Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an online marketing strategy to optimize a business’s visibility in a particular location. While many businesses operate globally or country-wide, certain businesses only operate locally. Let’s take an example for a better understanding of why local SEO is so important.

Imagine that you own a massage and spa clinic in New York City. Your target audience should primarily be the people in New York City, not those from other cities. It is so obvious that people from other cities will not visit your clinic for a massage or spa unless they are visiting NYC for some other reasons.

So, in such a case, you do not need to promote your business globally or country-wide. A business appearing in the top three of the local business snippet of Google will obtain ample leads. If your Google My Business profile does not appear in the search results for a particular location, you should embrace better local SEO strategies.

For better local SEO strategies, you need to start with an audit. For a detailed local SEO audit, here is a quick checklist for you.

1. Keyword & AI Prompt Audit

At first, you need to create a list of keywords or AI prompts. Digital marketers expect a local business to appear in the Google results against these keywords. At the same time, you may also expect your business to appear in the answers of the AI engines against certain commands or prompts. Check manually whether your business appears in Google search results or AI answers for those keywords or prompts.

A detailed audit in this regard will help you understand the amount of effort you need to put forward in the future for local search optimization. Using a keyword research tool can also prove helpful in this regard. The keyword research tool will not only help you identify relevant keywords for your local business, but will also help you to find keywords with the right intents, volumes, and difficulties.

Usually, the standard digital marketing practice focuses on finding keywords with commercial intent if your local business sells a product or service. Apart from that, working on the low difficulty and high volume keywords will fetch a relatively faster local business exposure through search engines or AI chatbots.

2. Check & Update Google My Business Profile

The next step is to check and update the Google My Business profile to ensure that people can find your business through search engines or AI engines. Primarily, you need to check the Google My Business description of a business. GMB profiles with a low search engine visibility often possess incorrect descriptions.

In such cases, the description needs to be updated or optimized. Typically, the length of the GMB business description varies from 500 to 700 characters. Optimizing the content with crucial keywords is essential to improve the profile’s visibility.

Apart from the business description, one can add services in a GMB profile. Nevertheless, adding images and encouraging existing customers or clients to leave reviews on the Google My Business profile also boosts online exposure.

3. Updated Address, Phone Number, Etc.

Have you updated your business location or phone number recently? In that case, you need to update those details on your Google My Business profile. A delay in updating these details could be costly since calls from GMB will go to your previous number instead of the updated number. On the other hand, people who want to visit your store physically will reach the wrong address.

Your GMB profile may draw some negative reviews in such cases since leads or prospects find business details incorrect. On the other hand, Google will downgrade the ranking of such GMB profiles to prevent the bad experiences of the users. Therefore, it is important to update the GMB details quickly if there is a change in the business details.

4. Irregular or No GMB Activities

Google My Business comes with an option to post images and small content to draw the attention of the users. Businesses must actively post content on their GMB profiles to optimize exposure. Posting meaningful content on the GMB profiles helps businesses to appear on the AI engines as well.

What are the essential elements of a good GMB post? Well, the business owners or GMB profile managers should keep the following aspects in mind when dealing with the GMB posts.

  • Images: The images for the GMB profile should be designed with precision to draw the attention of the Google users. Moreover, images should be meaningful and relevant to the nature of the business. For example, a restaurant in Florida City can post the newly launched dishes on its GMB profile.
  • Text Content: With the images, typically, the GMB posts should contain some text content. The text content should reflect a short story about a product or service. The content quintessentially should be unique – non-copied. Sharing duplicate content may lead to suspension of your GMB account.
  • Call to Action: The GMB posts can also have a CTA (Call to Action) in the end. Adding CTA will help you to promote a particular product or service page. This will not only boost Google ranking but also drive leads directly to your website.

5. Local SEO & Answer Engines

While conventional local SEO is still good to fetch a good amount of leads for your business, it is high time to invest into the futuristic solutions. Optimizing your GMB profile and business website for local exposure through AI engines can help in the long run. So, here are some proven strategies for local search optimization for answer engines.

  • Location-Specific Landing Page: The first step is to create a location-specific landing page for a business. The page should reflect all services or products from the business. Additionally, it should feature a photo gallery, testimonials, and sections such as why choose us, who are we, and more. Nevertheless, add some FAQs at the end of the page to improve the chance of business visibility through answer engines.
  • Answer-Based Keywords: Instead of the regular local search keywords, you should use the question-based keywords to draft your landing page content. The question-based keywords will help your business appear in the results of answer engines.
  • Local Citations & Listing: Listing your business on various location citation websites helps in increasing online exposure. Popular local citation websites such as Trust Pilot, Trust Index, Wiser Review, and more not only fetch traffic to your business website, but also help in gaining exposure through answer engines.
  • Hyperlocal Onsite Blogs: If you have a local business, you should focus more on the hyperlocal blog instead of general blogs. For example, on-site blog topics should be chosen keeping a specific location in mind. For example, a solar installer in Maryland should focus on writing blogs on solar incentives, grants, and tax rebates available in Maryland. Hyperlocal content helps gaining AI engine’s attention quickly.

Bottom Line

Optimizing the search engine ranking of a website for a specific location involves strategies that are separate from the regular search engine optimization tactics. Businesses need to keep many factors in mind for the local SEO campaigns. From optimizing the content of the GMB profile to creating location-specific landing pages for the answer engines, keeping all such factors in mind is crucial.

Since the job involves auditing and building strategies, it is wise to find a professional service provider. For example, you can choose Digital Mitro, a leading local SEO agency in Kolkata, India, offering quality search engine optimization and online local business outreach optimization services. Having served clients from India, USA, UK, and other countries, our team possesses immense expertise in local business optimization.