How’s your website’s local rank on the search page? When you Google local pages, is your business likely to pop out at the top?

If it doesn’t, we’re here to help you out with local SEO.

Below are some tips to increase local rankings for small businesses. They’re also applicable to small businesses that have yet to make their websites. Included as well are a few precautions you might want to follow.

1. Use Google My Business

Have you ever tried to look up your business on the Internet? Did you like what you found?

If not, then Google My Business is what you need to change what people see when they look up your business name.

Google made this service for business owners to be able to control what shows in the search results when someone searches for their business name. Google My Business allows you to edit information about your business. This information could be open hours, address, phone number, and photos.

You can post updates with the 4 post types if you have any promotional offers, announcements, or sales.

The great thing about these updates is that you can add photos, links, descriptions, and call-to-action buttons. Posts like this will show up in Google’s search results, but take note that they have 7 days only before they’re off the search results.

Here’s an added tip: start optimizing for voice search. People want faster and hands-free searches now, thus, the creation of AI like Alexa and Google Home. You can stay ahead of the competition by getting in trend with this development.

2. Build a Localized Link Profile

Link-building is an important tool for anybody who wants to top the search results page. For small businesses, a localized link profile is already a great approach to getting to the top.

Someone might tell you, who would link back to a small salad shop?

Well, here are some local links you can build for your salad shop. Local newspapers, media outlets, and bloggers need places and things to feature. Other businesses in the area might be open to linking back to local partners.

You want to know how you can rank higher on Google Places. You can volunteer for a local charity with a page for featured volunteers. Some event pages in your area might want to write about unique places to go to or things to do.

Be creative with how you get more traffic. No matter what your business, you can always find ways to gain connections. Your opportunities are vast.

3. Boost Your Local Rank with NAP

Do you know how ads bring people to you? You give them one of these: name, address, or phone number. It’s the same with your website.

You shouldn’t place important business information on the contact page only. On an ideal website, your name, address, and phone number (NAP) should be on all the important pages. We’re talking placing your NAP on the homepage, about page, services page, and blog page.

The typical place for the NAP is the bottom or footer area. Then again, you can be creative with where you place these things, like in a collapsed side panel. The important thing is to keep them visible to your viewers.

4. Local Reviews Have Impact

If you want to get big in the local search rankings, then get some great local reviews. They have a direct impact on the local rankings and are a great way to interact with your customers. Also, you get to find out where you might be lacking.

Local reviews on your business begin with your usual customers. When they come around to buy your products or services, ask them to leave a review on your website. One way to make sure they do is to give them incentives like discounts.

You can also lead them to a page on your website that will give them the process on how they could leave reviews. You can add a link on your business card specific for reviews. One more way to lead them to leave reviews is to put links in your email signatures.

Don’t fret if you get a bad review. You can’t please everybody, but you can learn from the experience and respond to it right. Besides, a website with too many good reviews and almost no bad ones can look suspicious and unnatural.

5. Make Quality Content

Here’s a tip to get more traffic to your website: write a blog. It’s a big bonus to local customers if you present parts of the area in your blog. Who doesn’t want to give their hometowns more exposure to the rest of the world?

Remember that you want to create high-quality content. You want the kind of thing that people will share without a second thought. The more people love your blog posts, the more traffic you get and the more visible you are.

So how do you write great content? Well, you focus on the topic. Go deep and make sure you use enough of the keywords you are trying to rank for.

What could a small business owner write about? Our answer is anything and everything under the sun. The key is to make it comprehensive and worth the read.

To gain the locals’ attention, you want to look around you first. You could look for an interesting historical fact about your area and vlog about it. Remember, quality content can be more than a written word.

Don’t join the 80% of local business websites that don’t invest in content marketing. It’s a key marketing opportunity that they are missing. Don’t make the same mistake.

6. Be Accessible to Mobile Users

There are about 3.7 billion people who use their phones to access the internet. Imagine how many of them are from your locality. Is your site accessible to these mobile users?

If it isn’t, you’re going to want to make it. Google has a mobile-first index. It means if you have a site that is mobile-friendly, it has a better chance of ranking than one that doesn’t.

Think about your competition. Are their sites mobile-friendly while yours isn’t? Chances are they’ll rank higher than you.

We’ve got here are a few things to remember when you’re making your site available to mobile users. Give mobile users the best user experience. One way to do that is to create a site that will adapt to any device: be it a phone, desktop, or tablet.

Another way is to use mobile-specific keywords. When you’re on your phone, chances are you’re likely to type shorter words. Look up and integrate the different mobile search terms and keywords.

If you want to check if your site is mobile-friendly, Google has a checker for that. If it isn’t, you might want to check your mobile SEO. You might need to do a bit more work on it since its complicated, but it’s worth the effort.

Rank Up Now

Those are our top tips to boost your local rank. Make sure to prioritize these steps to ensure customers within your area can easily find and contact you online.

Did you like the read? You can also check out our other posts for more information on SEO, web design, WordPress, and more! Also, if you’re simply looking for a local SEO services company to handle the work for you, feel free to contact us and let us know!