and slug should have “Local City Name”.
Example for SEO Title: Primary keyword in City Name — BrandName
Example for Best Slug: www.xyz.com/service-cityname
Why SEO Important for Business?
SEO will help you to get extensive visibility and quality traffic who will virtually be your ideal leads that convert into customers.
Besides these, SEO will provide more benefits for your business like you can make credit and get the prominence of your business, and the one crucial thing is that you can have an incredible conversation beyond expect. You can achieve these things when SEO is done for business websites by perfect strategy is all about to SEO success.
That’s what I am going to share with you.
SEO Checklist for Small Business Websites
Learn the best SEO tips for local business and start implementing it to grow business today.
Do the Best Research
Doing in-depth analysis is essential when a plan is to do SEO for small business websites as, without it, you cannot determine to move towards goals.
Moreover, you need to have a clear idea about the business model, who is your destination audience and what concerns they are having about those products or services that you provide. When you have advisable answers as a solution to users’ questions, you can run any business online successfully. No one can stop you, then.
Create a Best Website
Having a clear structure, navigation, UX/UI to a website will help you produce delight experience to your users.
Keep one thing in mind that real consumers often love to stay where they feel comfortable and get assurance on the website. Therefore, an attractive site is along with a high speed, which can bring more sales.
Some Pro tips:
- Do select such a theme of which weight is wane
- Use such images size of which are under 70KB
- I highly recommend you use WordPress to create a website for SEO
- Use as much as natural code and ignore javascript
Do Proper Keyword Research
Determining the valuable keywords is not an easy task as you have to fix it with the help of some tools. I would advise you to use various tools while researching keywords.
If I talk about my approach to finding precious keywords then I adore using UberSuggest, Keywords Everywhere, KeywordPlanner, AnswerThePublic, and LSIGraph. They are enough to find precise keywords.
Here is exactly how to find profitable keywords.
Step1: Create a list of keywords that you have in mind
Step2: Make sure its search volume with the given tools
Step3: Do filter those keywords of which search volume is between 100 to 1000
Step4: Choose a maximum of 3 keywords to target from the list
Pro tip:
- Always take long-tail keywords
- Use LSI keywords
When I had a plan writing about “SEO for small business” for someone compay blog, I had chosen this keyword “SEO for small business 2019” mainly and search volume of which was around 200 in the USA, it is ranked today. The blog was just launched 2 months ago.
Have a look at the screenshot:
Write Quality Content
Quality content means when you write content for users/people, not for your service or products. Google will also certainly rank that content as it only cares for its users.
So, what have you to do?
First, research about the target audience and then figure out the crucial concern that your audience often feels regards with that product or service.
After that, create a list of their questions which are often asked on Google. When you have done it, think about it and try best them to give a valuable solution so that they can more trust in your business, this is how quality content is created.
Now, the thing comes is keywords. If your content does not have keywords then it won’t reach to your readers or users. Therefore, sprinkle keywords in the content.
The last one is to present some content visually in especially when you write content for service page as visual content will help attract your users to read and they will also take interest to read if the content is presented simply and well.
On page SEO for Local Business Website
Some key Onpage SEO checklist that you keep in mind while doing on-page SEO for small business websites.
Title: An SEO friendly title can get rank fast. You have to write a unique title which is a little different than existing. Second, the title should have your primary keyword which is the main keyword for that page or blog. As I have given the best example above.
Description: A meta description is called what appears on Google when users search any query on Google. An appealing description will increase CTR (Click Through Rate) of that page or blog. Therefore, more CTR means more traffic and it will help get rank earlier. So, start writing a catchy description which can inspire the user to visit your page.
Keywords: Choose such keywords which are not highly competitive. Many people mistake in finding keywords and after all, they cannot rank it. I will recommend them to use such keywords of which search volume is under 1000. As I said above to use long-tail keywords.
URLs: Each URL of a website must be SEO friendly like don’t make it big as Google prefers to read short and sweet URLs. Additionally, include the main keyword in the URL.
Internal Linking: Giving an internal link to the right phrase will help in improving the bounce rate. Therefore, as bounce rate is lower as much you have a chance to get in rank that page.
External Linking: External linking is what when you put a link of the third party website into your website. It brings more trust and Google will crawl the page fast as well.
Image Optimization: Image optimization is what when you use images in blog or service page, those images should have an alt-text name because Google will be able to understand the image is what about. Apart from that, you need to do is give the name of those images where you save the images in your PC.
H1, H2, H3 ETC: These are the heading of the pages where you need to use keywords naturally.
Content: As I said, the content you write should have E-A-T expertise authority and trust.
Mobile Speed: Try to keep the speed of your website up to 3 seconds for Desktop & Mobile users.
Mobile Responsive: Website must be mobile responsive which should properly open on any mobile devices.
Schema Markup: It is just a code that helps in providing information in the right way to Google about that page.
Sitemap XML: Creating sitemap.xml means as many pages a website has, it will send all the pages to Google to index.
Robots.txt file: It is used to disallow the pages which do not need to be indexed on Google.
NAP SEO: NAP SEO means Number, Address, Phone. All this information to your website must be properly.
Social Sharing Button: Social signal is very important to get traffic to a website.
Learn more information practically. Have a look at the Infographic.
Image Source: Backlinko
Submit Website to Google My Business
Adding a website in Google my business will help let about your business know everything to consumers. By which you will get local customers and you could have some sales.
When you add a website, choose the niche category which is relevant to your business. And so on, always get massive reviews positively.
Do Link Building
I will give you some quality link building activities name that can help rank your website.
- Business Listing to Quality Sites
- Local Listing
- Search Engine Submission
- Guest Posting
- Social Bookmarking
Conclusion
The article’s aim is to provide the best guidelines about how to do SEO for small local business successfully. If you follow these guidelines then you will surely get results and have a lot of confidence than before. That is my promise.