Learn How To Get Your Local Business Ranked in Google Search

New and established business owners struggle with Local SEO and getting their sites ranked in Google, but you can learn how to get your local business ranked right now.

 

Learn How To Get Your Local Business Ranked

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Finding people, places and things has never been easier, but the struggle is real for many businesses trying to be the one that gets found.

 

For the user finding what you want is a simple as;

“Ok Google, Restaurants Near Me”

“Ok Google, Cinema Halls Near Me”

 

This “near me” feature is intriguing and it marks how significantly important local search has become for small businesses.

 

Nearly 85% shoppers search for local businesses online and 61% of local searchers make a purchase within 2 hours.

 

85% shoppers search for local businesses online

Local search is booming rapidly and if your local business still lacks an online presence, then you are missing out on a lot of opportunities to generate sales.

 

Paying attention to these local SEO tactics to optimise your local business for better ranking can generate online visibility for it.

 

So, let’s walk through these simple steps of getting your local business ranked.

 

1. Google My Business

Google suggests local results depending on the searcher’s location and distance plus query relevance and business prominence.

 

If you are not able to see your local business ranked in the search results, it is probably because you have not registered it in Google My Business.

 

google my business

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Google My Business accounts for 19.01% of local search ranking factors. So, it is necessary for local businesses to register in it.

 

What Details Does “Google My Business” Ask For?

  • Location

Inform Google about the exact location of your business. This allows the searchers to easily locate your store.

 

  • Working Hours

With the working hours detail, searchers can check if your store is open or not, this helps them decide the right time to visit your store.

 

  • Photos

Visuals are always pleasing plus they help in locating a store more accurately. Images give the searcher an idea about your store offerings.

 

  • Enter Basic Information

Including enough information to help the searcher contact your business in any particular way sends out a positive image of it. In Google My Business, you can include information such as your business name, address, phone number, website URL, services, opening date, etc.

local business listing

That’s How It Appears In Google

 

 

 

 

2. Presence In Local Citations & Directories

Around 13.31% of the local ranking factors are dominated by citations and directories.

They play an important role in suggesting appropriate local results to the searchers based on their query.

 2. Presence In Local Citations & Directories

You can start by registering to online directories like Yelp, Yellow Pages, etc. You need to provide them with basic information like business name, address, phone number, etc. but remember to keep the information accurate and similar in every directory for better GoogleBot crawling.

 

Backlinks

If you have more links leading to your website then your domain authority increases and GoogleBot crawler starts to regard it as a trustworthy website, which further helps in climbing up the SERPs.

 

Nearly 72% Local SEOs build backlinks via online directories and citations.

So, you can begin to include links to your website in those directories.

Local SEOs build backlinks

 

This helps your Local SEO and marks your website as trustworthy.

 

3. Online Reviews Can Enhance Local Search Rankings

13% of the Local search ranking factors are on the basis of reviews attracted by your business.

 

 

Online Reviews

 

After registering in Google My Business, users start posting reviews on Google after visiting your store. These reviews are helpful for the other visitors to decide upon the services of your store. It is advisable that business interact with the audience via those reviews.

getting reviews

There are other channels such as Yelp, where visitors write reviews about your store.

 

When you search for “Best Italian Restaurants in Chicago” you get results like these.

get local results like these

There are several websites which have shortlisted the best Italian restaurants, but how do they do it? The answer for that is Online Reviews.

 

These websites gauge how good a restaurant might be on the basis of how positive the reviews are. And getting mentioned in those successfully ranked websites drives more links to your domain and increases its credibility, plus people living in Chicago will become much more aware about your business.

 

4. Create Localised Quality Content


“Content Is King”

 

For a local business, creating long form content which focuses on the local events can boost up your Local SEO.

 

If there’s something occasional in your locality, you can market yourself with your content. You can include offers and discounts which you have decided to provide to your visitors on that joyous occasion. So that, your local business gets ranked in the SERPs and when people search for that event online, they are able to locate your store as well.

 

With content you can generate more rankings and gain more visibility.

 

Also, don’t focus on the text alone, you can fill your content with knowledge but without any visuals that content piece will become dull. You need to include images, infographics, videos, after short intervals so that you can grip the audience and engage them with your content.

 

5. Create Social Profiles

Create Social Profiles

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Now a days, every business should have a social media presence. Users tend to know more about a store through their social media handles, they prefer to see how popular the store is. Plus, they would like to have more options to interact with the store.

 

Social listening is important for your local business, you get to know what people are saying about your brand, where is it being mentioned, what comments are being made on your posts, etc. This kind of information is necessary to help you prepare better strategies.

 

But if you are aiming to get ranked and build goodwill with your audiences, you need to begin interacting with them by replying to their comments both negative and positive, thanking them for their feedback, and engaging them with your posts.

 

6. On-Page Optimisation

Whatever you have done has no essence if your content, your web page is not SEO optimised.

 

You need to include relevant keywords in your website’s content, title, meta description, H1 Tag, etc. this helps Google to efficiently crawl your local business’ website and rank it in the SERPs.

 

If you are new to this field, you can have a look at this On-Page optimisation tutorial for better and detailed understanding.

 

7. Voice Search

voice search

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In Local Search, voice search is bringing in more searches and engagement. People are preferring voice search to conveniently find solution to their queries without touching their device,

 

Nearly 44% adults and 55% teens are using voice searches on a daily basis and the number will tentatively increase to 50% by 2020.

 

With rising use of voice search, Google upgraded voice search to work even more efficiently for Local Search because voice related searches are 3x more likely to be local-based.

So every local business should optimize their voice search.

 

If you have upgraded your website content with on page optimisation, registered your local business in Google My Business, and in online directories and citations, then the chances for your website getting ranked on the top local SERPs increases.

 

8. Mobile Friendly – Mobile first indexing and local search

As Google has released Mobile-First Indexing this year, every webmaster is convicted to making their website more responsive to the mobile and tablet design. So that visitors don’t face any sort of inconvenience.

 

If you local business’ website is not prepared for mobile first indexing, it is essential that you make your website more mobile friendly because if your visitors are not able to load your website, then they will probably go for your substitutes and might even publish a negative review for your website.

 

9. Include Location In Domain Name

If the domain name of your local business includes the location of it then Google will favour it more than the other domains.

 

For example, if you have a bookstore in Ohio then you can make the domain name as Ohiobookstore.com.

 

But this will only be effective for local searches, if you are in Delhi and you search for bookstore, you will not see anything related to Ohio making you wish you had registered that Delhibookstore domain name.

 

That is why most of the local business choose to include their city name or part of it in the domain name.

local store

 

Closing Thoughts:

Some local marketers think that running a local business means you simply can’t get progressing rankings in the SERPs.

 

It is understandable that for local businesses getting ranked in the SERPs is hard both generally and when compared to big brands.

 

But for those big brands, this ranking process is even harder because they have to go for various other SEO techniques like off page and on page optimisation to get their websites ranked. Whereas local businesses have local SEO along with big banners’ on-page and off-page optimization.

 

Getting ranked is tough. No one really knows the correct algorithm depending on what Google decides to rank a website, SEO experts know parts of it and they are tactically efficient in boosting the chances of getting ranked progressively.

 

So, coming straight to the point, with these Local SEO tactics mentioned above local businesses can generate traffic to their website and get it ultimately ranked.

 

This is, however, a time consuming task that requires specified optimisations like content, URL, etc. but once leveraged properly, you will be able to generate ranking for your local business eventually, attracting more customers, generating more leads, more traffic, and increase business’ sales.