SEO isn’t just about choosing the right keywords and including them in your content. It’s also about good keyword research, ensuring your website is user-friendly, optimizing your content, URL, and images, using the right backlinks, and regularly creating fresh content.

It takes effort and time, but ensuring your website is visible to local searchers and potential customers are well worth it. Knowing the best tips to improve your local business’s SEO can help you get started on the right foot.

So, how do you get started with SEO for your local business? Here are the nine best SEO tips for small businesses.

One SEO tip that is particularly relevant for local businesses is to optimize for Google Business Profile (GBP). This business directory offered by Google allows you to manage your business information on Google Search and Maps.

In fact, within a year of launching, most businesses will have a Google Business Profile listing. If you don’t know how to set one up, here is a link on how to set up a Google Business Profile.

Setting up a Google Business profile helps you to appear in local search results, which is essential for businesses that rely on foot traffic.

To ensure you’re optimized for Google My Business, you must:

If Google recognizes your business as authentic or trustworthy, you’re more likely to rank higher in SERPs. You’ll be able to reach customers who use local search engines to find businesses like yours.

Your content needs to include the right keywords if you want it to appear on top of local search engine results pages. When choosing keywords, think about what customers might be searching for.

For instance, if you’re selling appliances, are your consumers using the slang word “fridge” or the more technical term “refrigerator?”

What you should consider when including keywords

You should also consider including keywords that target a specific location. For example, “plumber in Los Angeles” or “electrician in Miami.” This tells search engines that you’re a local business and helps you to appear in search results.

A tool such as Google Adwords can help you target local keywords. When you get a list of keywords, be sure to add them to URLs, titles, meta descriptions, headings, and throughout the body of your content. Doing so will surely give you that SEO boost you need.*

A business owner should keep one rule in mind regarding general SEO: avoiding keyword stuffing.

This means filling your content with so many keywords that it becomes difficult to read and sounds unnatural. Not only will this affect your ranking, it will also turn away customers.

A good rule of thumb is to use keywords sparingly and only when they fit naturally into the content.

In addition, it’s also important to consider search volume when selecting keywords. Targeting a keyword that no one is searching for wastes time and resources.

You don’t want to overload your content with useless keywords. Instead, focus on a few high-quality keywords to attract the right traffic to your site.

People search for different things at different times, so keeping your keywords up-to-date and relevant is important.

When following local SEO tips, wisely planning your content is essential to help you rank. Your website needs to have high-quality, well-written local content that is relevant to your local audience.

For example, if you’re in the health niche, your content should be about health, wellness, and fitness. Writing about irrelevant topics that are unrelated to what you do will not only turn off potential customers but also hurt your SEO.

To ensure you create local content that is relevant and engaging, doing deep research on what topics and keywords your target audience is searching for are essential.

When creating content, you can use tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and SEMrush. These tools will help you determine what topics and keywords are being searched for in your industry.

Once you have a list of relevant keywords and topics, you can begin to write about local events involving your business, blog posts, articles, and other types of content accordingly, which will help you appear on SERPs’ first page.

Among the best tips for better local SEO is link building. Link building is getting other websites to link to your website.

This is important for small businesses because it helps to increase your website’s authority and credibility. The more websites that carry a link to your site, the more credible you appear to search engines

However, before proceeding, you must consider whether the website you’re planning to link with adds value and is relevant to your niche.

If the answer is no, you shouldn’t use that link. Linking to sources with a high page or domain authority is also important.

There are a few ways to get other websites to link to you. One is to reach out to a business owner and ask if they would be interested in linking to your content. You can also pay for guest posts that feature a link back to your website.

The process takes time and effort, but it’s worth it if you want to appear higher in local search rankings.

Search engines’ primary goal is to help users find the answers to their queries.

Therefore, the greatest way for small businesses to increase traffic to their website is to produce interesting material, such as articles, videos, and pictures, that gives users useful information.

Google is very specific regarding what kind of content it will rank. For your content to appear in SERPs, it needs to be high-quality.

Your content must include the right keywords, provide value to readers, and be free of grammar and spelling errors. Avoid writing fluff content that beats around the bush. Be straightforward, clear, and concise.

As per Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, small firms can outperform larger ones by concentrating on enhancing the user experience.

Creating the optimal user experience helps level the playing field by allowing you to grow your business through content.

You should have a User Experience checklist to accomplish this. Doing so will give you a sense of what to watch out for and potential improvement areas.

Ensuring your website is easy to navigate, loads quickly, and is free of errors helps to create a positive user experience.

If users can’t find what they’re looking for or if your website is difficult to use, they will likely leave and go to a competitor’s site. To improve your user experience, start by evaluating your website and make any necessary changes.

Because users often utilize social media sites as search engines, using such platforms is a terrific ally in your SEO strategy.

Content marketing on social media is a great way to connect with possible and current customers while promoting your brand.

When using social media for SEO, it’s essential to post high-quality content that is interesting and engaging. As with any other type of content, your social media posts should be relevant to your target audience.

What and how often should you publish to social media?

You should also post regularly and use hashtags to help users find your content. Posting up-to-date information such as business hours and local area address is also a must,

You can announce if you have a new blog post on your site, local events coming up, or a new product launch.

You may also post user-generated content, such as customer reviews or testimonials. Although having a website is great, a social media profile functions more like a “live” version of your business.

We also recommend you post some case studies about your work, an example here is our SEO case study for marriage counseling.

Using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms as a marketing tool to establish a business profile is guaranteed to be one of the best local SEO strategies for small businesses since it will improve your rankings and increase the chances of your business being found online.

You’ll be able to reach customers who use local search to find their business choice.

Free and inexpensive tools like Moz, SpyFu, SEMRush, and Google Analytics can give you more details on the SEO performance of your site and offer additional information about your visitors, including where they are from and how long they spent on each page, and how they found you.

Measuring SEO results can be tricky because there are a lot of factors that contribute to how you appear in SERPs.

However, tracking your results over time will give you a good idea of whether or not your SEO efforts are paying off.

SEO is an important part of any digital marketing strategy to help your business grow.

By following the tips above, you can help improve your website, allowing you to appear higher in SERPs and drive more traffic to your site.