SEO
7 Ways To Improve Local SEO & Attract New Business
There is a big difference between the way standard organic SEO works and the way we should approach Local SEO.
Not only is searcher intent likely different, the algorithms Google uses to show the map pack differs from the main organic algorithms.
In this article, I’ll be taking you through the ways you can win new customers and improve your visibility through local SEO.
Top Ways To Improve Your Local SEO
1. Keep An Eye On Your Competitors’ Google Business Profile Q&As
Google Business Profile (GBP) has a great function that can do wonders for growing new business – the questions and answers feature.
If you use it well for your own organization, it can help convert customers who are otherwise on the fence.
But don’t stop there. Spend time researching your competitors’ Q&As, too. See what your potential customers are asking others in your industry.
How GBP Q&A Works
On your Google Business Profile, you may notice an “Ask a Question” button. Once clicked, users are taken through to a screen that allows them to submit a question.
This next bit is key. The question does not get submitted to the owner of the profile. It gets submitted to the profile. That means it is visible to anyone who sees a Google Business Profile listing.
Once a question has been posted to your competitors’ Google Business Profile listing, you will be able to see it.
And once the question is answered, that information – and the engagement – is there for all in the future to see.
How Does This Help Build New Business?
These questions are a great way to encourage new business from local searchers. Questions are likely to be asked by people who have never visited that business before but are in your target market.
They are already engaging with the brand but need a bit more information before they commit to a visit.
For Your Own Listing
On your own GBP, you can use this opportunity to converse with a potential local consumer who is far down the conversion funnel.
If they are at the stage where they have found you and are considering you enough to ask some questions, a thoughtful response may be all it takes to see them walk through your doors.
On A Competitor’s Listing
Look at what questions your competitors’ customers and potential customers are asking. Use this to better fill out the information on your own profile and website.
If you are noticing a lot of questions being asked about the availability of gluten-free pizza from other pizza restaurants in your area, for example, you want to make sure you highlight your gluten-free products on your site and listing.
This type of research can keep you one step ahead of local competitors, especially if the questions they have been asked are slightly negative in tone.
Consider this question: “Do you still play loud music?”
If a potential restaurant-goer sees that question asked of another business, it immediately makes them consider the environment they will be eating their meal in.
It may make them wonder if they will really be able to enjoy the catch-up with their friends over a meal as they have planned.
Answer the questions being asked of your competitors on your own website and GBP before anyone asks. State in your description that customers will enjoy a meal accompanied by relaxing, ambient music.
This can put you at a significant advantage over your competitors for winning new business in your geography.
When you proactively answer a potential customer’s question before they even have to ask it, you demonstrate that you understand their needs and wants.
2. Tweak A Google Product Listing To Get More Exposure
Google allows businesses with GBP to upload details of the products they offer. This can be viewed by potential customers on both mobile and desktop search results.
The listings appear in the GBP in a carousel format on Maps and in both a carousel and under the Products tab in Search.
Both formats allow users to click on the product cards for more detail, to call, or visit the website.
How GBP Product Listings Work
Uploading your products to a Google Business Profile has gotten simpler. Google has released a new way of doing this called “Pointy.” Pointy is a device that is plugged in between the barcode scanner and the point-of-sale device. As products are scanned in, Pointy adds them to Google.
This is a quick way of uploading your product inventory to your Google Business Profile. There are restrictions around this, however, as Pointy is only available in some countries and also isn’t suitable for products without barcodes (bunches of flowers, for instance).
It is still possible to upload products manually. Simply sign in to your profile and click Edit Profile > Products > Add Product.
How Does This Help Build New Business?
You may be looking to showcase some products over others for a variety of reasons. You may have a surplus of stock in one of your locations, for example.
Bringing that stock to the forefront of that location’s GBP listing will help alert local customers to it. It will allow you to target specific products more to relevant audiences, dependent on their location.
For instance, seasonal products may be better served first. Perhaps the geographic location of your car repair shop is set for an unseasonal snow flurry. Edit your snow tire listings to bring them to the beginning of the carousel.
This could enhance the visibility of your product at just the right time for a new customer in your target location to see them.
3. Use Google’s Business Messages While You Can
Google Business Profile can include functionality that allows businesses to correspond with customers straight from the SERPs.
When activated, GBP will display a Message button that users can click on to start direct messaging with the business.
How GBP Business Messages Work
This functionality has existed since 2017 in Google Business Profile and since 2018 in Google Maps. It has only recently made it onto the desktop, however.
If you are an owner of a GBP, you should see the option in your desktop dashboard to Turn on messaging under the Messages tab.
You can then set items like an initial auto-responder to be sent out when a visitor first messages you are using this service.
To make sure the service is a timely one, Google recommends you reply to all messages within 24 hours.
If you don’t, Google may deactivate the messaging service on your account. Your response times can also show in Google Search and Maps.
Google may display ‘Usually responds in a few minutes,’ ‘Usually responds in a few hours,’ ‘Usually responds in a day,’ or ‘Usually responds in a few days,’ depending on your average reply time.
How Does This Help Build New Business?
Not everyone has the time (or inclination) to call up a business they have yet to engage with. Allowing potential local customers to message you straight from your GBP is an excellent way of streamlining conversations with them.
If you respond quickly, your chances of that potential customer converting are greatly increased.
This is of particular use to local businesses that perhaps don’t use centralized call centers or messaging. It can be another touch point that shows the personalization of the business based on the location that the consumer is in.
Consider the offers, services, and tone of voice that might be most appropriate to your customers in that particular geography. This is your opportunity to highlight again how well you know your customers.
Make use of the local name for the area your business is in. Talk about the specific events and charities you support in the area.
Any additional indication that your business serves the local population specifically can help to reinforce your relevance to the potential customer who has contacted you.
Now that the functionality is available in such a wide range of places on the web, it would be a wasted opportunity not to engage with your potential customers in this way.
4. Update Your GBP With All Relevant Newly Available Attributes
Google keeps updating the features available through its Google Business Profile property. Make sure you keep your listing fully populated with the relevant attributes as they become available.
How Do New Attributes Work
Google frequently adds functionality to Google Business Profile that your business might be eligible to use. Not every new feature is available to all types of businesses, however.
Whether you can access new updates depends on what category is set as your primary in GBP.
To keep up to date with what new features are becoming available and who is eligible for them, visit Google’s GBP announcements page.
How Does This Help Build New Business?
With any new change to Google Business Profile, early adoption will put you ahead of the pack. Although these attributes will not necessarily affect your rankings in the map pack, they can make your business more attractive to prospective local customers.
For instance, attributes can include details of the business’s ownership. For example, it’s possible to include attributes like “women-owned” and “black-owned” to your Business profile.
Google also introduced the option to denote a business’s support for the LGBTQ+ community through “LGBTQ+ friendly” attributes.
A business showing that it is inclusive and supportive of minority groups can help members of those groups to feel welcomed. For some people, knowing they will be welcomed at a business can be the difference between them visiting there instead of a competitor whose support isn’t guaranteed.
5. Join Local Marketplaces And Forums
The key to marketing your local business well is understanding what your audience is looking for. A great way of understanding your target market is by spending time where they are.
This includes online.
Make sure you register your business in local directories and forums. This is not so much for the traditional citation benefit. It’s so you can be amongst your prospective customers, hearing what they are talking about.
How Local Marketplaces & Forums Work
Online Marketplaces
Look on platforms like Facebook for marketplaces relevant to your location and products. You don’t necessarily need to be engaging with the audience to learn more about who they are and what they respond to.
For instance, if you sell locally created craft products in your store, you can get a feel for how much your audience is willing to pay for products by seeing what similar items are being sold for in your town’s Facebook Marketplace.
By watching what your local audience is saying about prices, quality, shipping, and sourcing of products, you can begin to understand more about your audience’s preferences.
Forums
If you are a local pizza restaurant, you would do well to join Reddit subreddits for your city and read the threads that talk about restaurants in your area.
What is your local audience saying about your competition? Are they sick of pizza restaurants and really want someone to bring something new to the area?
Perhaps they are enthusiastic about local independent shops and want to support them more.
How Does This Help Build New Business?
This kind of information can help you to tailor your search marketing strategy, tone of voice, and more.
Go to places where your target audience members are talking freely about your local area. Find out what they want from their local businesses.
If you are feeling brave, you can even interact with your audience on these platforms. This has to be done sensitively and authentically.
Most people don’t want to be mined for information without their consent. Be open and honest when reaching out for feedback on these sites.
The more you can watch and learn from your audience, the more likely you are to be able to offer products and services they will respond well to.
6. Don’t Neglect Bing, DuckDuckGo, And Others
Google is not the only search engine you need to be concerned with. There are others, too, that might be the first port of call for users looking for information on local businesses.
How Other Search Engines Work
You may see the vast majority of the organic traffic going to your site coming from Google. Don’t forget that you might not be tracking all of the ways customers discover you through search.
Your profile showing in the SERPs might not generate a click. As a result, it will not show up in your web analytics program.
So, unless you are measuring impressions across different search engines, you will not know that your business has been seen on the likes of Bing or DuckDuckGo.
DuckDuckGo’s maps are powered by Apple Maps. Therefore, if you want your business to appear in the DuckDuckGo local map pack, you will need to have your business set up with an Apple Maps Connect profile.
Similarly, Bing uses Bing Places to power their local map functionality. Setting up and optimizing a Google Business Profile listing will not help you with increasing organic visibility on Bing.
We are seeing an increase in the popularity of other search engines over time, and for some locations, Google is not the primary search engine used.
If you have physical stores or business locations outside of the U.S., you should look at which search engines are also popular in those regions.
Make sure you utilize the local map functionality of these other search engines.
How Does This Help Build New Business?
Yet again, being where your competitors are not will put you in good stead.
If your competitors are not appearing in the Apple Maps results in DuckDuckGo, you are going to be far more likely to win the business of local searchers using that platform.
7. Keep An Eye On Your Reputation
You may be keeping a close eye on the reviews left on sites like TripAdvisor. You even check your own Google Business Profile listing regularly.
But are you keeping on top of some of the other places in the SERPs which might be giving potential customers an outsider’s view of your business?
How Reputation Monitoring Works
Top and middle-of-the-funnel local search queries, such as [car mechanic telford], can bring back a variety of features in the SERPs.
Prominently Featured Review And Directory Sites
Take a look at this SERP result:
The top carousel lists large directories, social media sites, and niche directories. This gives potential customers access to information about your company – and potentially even reviews – on sites you may not even be checking.
Aside from the inaccurate data about your company that these sites may contain, what have customers, former employees, or even competitors said about you?
Given that links to these sites appear as the first feature in the Google SERPs for this query, it would stand to reason they may get a lot of visibility from your potential customers.
People Also Ask
If customers are in the process of narrowing down their choice of business, they might start searching for specific information about those businesses. That can often trigger a “People Also Ask” feature to appear.
When searching for [is (name of a mechanic) in Telford any good], the following PAA box appeared, talking specifically about that brand.
That first “People Also Ask” question is, “why is [brand] so expensive?” That does not inspire much confidence in the value for money of this particular mechanic.
Although there is not much you can do to control what questions appear in the “People Also Ask” section, it is important to try to influence the perception of those who may click on this question.
Write a page addressing this question and try to get it ranking. That way, when someone interested in your local business clicks on this question, they at least will see your response around “the quality service,” “not compromising by using cheap parts,” and “highly-skilled technicians who you pay well for their expertise.”
How Does This Help Build New Business?
It is crucial to remember that what a potential customer sees about you may not just be the information you are writing on your website or Google Business Profile listings.
It might not even be the reviews left on sites you are closely monitoring and responding to.
A potential customer will be influenced heavily by others’ opinions and experiences of your business. Local businesses tend to attract a lot of reviews because they are promoted by sites that encourage them to be left.
A negative perception of your business will likely be the difference between you winning or losing a new customer.
Always monitor the SERPs around your core lead-generating search terms. Identify where negative perceptions of your business could be formed.
Conclusion
There are many aspects of SEO that you need to consider if you want your business to do well with your local audience.
How your website appears for searches with local intent in Google Maps and the standard SERPs can make or break your business.
If you want your brick-and-mortar business to succeed online, make sure you develop a robust local SEO strategy.
More Resources:
Featured Image: Rido/Shutterstock
SEO
The Most Engaged YouTube Fans For NCAA Basketball Teams
Imagine that you head up digital marketing at Turner Sports or CBS Sports, which have the exclusive rights to license NCAA marks, tickets, and taglines in commercial promotions.
Or suppose that your social video agency was just invited to pitch AT&T, Capital One, or Coca-Cola, which are official NCAA corporate champions.
And you have an assignment to identify the most engaged YouTube fans for the NCAA Division 1 Men’s and Women’s basketball teams.
I realize that you probably don’t work at one of those sports media and entertainment companies and it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be asked to pitch one of those brands in the foreseeable future.
So, why should you care about what makes engaged NCAA fans on YouTube?
Keep reading, there is method in the madness.
Cognitive, Emotional, And Behavioral Metrics
As mentioned previously, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has identified 30 metrics – 7 cognitive, 4 emotional, and 19 behavioral – that brands or agencies can use to measure the “engagement continuum.”
But fan engagement can fluctuate depending on whether a college basketball team is on the bubble, makes it to the Big Dance, or goes deep into the Sweet 16, Elite Eight, and Final Four.
Fan engagement can also vary depending on the number of logo 3s, buzzer beaters, or overtime wins.
That’s why this hypothetical assignment is so hard.
Nevertheless, exploring various video engagement metrics from several video intelligence sources can help you better understand the most engaged YouTube fans for NCAA basketball teams and how to apply what you’ve learned to your brands or clients.
Here are three cognitive metrics that you should explore when measuring engagement:
- Change in Brand Awareness/Familiarity: You can use surveys to measure the extent your brand is recognized by potential customers before and after this year’s NCAA tournaments.
- Change in Brand Consideration: You can also use pre- and post-March Madness surveys to measure your brand’s inclusion in a set customers would select from.
- Change in Purchase Intent: You can also use Brand Lift surveys to measure the delta in customers’ plans or willingness to purchase your brand in the future.
Here are three emotional metrics that you should look at using to measure engagement:
- Change in Baseline Brand Perception: Surveys enable you to measure the pre-post delta in what potential customers think and feel about your brand.
- Change in Baseline Brand Favorability: Surveys also enable you to measure what potential customers like and value about your brand before and after the Big Dance.
- Change in Baseline Brand Loyalty: Surveys enable you to measure customer loyalty in terms of weight and frequency of usage – as well as likelihood to switch – from Selection Sunday, March 17, to the women’s NCAA championship game on Sunday, April 7, and the men’s NCAA championship game on Monday, April 8, 2024.
Here are six behavioral metrics worth exploring to measure engagement:
- Watch Time: The total amount of time viewers spend watching a video, including any replays or rewatches, should be a key metric. Since it’s only available if you have access to your brand or client’s YouTube Analytics, digital marketers and social video agencies use “views” as a metric to compare videos across other YouTube channels.
- Applause Rate: The number of likes a YouTube video gets.
- Amplification Rate: The number of shares a YouTube video gets.
- Conversation Rate: The number of comments a YouTube video gets.
- Engaged-View Conversions (EVCs): In Google Analytics 4 (GA4), an engaged-view conversion (EVC) indicates that someone watched a YouTube video for at least 10 seconds and then converted on your website or app within 3 days of viewing the video.
- Economic Value: This is the monetary value of visitors from YouTube to your site who go on to complete micro conversions like subscribing to a newsletter or initiating a chat with your business, as well as macro conversions like purchasing a product or registering for a service.
In addition, here are some of the video intelligence sources you should evaluate:
- Official Team and Conference Channels: Many NCAA Division 1 teams and major conferences, like the ACC, Big 10, and SEC, have their own YouTube channels. These channels feature highlights, interviews, and behind-the-scenes content. Comparing their metrics can provide you with insights.
- Media and NCAA Basketball Channels: YouTube channels like CBS Sports and March Madness upload video content about various college basketball teams, allowing you to compare fan engagement based on comments and viewership.
- Third-Party Tools: Tubular Labs, a social video intelligence company that provides data on social video audiences, and Pixability, a company that helps brands monitor their YouTube and CTV campaigns, can provide deeper insights into engagement, but they require paid subscriptions.
For this article, I contacted Matt Duffy, the company’s CMO, and Sean Alie, the head of its insights team, to see if they had any critical data or strategic insights worth sharing.
They did – and it appears below.
There are four sections: men’s team views, women’s team views, year-over-year (YoY) data for men’s and women’s teams + men’s vs. women’s teams, and lastly, views by popular players (such as Caitlin Clark, the NCAA Division I all-time leading scorer of the Iowa Hawkeyes in the Big Ten Conference).
Here’s what the men’s NCAA basketball views look like.
They are filtered to sports videos only, and each video includes the keywords “*team name*,” “basketball,” and “men” somewhere in the metadata.
The timeline is February only.
Men’s Basketball
Houston, the #1 ranked team, earned 7.5% more views than the next leading team, Kansas (21M vs 19.6M). Kansas did rank first in engagements, though, earning 13% more engagements than Houston (442K vs 391K).
Duke ranked 3rd in views (16M) and engagements (389K). One thing to note is Houston is the #1 ranked team and the most viewed team on YouTube.
However, Kansas was ranked 14th and Duke 9th, yet they were able to rank 2nd and 3rd in views. This is a testament to the brand awareness these programs hold.
Women’s Basketball
This data uses the same methodology as the men’s data except with “women” as a keyword instead of “men.”
Iowa, home of star Caitlin Clark, earned 51% more views than the next leading program, LSU (12.4M vs 8.2M). This makes sense as Angel Reece plays for LSU and is widely considered the second most popular player in women’s college basketball, after Caitlin.
The individual stars may influence views for women’s programs more than the team’s fan base. Iowa earned 9.5% more engagements than LSU (178.5K vs 162.9K). Indiana ranked 3rd in views, followed by UConn.
Men’s Vs. Women’s Teams And YoY Stats
- The top 16 men’s teams earned a combined 130.8M views in February 2024, which is 157% more than the top 16 women’s teams have earned (50.8M). Men’s teams earned 247% more engagements (2.4M) than women’s teams (690K).
- YoY, the top 16 ranked men’s teams earned 61% more views this year compared to the top 16 ranked teams last year in February (130.8M vs 81.2M).
- YoY, the top 16 ranked women’s teams earned 147% more views this year compared to the top 16 ranked teams last year in February (50.8M vs 20.5M). This means that views for women’s college basketball are growing faster than the men’s. A large part of this was due to the rise of Caitlin Clark.
Views By Popular Basketball Players
The stats below are based on players participating in the tournament: Caitlin Clark earned 17.5M player mention views in February, which is more than any other player in the men’s and women’s tournaments.
Caitlin earned 10.6x more views in February than the highest male player (Kyle Filipowski) views polled in February (17.5M vs 1.6M).
The second most viewed player was also a woman, Angel Reese, who plays for the LSU Tigers in the Southeastern Conference. Angel earned 3.9x more views than Kyle Filipowski, who plays for the Duke Blue Devils in the Atlantic Coast Conference (6.4M vs 1.6M).
The rivalry between these two women stars has fueled incredible engagement on YouTube.
Again, men’s teams are more popular than women’s teams, but at the individual level, women players are outperforming men by a large margin.
Although the USC Trojans of the Pac-12 Conference won’t make the tournament this year, LeBron Raymone “Bronny” James earned 32M views, which is 87% higher than Caitlin Clark’s views.
This is still incredibly impressive for Caitlin as she is putting up numbers that compete with someone as well-known as Bronny James.
Of course, you could figure out who are the most engaged YouTube fans for NCAA basketball teams without using third-party tools.
But that might take so much time that you’d miss some of the games that make March Madness worth watching and create highlights worth sharing on YouTube.
Hey, you make the call.
How Marketers Can Use Insights Into The Most Engaged Fans
So, how can digital marketers use these insights about NCAA basketball’s most engaged fans?
Well, I can think of three key ways to apply what we’ve just learned.
First, as I mentioned in “39 Emotions Digital Marketers Can Use In Advertising,” people share videos that elicit “high-arousal” or intense emotions twice as much as ones that elicit “low-arousal” or moderate emotions. And March Madness elicits several intense emotions.
For example, the Big Dance triggers nostalgia, a sentimental longing or wistful affection for some past period or irrecoverable condition. How do you make use of this insight?
Watch Continental Tire’s “Grant Hill, Christian Laettner, and the Smart Choice!” Basketball legends Grant Hill and Christian Laettner of Duke not only tell us about the importance of making smart choices but also remind us of “The Shot” during the 1992 NCAA tournament.
During a game between East Region #1 seed Duke and #2 seed Kentucky in the East Regional Final to determine a spot in the Final Four, defending national champion Duke trailed 103–102 with 2.1 seconds remaining in overtime.
That’s when Hill threw a pass three-quarters of the length of the court to Laettner, who faked right, dribbled once, turned, and hit a jumper as time expired for the 104–103 win. In 2004, Sports Illustrated called it the greatest college basketball game of all time.
Second, college athletes can now make money from their name, image, and likeness (NIL). So, brands like State Farm Insurance can now feature players like Caitlin Clark in YouTube videos like “Shoot! (feat. Caitlin Clark, Jimmy Butler, Reggie Miller) :30 | State Farm Commercial.”
It’s worth noting that State Farm uploaded this video on Nov. 21, 2023, almost three months before Clark broke “Pistol” Pete Maravich’s NCAA Division I scoring record on Feb. 15, 2024. Kudos to the brand and their agency for being ahead of the curve.
Third, the line between creators and their audiences is blurring.
At last year’s Brandcast, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan told advertisers, “The universe of ‘creators’ is growing every day as more people make videos on their phones.
This limitless access means the world of creation is changing. Fans used to engage with a like or subscribe. But now, you can see a trend and easily jump in with your own video.”
For an example, check out “Meet the New Face of March Madness – Robbie Avila #collegebasketball #indianastate #sports #funny.” BenchwarmerBran, the online alias of Brandon Carney, a sports content creator who makes jokes about teams, players, and fantasy leagues, uploaded this video on March 7, 2024. And it currently has 405,000 views and 63,500 engagements.
If you use Tubular Intelligence, then you will see that 1,536 accounts in the U.S. uploaded 3,208 videos about “March Madness” to YouTube in the last 90 days.
And influencers uploaded 2,359 of these videos (73.5%), while media and entertainment companies uploaded 602 (18.8%), and brands uploaded only 224 (7.0%).
Now, these 3,208 YouTube videos about March Madness got a total of 11.6 million views and 455,000 engagements.
So, targeting affinity segments, people who already have a strong interest in relevant topics, may be a much smarter option than targeting placements, specific YouTube channels or websites and apps on the Google Display Network.
How SEO Pros Can Use This Information, Too
So, how could an SEO specialist use this information to make actionable decisions?
Well, I’m sad to say that some won’t.
Why? As Captain Spock (Leonard Nimoy) said in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn”,
“He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking.”
In other words, some intelligent SEO specialists think their job is to work with text, not videos. And they also think that the content that their optimizing is to help people make rational decisions, not emotional ones.
But YouTube videos have been appearing in Google’s search results since May 2007. And as I mentioned in “Customer Personas Can Transform SEO, PPC and Content Marketing,” Google has talked about emotions driving search intent since May 2019.
As Justin De Graaf, Head of Ads Research and Insights at Google, observed back then,
“The truth is, decision-making is not a rational process, but one driven mainly by how people feel. The rational brain layers on reasons for our choices only after they’re made.”
So, if SEO specialists continue to focus on optimizing text to help people make rational decisions, then their pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking.
Now, they may continue to be somewhat successful, especially if they can answer “yes” when asked: “After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?”
But, as Google has said,
“The helpful content update aims to better reward content where visitors feel they’ve had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn’t meet a visitor’s expectations won’t perform as well.”
So, SEO specialists who can’t create (and optimize) video content that tells a good story and makes a visitor feel something emotionally may struggle to provide a satisfying experience.
In conclusion, this is why it’s worth dreaming about getting a starring role in a Cinderella story.
I realize that you probably won’t get a job at one of those media and entertainment companies and it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be asked to pitch one of those brands in the foreseeable future.
But, if and when your opportunity presents itself, then you will be ready to take your best shot at the buzzer.
More resources:
Featured Image: adriaticfoto/Shutterstock
SEO
7 Easy SEO Tips for Small Businesses
If you’re a small business owner, people are searching for what you do on Google. Unless you show up, you’re missing out on customers or clients.
SEO is how you do that, and the basics are quick and easy.
Follow these tips to rank your small business higher in no time.
If you only do one thing as a small business owner, make it to claim and optimize your GBP.
A Google Business Profile helps users find and learn about your business in Google search and maps. It’s free to set up and lets you share important details about your business with customers, like its phone number, opening times, and offerings.
But here’s the real beauty of Business Profiles: People don’t have to search for your business to see your profile. They can appear for broader searches like “pizza restaurant near me.”
This makes them a powerful way to attract new customers searching for what you do.
Here are the basics of optimizing your profile:
- Set the right business category and type
- Add opening hours (and keep them up to date!)
- Add contact details
- Add photos
- Add your products or services
Learn more in our 30-minute Business Profile optimization guide.
People don’t always turn to Google to find small businesses. They also search popular business directories and trusted review websites.
Even if they do search Google, they’ll often end up browsing a popular directory anyway because that’s often what ranks.
For example, I was recently searching for a cat sitter for an upcoming vacation. I started my search by typing “cat sitter near me” into Google. But I soon ended up browsing a niche directory because that’s what all the top results were.
In fact, I even ended up booking a cat sitter through one of these websites:
Long story short, if you’re not listed on popular niche or local directories, you’re losing out on second-hand search traffic and customers.
Let’s look at a couple of ways to find the best directories to get listed on.
Search Google
Head over to Google and search for “[what your business does] in [location]”, then add your business to directories that rank on the first page.
For example, if you’re a cat sitter in Seattle, you’ll probably want to get listed on:
- Meowtel
- Rover.com
- Yelp
- Care.com
Find the directories your competitors are listed on
Most directory listings also link to your website, which means you can use your competitors’ backlink profile to find relevant directories.
Here’s how to do it in Ahrefs:
- Go to our Competitive Analysis tool
- Select the “referring domains” mode
- Enter your site in the “Not linking to target” field
- Enter the sites of a few competing businesses in the “But linking to these competitors” fields
- Hit “Show link opportunities”
You should see a list of domains that link to your competitors but not you. Eyeball this list for sites that look like relevant directories and add your business to them.
Not sure who your competitors are?
Search Google for “[what your business does] in [location]” and go to Maps. Follow the website links on their profiles to find their domains, then copy and paste them into Ahrefs.
Having technical SEO issues can hurt your rankings, so it’s worth checking that your website is technically sound and fixing any major issues.
The easiest way to do this is with an SEO audit tool like Ahrefs’ Site Audit. You can use this free of charge with an Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) account. Just sign up, follow the steps to crawl your site, then filter the All issues report for Errors:
For advice on what the issues mean and how to fix them, hit the tooltip:
For example, Site Audit found eight 404 pages on our blog during a recent crawl:
To fix this issue, we can either reinstate, redirect, or remove internal links to the pages.
If you also schedule regular crawls in Site Audit, you’ll get alerts about new SEO issues so you can fix them before they cause problems.
People often search for specific products or services rather than what your business does. For example, they might search for “bathroom remodel near me” instead of “plumber near me.”
If they do this, Google tends to show pages about that service, not plumbers’ homepages.
You might struggle to rank for these terms unless you have these pages.
But you might be thinking, “I offer lots of services. I don’t have enough time to create pages for all of them.”
Keyword research is the answer. This is the process of discovering what words and phrases your customers are typing into Google. You can use it to find the products or services they’re searching for the most and then prioritize creating pages about them.
Here’s how to do it:
- Brainstorm all the products or services you offer
- Paste them into Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer (make sure to select the country you’re in)
You’ll see the keywords sorted by their estimated monthly search volumes from high to low:
This should give you a good idea of relative interest in the products or services you offer and the pages you should prioritize creating.
Sidenote.
These are national volumes, but that shouldn’t really matter. If a service is more popular than another nationally, it’s probably more popular in the local area where your business operates, too. The only caveat is if you offer something like HVAC services and the climate in your country differs greatly from region to region.
For example, it would make sense to have a page for boiler servicing if it’s something you offer.
Having pages about your products and services is one thing, but you also need to make sure they tell searchers what they want to know. If you know your customers well, you can probably get halfway there easily. But it’s always best to do a bit of research.
For example, I was recently searching for someone to repair our boiler…
My process went a little like this:
- Searched Google for “boiler repair near me”
- Had a quick look at the reviews and websites of the top-ranked businesses
- Called the most promising ones
I knew that our boiler brand isn’t very common, so I was specifically looking for engineers who mentioned working with our brand on their websites. Out of a dozen sites I checked, only one mentioned this:
As a result, this was the first company I called.
If the other engineers had only done a bit of keyword research, they’d have known this is something customers care about and included it on their pages.
Here’s how you can do that in Ahrefs:
- Go to Keywords Explorer
- Search for your product or service (e.g., “boiler repair”)
- Go to the Matching Terms report
- Go to the “Cluster by terms” tab
From here, skim the list for similar terms that might indicate the kind of information searchers are looking for.
For example, the highlighted terms below are all boiler brands:
I also see mentions of different types of boilers, like oil, gas, and electric:
From this quick skim alone, it’s clear that searchers are looking for engineers who can repair their type and brand of boiler.
If you’re a local boiler engineer, having this information not only helps searchers but also saves wasted time answering the phone to give your “Oh… I don’t work with that brand of boiler, sorry!” response.
Can this also help you rank higher?
In all likelihood, yes.
For example, had I searched Google for local engineers who work with our brand of boiler, the engineer’s website that actually mentions the brand ranks in position #3:
Backlinks are a known ranking factor. The only problem is that high-quality backlinks are far from easy to get. (This is what makes them such a good ranking factor.)
For small businesses, taking advantage of existing relationships is a good starting point.
Here are a few ideas:
- Give suppliers testimonials. These often get featured on their sites along with a link.
- Publish client spotlights. For example, if you’re a plumber who recently helped renovate your local church, write it up and ping them about it. They might feature it on their website.
- Pitch stockist pages. For example, if your store stocks a local craft beer, see if the brewery lists its stockists on its website. If its does, you can usually get featured just by asking.
I would also recommend trying to replicate your competitors’ best backlinks. To find these, plug their site into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and check the Backlinks report.
Sidenote.
If there is a lot to go through, toggle the “Best links” filter to narrow things down.
For example, this local plumber has two links from sites listing small businesses that offer discounts to health and other key workers:
Both of these would be pretty easy links to replicate (assuming you’re happy to offer this discount!)
Google itself advises small business owners to remind customers to leave reviews and reply to them to build trust:
As Google says, the easiest way to do this is to create and share a link to your Business Profile with customers. You can do this in “thank you” emails, at the end of customer support interactions, or simply by including a link or QR code on receipts.
This is also likely to help with your “map pack” rankings, at least according to BrightLocal’s survey. It states that 17% of SEOs deem reviews to be the most important ranking factor.
But don’t limit yourself to asking for and replying to reviews on your Google Business Profile. Many customers also trust other websites. If you’re wondering which review sites matter most for your small business, Google its name and look for other review sites in the results.
For example, reviews on TripAdvisor are clearly important for my favorite pizzeria:
For my favorite local craft bottle shop, niche review sites like RateBeer and Untapped seem more important:
FAQs
What is small business SEO?
Small business SEO is the process of improving your online presence to get more customers from Google and other search engines. It almost always revolves heavily around optimizing for local searches.
What are the benefits of small business SEO?
There are three main benefits of doing SEO for your small business:
- More brand awareness. Showing up in more places online means more people will become familiar with your business.
- More traffic. Ranking higher in Google and other search engines leads to more traffic.
- More customers. As long as your traffic is targeted, it’ll bring in more customers or clients.
What’s the difference between small business SEO and local SEO?
Unless you sell products or services beyond your local area, not much.
If your small business sells products nationally or internationally, check out our guide to ecommerce SEO or our guide to international SEO.
If your small business sells services in multiple locations (e.g., car hire), read our guide to local keyword research to learn how to optimize for that.
SEO
A Comprehensive On-Page SEO Checklist for 2024
If you’ve invested time and effort writing an epic piece of content, don’t forget about on-page SEO. It helps google to understand what your page is about and show it to as many people as possible in the search results.
Even better, many on-page improvements are super quick and easy to do.
Follow this checklist for perfect on-page SEO every time:
If you’re looking for a reusable interactive checklist to use time and time again, here are a few other formats
Let’s run through everything real quick.
Google says it’s best to use words that are relevant to your content in page URLs, so you don’t want random gobbledygook urls like domain.com/734/834753956756
if you can avoid it. It’s better to use something short and descriptive like domain.com/mens/shirts
.
It only takes a few seconds to change this in most content management systems:
If you’re not sure what words or phrases to use, the main keyword you’re targeting is usually a good bet. That’s what we do on the Ahrefs blog 90% of the time.
For example, our target keyword for this post is “on page SEO checklist,” so that’s what the post’s URL is:
Few best practices to keep in mind:
- Avoid repeating words. If your page is about mens shirts and it’s nested in the /mens/ subfolder, you don’t need to repeat the word “mens.”
domain.com/mens/shirts/
is better thandomain.com/mens/mens-shirts/
- Avoid dates. If a searcher comes across
domain.com/blog/2020/fashion-tips/
in 2024, they’re going to assume it’s out-of-date even if you updated the content yesterday. Sodomain.com/blog/fashion-tips/
would be better. - Avoid being too specific. If your URL is
domain.com/blog/20-best-fashion-tips/
, it’s going to look weird if you add more tips to your post later on. Using the less specificdomain.com/blog/best-fashion-tips/
gives you more future freedom.
Google says that title tags are often the main piece of information searchers use to decide which result to click on. If yours is boring and dull, you’re probably not going to get as many clicks as you could—even if you rank.
It’s the same story for meta descriptions, which Google often uses for the descriptive snippet.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach for title tags, but the ABC formula is a decent starting point for blog posts:
For your meta description, my best advice is to try to expand on your title tag to give searchers more detail and context.
If you’re struggling or just want a fast solution, give our free AI title tag generator and meta description generator a shot. Tell the tools what your page is about and your desired writing tone and they’ll generate a few options.
Remember to keep them both short and swee, too. If they’re too long, they’ll get cut-off in search. This looks odd and makes them less compelling. You can use a free tool like this one to check for truncation before publishing, or Ahrefs’ Site Audit to find all the issues on your site.
Google recommends using one H1 tag per page. It makes sense to use this for your page title as H1 is the highest level heading there is.
Most content management systems do this automatically, but you can double-check your title is indeed a H1 for free using Ahrefs SEO toolbar. Just click the Content tab:
If the copy you’d expect to be wrapped in a H1 tag isn’t, hit up your developer!
People want what you promised them in your title and meta description, so don’t kick things off with a load of fluff. Get straight to the point and give the reader what they came for in the first sentence.
There’s no one-size-fits-all way to do this. It all depends on what searchers are looking for.
For example, when people search for “toxic backlinks,” they’re overwhelmingly looking for a definition above all else. That’s why I made the very first paragraph of my article the definition:
But when people search for “best snow blower,” they just want a recommendation—so that’s what Wirecutter gives them in the first paragraph:
Sidenote.
I think Wirecutter’s opening paragraph could be even better because there’s no point in that first sentence. If you’re searching for “best snow blower,” you already know the benefits of the product. You just want to know which one is best!
Google’s John Mueller said that the search giant uses headings to help better understand the content on a page. This is why you need to make sure they’re clear and descriptive.
It’s easy to miss the mark here. We’ve even been guilty of it ourselves.
For example, look at these two subheadings from our list of blogging tips:
Do you have any idea what those mean at first glance?
Me neither. And many of the other subheadings in our post were also unclear.
If you suspect the same might be true for your subheadings, try this: ask ChatGPT to rewrite them for clarity.
This is exactly what Sam did for our post, and it made them much clearer in seconds.
For example, “Create a ‘Do 100’ project” became “Start a ‘write 100 blog posts’ project”:
Make sure your subheadings have proper hierarchy, too. It helps Google to understand the structure and makes it easier to skim for readers.
Search intent is the reason behind the search. Unless your page aligns with intent and gives searchers what they’re looking for, your chances of ranking high are slim to none.
To show just how important this is, look at this graph:
This shows our ranking position for the keyword “backlink checker” over time. You can see that in late 2018, we suddenly went from struggling to rank higher than position #5 to consistently ranking #1.
How? By optimizing our page for search intent.
Here’s what the page looked like before:
Here’s what it looks like now:
Minor design tweaks aside, there’s one important difference: there’s now a free backlink checker embedded. Before it just asked visitors to start a trial of our SEO software.
By catering to what searchers actually wanted, we improved the page’s rankings and its estimated search traffic from ~18K to ~215K monthly visits. That’s a 12X improvement!
But how did we know what searchers wanted?
Back then, we had to do a manual analysis of the top search results. While you can still do that, it’s much easier just to click the “Identify intents” button in Keywords Explorer:
This uses the power of AI to analyze the top search results and tell you what searchers are looking for.
Broadly aligning your content with search intent isn’t enough. It should also cover the topic in full to tell searchers everything they want to know. This can help it rank for more keywords and bring more traffic as a result, too.
To find what searchers are looking for, look for common subtopics among top-ranking pages.
There are a few ways you can do this.
Manually check the top-ranking pages
Search for your target keyword in Google, open a few top-ranking pages, and eyeball them for commonalities.
For example, many top results for “best running shoes for flat feet” give a budget option:
Check the keyword rankings of top-ranking pages
Pages often rank for keywords related to the subtopics they cover. If you see many top pages ranking for these keywords, it’s probably an important subtopic to cover.
Here’s how to find these keywords:
- Go to the Competitive Analysis tool in Ahrefs
- Enter your page’s URL in the “This target doesn’t rank for” field. (If you haven’t published your page yet, enter the URL you plan to use.)
- Enter the URLs of a few similar top-ranking pages in the “But these competitors do” fields
- Look for keywords that represent subtopics
For example, the top three results for “best running shoes for flat feet” also rank in the top 10 for many keywords related to men and women’s shoes:
This tells you that the best picks for men and women is an important subtopic to include.
Find subtopics with the help of AI
It’s currently in beta, but the new AI Content Grader in Ahrefs finds “missing” subtopics. It does this by comparing the content of the three top-ranking pages for your target keyword to your content.
To use it, just enter your target keyword and your page’s URL. (If you haven’t published your page yet, enter the URL you plan to use).
For example, here’s one of its suggestions for the keyword “best running shoes for flat feet”:
Information gain is a measure of how unique your content is. Google describes a mechanism for scoring this in a patent granted in June 2022.
Two months later, in August 2022, Google launched the helpful content update, which they described as “part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.”
Are these two things related? Nobody knows. But what we do know is that Google cares about the originality of your content, and almost certainly has mechanisms in place for identifying it.
This means that covering what other top-ranking pages cover isn’t enough for a well-optimized page. It also needs to bring something new and valuable to the table.
For example, my colleague Chris collected data on how folks deal with low-quality backlinks for his post on removing backlinks:
Ryan interviewed three B2B marketers for unique insights for his post on B2B content marketing:
And I worked with Patrick Stox to create an interactive workflow and template for my content audit guide:
None of these posts are completely unique. They contain plenty of information that you can probably find elsewhere—and that’s fine. What matters is that we’re bringing at least something new to the table.
Google’s algorithms are designed to surface content that demonstrates E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust.
If you’re an expert in your field or crafted your content from personal experience, your page already has E-E-A-T. But searchers aren’t going to know that without reading it, so you should try to showcase it as obviously as you can on the page. Let’s look at two ways to do this.
Flash your credentials
Healthline does this extremely well. The very first thing you see on their page about rheumatoid arthritis is that the content was reviewed by a rheumatologist:
Put your uniqueness front and center
If you’ve put time and effort into adding “information gain” to your content, don’t bury it. Make sure searchers see it right away so they know they can trust you.
For example, to curate our list of the best Facebook groups for SEOs, we asked the 12K+ members of our customer-only group to vote for their favorites. Instead of burying this fact deep in the post, we highlighted it in the very first paragraph.
For a page to earn backlinks (which are a strong ranking factor) and shares, people have to actually consume the content. This isn’t going to happen if the copy is hard to read.
You can use free tools like Hemingway and Grammarly to fix this.
For example, Hemingway gives my recent guide to toxic backlinks a reading grade level of 7:
Given that 54% of Americans lack literary proficiency (essentially reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level), this means we’re alienating at least 46% of readers. If we could bring the reading grade level down, more people would be able to read it.
Sidenote.
This isn’t absolutely necessary for every topic. It depends on who your audience is. If they’re technical folks, don’t worry about it. But if you’re publishing content for the masses, accessibility matters.
Here are a few more tips to improve readability:
- Use short sentences and paragraphs
- Use bulleted lists
- Use images
Featured snippets give searchers a short answer right in the search results.
But here’s the cool thing: Google pulls the snippet from one of the top-ranking pages. This means that if your page already ranks in the top 10 for keywords where Google shows a featured snippet, there might be an opportunity to steal it without much effort.
This is exactly what I managed to do a couple of months ago, which led to a ~38.9% jump in estimated search traffic to our page:
Here’s what happened:
In Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, I used the Organic Keywords report to find the page’s top 10 keyword rankings with featured snippets we didn’t own.
Right away, I noticed a trend: many of the keywords were people searching for the most searched thing in Google (singular) rather than a list of top searches (plural):
After searching for a few of these keywords in Google, I saw that the snippet was pretty much always pulled from this very short paragraph in a competing post:
So… I added a similar paragraph to our post (using our data instead):
This quick big of on-page SEO won our page 163 more featured snippets:
Images on your page can rank in Google Images and send you more traffic. There are three things you need to do to optimize them.
Filenames are descriptive
Google says that these give clues about the subject matter, so avoid random file names like IMG_5497.jpg in favor of something short and descriptive like brown-dog.jpg.
Alt text is present and descriptive
Google also says that image alt text helps them understand subject matter, so the same rules apply as filenames: keep them short and descriptive.
Most content management systems have a place to add alt text in the UI, so there’s no need to mess around with HTML:
Images are compressed
Compressed images are smaller and faster to load. Some platforms like Shopify claim to do this automatically, but the results aren’t always great. It’s generally better to employ the help of a plugin like TinyIMG or Shortpixel.
Internal links are links from one page on your site to another. They help Google understand what a page is about and boost its authority, which can lead to higher rankings.
For this reason, when you publish a new page, it pays to internally link from there to other relevant pages. This won’t help the new page’s rankings, but it might help the rankings of the pages you internally link to.
To find relevant opportuntities, use Ahrefs’ Site Audit:
- Go to the Internal Link Opportunities tool
- Enter the URL of your newly-published page in the search box
- Choose “Source page” from the dropdown
Sidenote.
Site Audit needs to have crawled your site since you published the new page, otherwise this won’t work.
Pay attention to these columns:
- Source page → your newly-published page, where you will add the link
- Keyword context → where on the page to add the link
- Target page → where to link to
For example, here the report is suggesting that I link from my post on toxic backlinks to our bad links guide:
Citing valuable resources is helpful for readers. Even Google says so.
Does that mean it’s a “ranking factor?” No. But it does improve your content’s credibility with readers, and that can impact things that do matter like links and shares.
This is something we regularly do on the Ahrefs blog:
If you’re trying to boost the rankings of the page you’re optimizing, you’ll want to add internal links to it from other pages on your site.
To find relevant opportunities, use Ahrefs’ Site Audit:
- Go to the Page Explorer tool
- Enter your target keyword (or part of it) in the search box
- Choose “Page text” from the dropdown
This will find pages on your site that mention your target keyword, which may be good places to add internal links.
For example, it tells us that our guide to removing backlinks mentions the word “toxic”:
If we search that page, this is the mention:
That looks like the perfect place to internally link to our guide to toxic backlinks.
Schema markup is code that helps search engines understand the information on a page. It also powers many rich snippets you see in Google, which can lead to more clicks.
If you’re not sure whether schema markup is worth prioritizing for your page, search for your main target keyword in Google and look at the top results. If all or many are rich results, it’s probably worth adding it.
If you use WordPress, you can easily add schema with a plugin like Yoast or RankMath. Alternatively, use a tool like Merkle’s Schema Markup Generator to generate the JSON-LD code yourself and add it manually.
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