Local search visibility refers to how easily and frequently a business appears in local search results when users search for relevant products or services within a specific geographic area.
When you search on Google for keywords related to your business and location, such as “nail salon in Oklahoma,” what do you see?
If your Google Business Profile doesn’t show up in Google’s local pack like this:
Nor does your website come up in the organic listings like this:
It means your local search visibility is low and needs improvement.
The more your business appears in both search result sections, the more website and foot traffic you’ll attract. Here are nine tactics to include in your local search strategy to improve local SEO visibility today.
1. Optimize Your GBP and On-Page SEO Elements
Google determines local rankings using three main factors: relevance, prominence, and distance.
While you can’t easily change your prominence and distance, you can improve your relevance through on-page SEO.
On-page SEO involves optimizing your website content to help search engines understand the context of each page.
In local SEO, this means using keywords and elements that describe your business and geographical location, helping Google rank your web pages or Google Business Profile (GBP) for location-based searches.
Here’s how:
- Start by performing local keyword research with tools like Semrush and Ahrefs to identify keywords related to your business and location. Enter the term that describes your company, e.g., “dog walker.”
- Next, add filters for the country and location, then search. Identify relevant keyword variations and questions to naturally include in necessary places when optimizing your GBP.
Optimizing Your GBP
Local SEO visibility aside, optimizing different elements of your Google business profile can help to improve local SEO rankings and customer experience.
Try out these tips to help you.
Business Name:
Use a business name with keywords describing your business and location. This local business below is an excellent example of how to do this:
However, it’s against Google’s guidelines to add these keywords arbitrarily. If your business name doesn’t naturally include relevant keywords, you might want to consider registering a “doing business as” (DBA) name that incorporates those keywords. Keep in mind that this step is not mandatory, you can still enhance your local SEO performance without changing your business name.
Primary and Secondary Categories:
Including categories is another way to tell Google what your business is about. The primary category is more relevant than the secondary categories, and you can only fill one field out, whereas the secondary category allows you up to nine fields.
To select the correct primary category for your business, search for your service on Google Maps. The category your competitors appear for in the first few results is most likely the category to target.
For instance, a private practice dentist will have their primary category as “Dentist,” as illustrated below.
If you run a seasonal business, such as a holiday retail store, update it each season to reflect your most important product/service.
Address:
Ensure your address is correct on Google Maps to help search engines understand your target location.
Reviews:
Detailed reviews can contain keywords about your business and location, providing insight for search engines and improving customer trust.
Photos and Videos:
Besides providing context for your visitors, search engines analyze images and videos to find proof of your products and location. Use real and relevant photos to show authenticity.
FAQs:
Answering frequently asked questions helps customers and allows you to include additional keywords to improve visibility.
Trust Builders:
Include reviews, badges, guarantees, licenses, and insurance information to build credibility.
Operating Hours:
Show your reliability by clearly stating your business hours, including public holidays.
Optimizing Your Homepage and Landing Pages
GBP elements like address, reviews, operating hours, and visuals apply to homepage and landing page optimization. The website-specific elements to optimize include:
URL Structure:
Use clean and descriptive URLs that include the location, e.g.,
- example.com/nail-salon/las-vegas
- example.com/nail-salon-las-vegas/
Title Tag and Meta Description:
Include your location, brand name, and service/product type in the title tag and meta description. They should be compelling and accurately describe the page content.
For example, see Chicago’s Urban Tailz homepage’s meta description and title tag. It gives searchers a compelling reason to click and uses keywords to tell search engines what the page is about.
Header Tags (H1, H2, H3) and Body Content:
Use header tags to structure your content and include the location in at least one H1 or H2 tag. Expand the headings by describing your product or service and how you can help the visitor. Use your primary keyword, related terms, and location-specific details to improve relevance.
This detailed body content from Windy City Paws’ homepage allows them to integrate relevant keywords for an increased SEO advantage.
Source: Windy City Paws
Google Map Embed:
Include a Google Map of your business location to provide visual location context and direction for potential customers. Windy City Paws also did well by embedding a Google map showing their store’s direction on their homepage.
Internal Linking:
Link to other relevant pages on your site, such as other location-based or service pages, to improve navigation and SEO (more on this in point eight).
Optimizing your homepage is enough if you have a single-location business, but if you have multiple locations, you need a dedicated landing page for each location. The key to a well-optimized location landing page and GBP is including all the required details and tailoring them to your target location and business.
2. Optimize for Mobile and Voice Search
As mobile voice assistants like Siri and Alexa become more sophisticated, people will likely use them to search for things online. EMarketer estimates that by 2027, 162.7 million Americans will use voice assistants — 80 percent of whom will use smartphones — up from 145 million in 2023.
This trend shows how important it is to optimize for voice search and mobile to avoid losing a significant local market segment.
Optimizing for voice search in local SEO isn’t fundamentally different from traditional SEO; however, your focus should be location keywords.
How to Optimize for Voice Search:
- First, conduct local keyword research using tools like Keywords Everywhere and Also Asked to find relevant long-tail keywords. These tools often reflect people’s use of natural language in voice searches.
- Then, integrate these keywords naturally into your website content, such as landing pages, home pages, and blog posts.
- You can also create a dedicated FAQ page with specific, concise answers similar to this page:
Source: Julia Christina
This can improve your chances of appearing in featured snippets.
Remember — while Google dominates the voice search market, other voice assistants, like Alexa, use Microsoft Bing for search queries. This means you should also consider optimizing for these platforms to maximize your reach.
How to Optimize for Mobile
Google is big on mobile user experience and has upgraded its algorithm to reflect this. With mobile-first indexing, Google now crawls all web pages from the perspective of a mobile browser. This means your local business website loses any chance of local search visibility or rankings if it isn’t well-optimized for mobile.
- When designing your website, take a mobile-first approach and scale to larger screens.
- Use a responsive design so your website automatically adapts to different screen sizes. Compress images and install cache plugins to prioritize mobile page speed. Use simple navigation and mobile-friendly fonts to improve accessibility on smaller screens.
3. Manage Your Google Business Profile Reviews
As seen in Google’s local ranking factors, reviews are a key component in determining the prominence of a business. This is why having a solid review strategy is essential for gaining local SEO visibility.
While there is no specific number of reviews to aim for, more reviews generally improve local SEO rankings. Tools like Localo can help you analyze the number of reviews your competitors have, allowing you to set a target to surpass them.
Asking and hoping customers leave reviews is an ineffective review collection approach. Instead, proactively use the “Requesting Reviews” feature in Google Maps to ask for reviews via social media, WhatsApp, email, or text. Google automatically includes a note and a custom link in your message, directing customers to leave a review.
Another method is to use QR codes. Embed them in your receipts so customers can scan them with their mobiles to leave reviews. You can quickly create one using free QR code generators like QR.io and Flowcode.
Tips for a Successful Review Strategy
Aim to Acquire Recent Reviews
Google favors recent reviews because they show you’re still in business. The frequency depends on the competitiveness of your market — if your competitors are acquiring reviews rapidly, you should, too.
Encourage Photos
Reviews with photos tend to remain longer in the most relevant review section and can help push down lingering negative reviews.
Diversify Review Platforms
Encourage reviews on other listings and social media pages, as Google includes them in your GBP’s “Reviews from Web” section. This can increase the trust of Google and visitors in your business.
In this example of Manhattan Vision Associate, Google only sourced reviews from Facebook; however, they could include reviews from more places at their discretion.
Respond to Reviews
Respond to all reviews, whether negative or positive. This shows that you care, increasing trust from Google and your audience.
Aim for High Ratings
According to Whitespark, ratings are the sixth most important local ranking factor because Google favors businesses with four and above stars in the local pack.
Also, ratings can influence the business a searcher clicks on in the local pack as customers are likely to click the listing with the highest stars.
4. Use Consistent NAP Citations
NAP Citation refers to a business’s name, address, and phone number that are mentioned across various online platforms like directories, websites, and social media. It’s important to keep this information consistent across all platforms because Google cross-checks these details to verify your authenticity.
If Google finds discrepancies, they may change your details to match another platform. Incorrect citations could mislead your customers, leading to a wrong impression or even negative reviews. Therefore, if you change any of your NAP details, ensure that you update them across all listings and online platforms.
Use free tools like Moz Local and LocaliQ to check if your listings are consistent across the web.
For example, using Moz Local here’s the NAP consistency result for the restaurant called Cicchetti by San Carlo – London Piccadilly.
With such an overview, you can easily identify and correct inconsistent NAP citations across the web.
However, avoid changing your business details often for GBP, as this may trigger Google to ask for re-verification. Also, Google prohibits using a USPS mail store, P.O. box, or virtual office to claim a Google listing; instead, use a valid address.
5. Create High-Quality Localized Content
Besides capturing buying demand with landing pages and GBP, high-quality content like articles, videos, and surveys is essential for showing authority.
To create content that appeals to your local audience, research your target area and customers to understand their needs, interests and trends. Use these insights to develop localized industry content, such as research reports — similar to The Madrona Group’s real estate report for Seattle.
Source: The Madrona Group
You can also create blogs and articles, such as:
- “Best Places to Eat in [City]”
- “Top Things to Do in [City]”
For example, this “NJ State Auto” blog focuses on auto content specific to New Jersey.
Source: NJ State Auto
Other content ideas include creating content around local trends, festivals, community events, and news stories relevant to your industry.
6. Engage With Your Local Community and Customers on Social Media
Though social media engagement might not directly impact your search rankings, getting likes, shares, and comments can boost your social SEO signals. These signals show credibility and authority to Google, which can improve your local SEO performance.
Therefore, invest in creating content that attracts organic engagements from your local audience on social media.
Chipotle is a prime example of a brand that has mastered the art of engaging its local communities on social media.
One of their tactics is partnering with another local brand in a region they’re present in. In the example below, they ran a challenge with fitness brand Strava to bring new segments in cities like New York, Los Angeles, etc.
Source: Chipotle
This challenge encouraged social media engagement and improved both brands’ local visibility and online awareness.
Also, when you share posts, add geotags to show your audience and algorithms where you created the content.
Source: Secret Houston
Geotagging helps you attract local audiences and increase your visibility on location-based social media searches. These interactions can lead to backlinks and user-generated content, such as reviews and mentions from your audience, further boosting your credibility and local search visibility.
7. Invest in Link Building
Like traditional SEO, link building is an important local search strategy as it signals your website’s authority and trustworthiness to Google. The number of backlinks you need depends on your niche; if your competitors have many, aim to match or exceed that.
However, it’s not just about quantity but also quality. Quality here refers to the referring domain authority (backlink source) and its relevance to your business or target local community. For example, a few backlinks from a domain with a domain authority (DA) of 70-90 are better than many from DA 20-30 websites.
Note: Domain Authority (DA) and Domain Rating (DR) are scores calculated by two different SEO tools: Moz and Ahrefs. These scores range from 0 to 100, with higher values indicating that your website has a number of high-quality backlinks.
Here are some ways to secure backlinks from local sources:
- Request backlinks from local partners and vendors.
- Organize and promote events on local event sites and directories.
- Support prominent local organizations for backlinks or mentions.
- List your business in as many local directories as possible and link to your website where necessary.
In addition to backlinks, internal linking is another crucial link-building tactic to consider. It helps visitors navigate your website and helps search engines find important pages. You can also improve the ranking potential of your Google Business Profile by linking your website pages to it.
8. Integrate LocalBusiness Schema
Local schema markup helps search engines understand essential information about your business, such as name, address, phone number, and hours of operation. This structured data follows a specific format recognized by search engines, making it easier for them to read and process your information.
Integrating Local schema markup improves your chances of appearing in voice search and winning rich snippets. It displays details like star ratings, photos, business hours, contact information, website pages and more, making your listing more appealing.
For example, this dental clinic’s Rich Results feature the website’s main pages, making it easy for potential clients to find their desired page in the SERPs.
If coding isn’t your forte, use a free tool like schema.org to generate a markup. Alternatively, ChatGPT can do it for you using this prompt:
“Create the schema markup for a local business named “[the name of your business]” that primarily offers “main service.” The business is located at “[your exact address as listed on your Google Business profile],” has the phone number “[phone number],” and is open during the following hours: “[list your opening times]”.
Validate the generated code using the Rich Results Test and fix any critical errors once you get it. You should address any non-critical issues flagged by the tool as well to help improve the quality of your structured data. However, this isn’t necessary to qualify for rich results.
Afterward, copy and paste the code into the HTML header section of relevant pages, such as your homepage, contact page, and any location-specific landing pages.
9. Conduct Regular SEO Audits
Performing regular SEO audits helps you understand the impact of your local search strategy on your visibility. Start by checking the rankings of your target keywords using a local SERP tracker like Keyword.com.
Open the tool and create a project.
Enter your website URL and add the keywords you want to track.
Filter by country, language, city, or zip code, and ensure that you uncheck the “ignore local listing” option to track your GBP.
You will then have a dashboard showing the performance data of your keywords, including search intent, old and current ranking positions, and rank position changes within one day, seven days, and 30 days.
If your rankings are below expectations, either rework your content or use tools like Oncrawl to audit your website for technical SEO issues such as broken links, slow page loading times, and crawl errors.
Finally, ensure all the visibility strategies listed above are well-executed and that issues are addressed to improve your rankings.
Try a Quality Local Rank Tracker for Better Local Rankings
When it comes to local SEO, improving local rankings and local search visibility works hand-in-hand. Rather than focusing on ranking positions alone, local SEO visibility gives your business broader local relevance, frequency, and breadth of appearance online.
Some of the techniques discussed in this article can affect local SEO rankings, but they’re also proven to improve search visibility when implemented correctly.
To improve your local SEO, focus on optimizing your web pages and Google Business Profile. Make an effort to gather recent reviews and local community engagement on social media. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly and conduct regular SEO audits to identify technical and other SEO issues, such as poor keyword performance.
Consider signing up for a local rank tracker like Keyword.com, which allows you to monitor multiple keywords simultaneously and scale local SEO tactics for improved local SEO visibility.