One of the most common things I hear from small business owners is frustration over their visibility in the search engines within their local service area. They often feel that competitors are spending more money and as a result, their businesses are getting pushed down in the search results. The truth or the matter is, Google Ads are separate entities and do not directly influence SEO. Google Ads should run parallel with your SEO strategy. Google Ads are more for quicker results and more efficient targeting while your SEO strategy is building over time. So what can SEO owners do to build a good foundation and start the process of showing up organically rather than paying for placement? Here are the top 5 things small businesses can do to get started.
Optimize Your Google My Business Profile
Consider this Google’s social media platform. Similar to the rules of SEO for website pages, you want to provide the best possible user experience. That means complete all fields and information. This includes hours, parking, services, languages spoken, etc. While it may seem silly, the search engines utilize this information when trying to match queries with local search results. So if your profile is complete, you have a better chance of ranking and being visible. Google cites three elements when it comes to ranking locally with your GMB profile. They are relevance, distance and prominence. In other words, how well your business profile matches what someone is searching for, how close in proximity it is to them, and how well your business is known (other business linking to your site, reviews, etc.).
Getting back to the user experience, availability also matters. If your business closes at 5pm and a competitor closes at 8pm. From 5pm-8pm your competitors’ business will show up first because they are currently open. Now, that does mean you should post hours that you are not open and available just to rank. That will cause customers to get frustrated and leads to a poor user experience with lower rankings. In addition, ensure that the messaging feature and Q&A is enabled so that users can reach out to you when needed and get answers to their questions in a quicker time frame.
Consistent Business Information – NAP
This is essential not only for SEO but for the AI visibility as well. NAP stands for name, address and phone number. These should be consistent across the web. This way there is no confusion among the users, search engines, or AI platforms that this is a verified business with consistent contact information that can be reached. The algorithms will feel more confident displaying this information if it has consistent information provided. Completing these suggestions can increase your local ranking potential by 16%.
Consistent Reviews
Having a review strategy in place is an essential local SEO component. Users want to know and view the experiences of others with a specific business. According to a recent CaptialOne shopping research article, More than 99% of American consumers read online reviews before making purchases; reviews influence 93% of consumers’ purchasing decisions. Reviews should be consistent, responded to, and if possible have some main keywords placed naturally into the response. While Google is often considered the main priority, don’t underestimate those third party reviews and the impact they can have on displaying in the various AI platforms. Having steady consistent reviews is the preference over a sudden sharp increase, which can seem suspicious not only to users but to the search engines.
Create Schema Markup
For those who have not heard of schema markup, it is a little piece of code that gets placed in the header of your website (not visible by users) that helps the search engines make connections between what the user is searching for and the content on your page. Without schema, it is left up to the search engines to make inferences as to whether the query might be a good march with a specific website or page. There are three main types of schema recommended for local businesses which include local business, service and review schema. In other words, where the business is located, the service it offers and the user reviews for that service in a specific area. You can read more about these specific schema types and talk to an SEO consultant or specialist for more information.
Add Service Area Pages
Having additional pages that identify the specific area/region and projects that the business has worked on in that location, help match the location and service to a user’s specific need. Make sure the content on each page is original and helpful in order to avoid duplicate content and poor on-page performance. As this could lead to a decrease in your search rankings. Ensure the page has optimized images that are in .webp format, headers that are in the correct sequential order H1, H2, H3 etc. and do not skip, internal links (hyperlinks that go to a page on your site) and external links (hyperlinks that go to an external website) on the page. Also ensure that each image has the proper alt tag description that clearly describes what is in each image so the search engines and screen readers can decipher properly.
In conclusion, it is not how much money you spend but the foundation you build to increase local SEO. Implementing the elements above form an optimized Google My Business profile to local service area pages to gathering consistent reviews, will ensure you create a solid digital footprint and SEO strategy moving forward.