If you are a business selling to a local audience, appearing in the top 3 spots of Google's map listings can get you a whole lot of customers. In fact, it is the best spot on a search results page.
Nevertheless, with competition heating up, this feat is becoming harder and harder. So how can you continue to rank higher?
In this article, I will share critical tools that affect your Google Map's ranking. In addition, you'll get tips on how to get more exposure than your competition whilst learning about the best local SEO tools.
But before we get started, if you haven't reviewed part 1 of our how to do SEO - beginner's guide series, I recommend that you do so before reading this article.
This is what you will find in this article.
Steps to rank for local SEO.
#1. Ensure your mobile website is optimized.
#2. Claim your Google My Business Listing.
#3. Perform local SEO keyword research.
#4. Implement local on-page SEO tactics.
#5. Build local citations.
#6. Do local SEO link building.
#7. Maintain ongoing activities.
#8. Use SEO cheat sheets for local search engines visibility.
Although you may already have your Google My Business Listing set up, I strongly recommend you to review #2 in this article.
Let's first cover a couple of key SEO terms that will be referenced throughout this article.
Local SEO vocabulary:
Snack Pack: The box of local listings that appear on Google Maps.
NAP: Name, address and phone number.
SiLs: Short for "service in locations".
This article provides image references for the above SEO glossary.
Without further ado, here’s how you can get the most results for the least effort.
Now, what actually is local SEO?
Local SEO is the process of optimizing your online presence to increase your chances of being found by customers who are searching locally.
You'll see, for example, that if I type in “best place to buy a wedding suit in Dublin”, the top of the page is dominated by a box of local listings on Google Maps called the "Snack Pack".
Your local organic search results can be found below that.
33% of clicks come from businesses positioned in the Snack Pack, according to Moz.
Therefore, gaining a position in this field is very important.
Though, having a high ranking in organic search results is equally important, as these also attract a big portion of clicks.
So, what should we do?
When it comes to local SEO, it pays to rank in both spots, and I will dive into this very soon.
But, if you still have doubts about why local SEO is important to your business, then here are some local SEO statistics for you:
46% of all Google searches are looking for local information. (Source: GoGulf)
4 in 5 consumers use search engines to find local information. (Source: Think with Google)
72% of consumers that performed a local search visited a store within five miles. (Source: HubSpot Marketing Statistics)
97% of people learn more about a local company online than anywhere else. (Source: SEO Tribunal)
Search result information will send 70% of consumers to a physical store. (Source: Joel House Search Media)
With a market share of 92% according to a 2021 report from Statista, Google is the most popular search engine to find local businesses. So for this post, I'll only discuss local SEO in Google.
#1. Ensure you have a mobile optimised website.
Okay, so let's start at the beginning, the main objective for all local businesses: Optimising your website for mobile.
61% of mobile searchers are more likely to contact a local business if they have a mobile-friendly site, according to HubSpot Marketing Statistics.
And by the end of 2021..
mobile devices will influence more than $1.4 trillion in local sales, according to Forrester.
You can test your mobile-friendliness using Google's Mobile-Friendly Tool. Once you enter your website URL, Google will give you a brief mobile SEO audit, that will let you know whether or not your page is mobile-friendly.
#2. Claim your Google My Business Listing.
Google My Business is an excellent platform for generating traffic to your business and attracting more customers.
It's important to note that there are right ways and wrong ways to set this up. Today I will show you how to do it correctly.
You will learn tips and strategies for increasing your local SEO visibility so that you can gain more customers.
So, if your business relies on traffic from a local community, let’s get started with creating and optimizing your Google My Business Listing.
Google My Business: What is it and how does it work?
Google My Business gives you the option of creating a free listing, which can be found by potential customers using Google search and Google maps.
Benefits of Google My Business:
It's a free way to reach a larger audience
It gives your business the ability to appear in local packs and on maps.
It's easy to use.
It provides the option for people to leave you reviews.
How to add a business to Google and how do I get my business on google maps?
Step 1. Log in to Google My Business.
Log into your Google email at google.com/business, and then enter your NAP, which is short for your name, address, and phone number.
A business that owns multiple locations or owns a franchise can begin typing its name into Google's search box to find listings that are already in the database.
It’s important to note that your business name is not meant for keyword stuffing. It’s not going to help you rank, so don’t bother.
Step 2. Enter your business location.
As a brick-and-mortar shop owner, you’ll have a physical location. However, if you're an independent service provider of for example, “wholesale men's clothing” like us, you can select the "I deliver goods and services to my customers" button, and hide the address since your business doesn't have a physical location.
As a result, when your business shows up in Google search, it will only display the city and province/county where you are located.
As this doesn’t apply most likely to your business, let's proceed to the next step, which is pinning your business on Google maps.
Step 3. Confirm your pinned location on Google maps.
Google does a pretty good job with this, but you'll want to double-check that the map is positioned exactly where your store is. Once you have it dropped, click next when you are done.
Adding multiple categories to your products and services is not recommended by Google. Consider this statement instead:
“My business is a ______” rather than “My business has_____”.
Step 4: Verify the website.
Now the next step is to enter your phone number and website. This step is optional, but I recommend including both. To complete this process, we must verify the website via phone or mail.
Your My Business Listing should be live within a few minutes after you follow the directions from Google.
Step 5: Optimize your Google My Business Listing.
The next thing you should do is optimize your listing for local SEO.
From the sidebar, you can access the information menu. So, you can add more relevant categories.
Key things to add in your Google My Business Listing.
set your opening hours.
add specific URLs to important pages
add a clear description of your business
and photos of your actual location.
Step 6. Encourage reviews.
Reviews make any business more trustworthy and Google like to rank businesses with a lot of good reviews.
Once you start generating reviews, it’s really important that you respond to any incoming review, even if it’s bad. Check out the article on how to respond to negative reviews for more tips.
Let's move on to step 3 now that we've established the groundwork for local SEO.
#3. Local SEO keyword research.
The first thing you’ll want to do is to find the keywords that your local audience is going to use to find you. And there are tons of keyword tools out there that you can use, both free and paid.
My favourite one is Ahrefs and I got a whole section in part 1 of our DIY SEO series for beginners dedicated to how to use these SEO tools to find your keywords for best SEO visibility.
Now, if you are a small menswear business selling suits, these are some obvious terms you would want to rank for:
Suit shop near me.
Wedding suits nearby.
What time does {name of your business} open or close,
and {name of your business} phone number.
With these kinds of local search terms, Google pulls the information from the Google My Business Listing.
For example: If I type in “what time does Eddie Murphy's store close at”, Google will pull up the Eddie murphy’s store in the area and show the hours of operations for all locations on the map.
And if I specify the location in the search term, then you’ll see a quick answer box like the below, which I pulled directly from Google My Business.
So rather than going deep into the “Snack Pack,” and Google Maps Listings we’ll be talking about keyword research and organic search visibility.
For this, we need to first determine your SiLs, which stands for “service in locations”.
For example: If I was running a 24-hour coffee shop in Dublin, I’d want to rank for queries like these:
Coffee shops in Dublin
24/7 coffee shops in Dublin.
24-hour coffee shops in Dublin
And I would want to rank for synonymous variations like “café in Dublin”.
For a few ways, you can generate solid keyword ideas, check out part 1 of our how to do SEO - beginner's guide series.
When you have a solid list of keyword ideas, it’s time to move onto some on-page SEO.
#4. Local on-page SEO tactics.
If you read part 1 of our series on how to do SEO for beginners, you’ll find that a lot of the typical on-page SEO best practices apply also in a local SEO strategy.
For example, you should:
include your keyword in your H1 tag,
add your target keyword in the title tag,
set the URL slug to your keywords, and use short URLs.
You might also want to know the answer to - how many keywords per page should I include?
Consider the page's length when deciding how many keywords you should include on your page.
Two to three keywords per paragraph are good when the piece of content is short (200-400 words). This adds up to around eight keywords on average per page.
With a longer piece of content (700 - 1000 words), this would mean you end up with around 15 keywords in total.
For most small businesses, starting with keywords with a monthly search volume of around 50 and a low competition score is ideal.
It's important to remember that the number of keywords that you include in your content depends not just on its length, but also on its relevance to the page that you're writing.
In order to optimize your content as effectively as possible, let the keywords flow naturally.
So that the content is easy to read. You should never compromise the readability of your content over keywords.
But there are a few other things you should do to improve your local SEO visibility.
It is important to note that these optimizations will vary depending on whether you have a single location or many locations.
I'll address both here.
If you only have one location:
First, you should optimize your home page for local search engine optimization.
As a general rule, businesses with a single location are encouraged to optimize content on their homepage (aka the first page of a website) around their primary location.
So again, if I was a Dublin based coffee shop, I would probably target keywords like “coffee shop Dublin”, rather than just coffee shop and set this as my H1 on my homepage.
Additionally, you need to follow these points to optimize your homepage in the best way:
Show NAP (name, address and phone number) on the homepage. In fact, you can add this to the footer (a section at the bottom of your website) if you operate from a single location as you can see in this example below.
Example of London, UK based made-to-measure store, The Artefact.
Make sure NAP (your name address, and phone number) match exactly or as close as possible to what you’ve submitted to Google My Business. This it’s absolutely critical or else Google will struggle to see the resemblance.
Now, if your business has more than one location:
If you’re a business with multiple locations, then you’re exempt from the rule of optimizing your homepage around your primary location.
Instead of the home page, you would want to optimize content on local landing pages by including key elements like the location’s NAP, operating hours and sprinkle in related keywords targeted at that location.
Author's tip: Create a separate page for each of your locations on your website. (See below)
Example of London, UK based made-to-measure travelling tailor service,
#5. Build local citations.
The next step is to link build with local citations, which are basically online mentions of your business.
There are two main types of citations. They are structured and unstructured.
Structured citations are mentions that include your NAP information and it’s usually presented in a visually structured manner. So, this would include places like business directories and your social media profiles.
Unstructured citations are mentions of your business that don’t follow a structure. So, this might be blog posts and general websites.
Citations signals were one of the top local ranking factors, which was true for both Google’s “snack pack” results and regular organic search results, according to a 2017 study done by Moz,
So, the more citations you have, the better you will rank in search results.
But it’s important that your NAP information keeps a consistent format across the web because inconsistent NAP information can confuse or mislead both Google and potential customers.
For example: If it says RD, don’t start writing out road another place. Also, don’t make changes to your brand name. If it's Michael’s Menswear in your Google My Business Listing, don’t write Michaels on a business directory page.
Try to copy the format that My Business Listings use.
For your local citations, there are two things you need to do:
Make sure your existing citations are accurate and consistent.
Build more relevant citations.
Whitespark.ca is a great free tool that can help you build structured citations more easily. With Whitespark you get a list of recommended business directories in line with your industry among other potential websites for potential mentions.
You get 3 searches per day on their free plan. Just choose your county, and you’ll see a list of places to add your mark.
Another great place to find citation opportunities is to let your competitors do the work for you. You can use a keyword tool like Ahrefs and its site explorer to see what websites and directories your competitors are listed on, and who is sending traffic to their site.
#6. Local SEO link building.
The last actionable thing we like to do is build quality editorial links.
Rather than creating a full-on guide about external link building, I would rather give you a few tried and true strategies that work.
Tactic 1. Create a useful resource and promote it.
The best option in this situation would be to create resourceful content optimized for your niche. So, you could make local guides or articles about local "best of" that would appeal to your audience.
So, to follow my previous example, if we were a coffee shop we could create content on how to make the best cup of coffee, where we can plug in our own products.
We could also create content targeted at coffee drinking people on the best and affordable local places for office space since coffee shops have become a trendy spot to work from.
The same, if we were a menswear shop in Dublin, we could create content like;
how to dress over 50 and overweight
how to dress for an interview.
How to iron a shirt
or how to tie a bowtie
Tactic 2. Guest blog.
While guest posts normally include links back to your site, this is also a great chance to prove yourself as an expert in the field.
#7. Maintain ongoing activities.
Make sure that your Google My Business account is active by taking regular care of these tasks:
Be consistent in responding to customer reviews. Including positive and negative feedback.
Watch out for inaccurate updates to your Google My Business Listing. The "suggest and edit" option on your My Business Listing is visible to anyone, and Google sometimes accepts suggestions without your approval.
Use the Google Posts function to communicate with your customers. Google Posts is a microblogging platform that is part of Google My Business. Check out Hootsuite's article on how to create the best Google My Business Posts for more information.
Image source
By doing this, you can increase the attention your listings receive, connect with your audience, and ultimately boost sales. Creating a Google Post from within Google My Business is as easy as clicking "write your post", adding an image, and adding up to 300 words.
You can use this to share promotional offers or teasers for your blog posts. You can also pick one of the predefined call-to-action options to increase clicks.
#8. SEO cheat sheets for local search engines visibility.
If you like to get your hands on our zip file containing:
Local SEO checklist template.
Keyword research sheet template.
SEO hiring checklist template.
just drop us an email, subject line "SEO cheat sheets" to info@rjmtm.com.
Now if you are a menswear shop owner and really serious about getting your small business ranked for local SEO, you should know that below is a list of keywords that consumers in Ireland and the UK are currently searching for.
Design your own suit
Make your own jeans
Made to measure chinos
In addition to using keyword research as part of your ranking strategy for your current products and offerings, it can also be a useful source for identifying what new products consumers are looking for.
Using this SEO tool, shop owners can keep up with the latest fashion trends instantly.
However, not every men's wholesale supplier has the ability to deliver clothing on demand, but there are some who do.
With RJ MTM's End-to-End Apparel Retail system, small menswear shop owners can now easily offer customers what they are searching for instantly. Offering them the option to design their own suit, make their own jeans, choose fabric weight, sizing, and much more - true clothing made on-demand.
Want to see it for yourself? Join my colleague Frank on a Visual Tour. Let him show you how you can retain customers, keep them coming back for more and reduce your inventory costs by 50% by leveraging our tools!
To contact Frank, simply email him at info@rjmtm.com. Let him know briefly what your business is about, and a time and date that would be convenient for him to call you.
A no strings attached chit-chat to get some ideas on how to make your business a menswear temple.
If you enjoyed this article, please give it a thumbs up so that I can see what kind of content you enjoy. Feel free to comment below if you have any topic you would like me to cover in future articles.
Cheers,
Camilla
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