Local SEO is the practice of getting your business to rank well on Google for keywords in your local market. If you accomplish this, it can catapult growth for your local company.
Local SEO Includes:
- On-site website optimization
- Google Business Profile optimization
- Local directories and backlinks
- Proper blogging strategy
Our Experience
- Our agency, The Media Captain, works with 200+ clients
- More than 80% of our clientele are local businesses where we deploy local SEO tactics
- We have tens of thousands of local keywords ranking on the first page of Google for our local clients
- Our founder, Jason Parks, was quoted in BrightLocal for discovering that Google’s Local Pack condensed a business’s cumulative rating to a one-star icon, rather than showing the full star count.
- We’ve been quoted in Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land, and Entrepreneur on local SEO topics [view accolades]
- We’ve grown our own business through local SEO by ranking well for Columbus and Ohio queries, growing from a one-person operation to a team of 20.
Real-Life Scenario To Show You The Impact of Local SEO
A client of ours is Schiff & Associates, is a personal injury law firm in Columbus, OH.
If you do a search for “Columbus Personal Injury Lawyer” or “Car Accident Lawyer,” they are ranking in the top positions.
Local SEO is serving as Schiff & Associates’ best sales rep. They are getting inbound leads from AI, organic, and the local pack. The beauty is they don’t have to pay per click in a hypercompetitive industry since organic is owned placement.
On the contrary, if you are a personal injury attorney ranking on the third page of Google for coveted keywords, you aren’t going to get any online leads. Instead, you’re relying on word of mouth, referrals, and possibly other marketing efforts outside of SEO.
Deploying Local SEO Yourself vs. Hiring an Agency
The goal of this local SEO page is to give you a better understanding of local SEO while providing you with the tactics needed to rank in your local market.
We understand that if you’re a business owner or marketer, you’re busy in the day-to-day.
If you’d rather have an agency handle it for you, here’s how our Local SEO services work.
Now, let’s dive into the tactics needed to outrank your local competitors.
On-Site Optimization
The first step to succeed with local SEO is building a website that lets potential customers learn more about your business and easily get in contact. Your site must be optimized for local SEO.
The strategy you need depends on how many locations you have and which markets you want to target. Let’s go through what you need to optimize on your site.
Homepage
The homepage is the most powerful page on your site. A good homepage should instantly explain who you are, what you do, where you’re located, what services you offer, and your accreditations.
Optimize the homepage for your local market. This includes title tags, headings, on-site text, images, and other local trust indicators.
Think of your homepage as the top of the ladder, and each rung of the ladder is a core service of your business (more on service pages next).
For Schiff & Associates, the personal injury example we alluded to earlier, their homepage is optimized for “Columbus Personal Injury Lawyer.”
While our agency, The Media Captain, offers SEO, PPC, Social Media, and Email Marketing, “Columbus Marketing Agency” is what our homepage is optimized for since “Marketing Agency” is our descriptor term and Columbus is our local market.
Service Pages
These are pages that go into detail on each service you perform.
With Google, it’s all about matching the intent of the searcher. If someone is searching for “Columbus Car Accident Lawyer,” having a page specifically about auto accidents that’s optimized for the Columbus market is going to improve your chances of ranking well on Google.
It makes perfect sense. Someone in Columbus wants to work with a local attorney that specializes in this practice area. Building out these service pages provides a direct match.
Service Area Pages
If your business does a lot of work in the suburbs of a specific market, service area pages can help you generate business in these areas.
This is very popular amongst home service businesses.
Many people search for home service jobs at the suburb level. In Cleveland, OH, for example, if someone is looking for AC or Heating repair, they would search based on the suburb where they live:
- “Brecksville AC Company”
- “Brecksville Heating Company”
To generate business in these areas, create service area pages for each suburb. These pages showcase pictures of jobs in a specific area, hyperlocal reviews, and insight into the local market.
For Broadview Heating, a client, after we implemented service area pages for Brecksville, their visibility increased by more than 100%.
You have to ensure these pages have unique content and aren’t copied templates across many suburbs, since most of the time, the business doesn’t have a physical location there.
Location Pages
If you have multiple locations, you want to rank on Google in each area where you have a physical location. That is where location pages come in.
The primary purpose of a location page is to help a potential customer find business information for a specific location on your website.
Premier Allergy, a client in Columbus with 13 locations, wants to rank for Dublin Allergist, Grove City Allergist, Gahanna Allergist, etc.
Creating a separate page for each location with the address, phone number, hours of operation, directions, reviews, etc., can help you rank well locally on Google. These are also powerful pages to link to from your Google Business Profile, if you have multiple locations.
The main difference between a location page and a service area page is that a location page is for a business with a physical office in that area, while a service area page is for a business that works in the area.
Below, you can see Premier Allergy dominating local search for queries like “Gahanna Allergist” based on this location page strategy.
Thinking Outside of the Box
We redesigned a website for a client, Performance Auto Spa.
In a meeting with the client, they shared data on the percentage of revenue generated from different vehicles they service (Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Ford, etc).
We decided to create pages for “Vehicles We Service” to show the before-and-after work they’ve done on these types of cars. We wanted to highlight that they service luxury vehicles while supporting everyday drivers with a Ford.
These keywords don’t generate much volume, but the intent is extremely high. They had 0% visibility prior to these pages and now have 44% visibility.
While on-site optimization for a local business often focuses on the homepage, service pages, and service area pages, it’s important to understand each business and structure the website accordingly.
Google Business Profile
After launching your website, you’re telling Google that you’re a legitimate operation. When you optimize it for local SEO, Google understands where you’re located, helping you show up for local queries.
The next step is to optimize your Google Business Profile, one of the most important components of local SEO.
What is a Google Business Profile?
This is a free profile you can create on Google that showcases your address, reviews, photos, and business information.
Importance for Local SEO
42% of local searches lead to clicks on Google’s Local Pack [source]. This is prime real estate for local businesses at the top of Google.
Set-Up & Structure
- Just like building a house, you need a strong foundation with your Google Business Profile
- From picking the right primary category to linking to the best pages on your site, to managing multiple locations.
- We created an extensive page on our website that goes deeper into Google Business Profiles and why it’s crucial for your SEO [view here]. This will help you map out a better strategy based on your business, location, and whether you’re a single- or multi-location business.
What To Focus On Once Your Profile is Set Up
- Get consistent reviews coming through for your business
- Upload new photos and videos on an annual basis for fresh content
- Proudly display your Google Business Profile reviews on your site
- Make posts directly from your Google Business Profile
Follow the Google Business Profile checklist we’ve used for 500+ profiles to ensure you’re set up and managed properly.
Compliance and Reputation
Did you know that competitors can report your Google Business Profile for inaccurate information? On the contrary, if you see a competitor ranking in the local pack with deceptive information, you can report them.
It’s important to stay on top of compliance and reputation with your Google Business Profile:
- Reporting competitors violating Google My Business guidelines, such as keyword stuffing your business name
- Getting rid of negative reviews if they are malicious and not legitimate
- Understanding what best practices are and what’s against Google’s guidelines
Local Backlinks & Trust Signals
Even if you build a website that’s perfectly optimized and follow all of our guidelines for the perfect Google Business Profile, this doesn’t mean you’ll outrank your local competitors.
Understanding Authority Score
- Google likes when high-quality, authoritative sites link back to your site
- For most local businesses, a score of 10-20 is considered above average, 20-30 is considered good, and 30+ is great.
- If you’re a brand new business, you’re starting at 0, and it’s an uphill climb
- For a company that’s been in business for a decade, they are naturally going to have more links pointing back to their site
How to Acquire High-Quality Links
- Utilize your blog to create amazing content
- We wrote a blog on “Google Business Profile Stats” that generated more than 200 links from highly authoritative marketing sites. This was a huge SEO win as it bolstered our authority score.
- Leverage your authority and expertise for strong PR
- We worked with a dermatologist who was quoted in Women’s Health, NY Mag, TODAY, and in local publications like 10TV in Columbus
- Powerful sites and media publications want to quote and hear from experts.
- Leverage existing partnerships and business relationships
- If you are a roofer and you’re GAF Certified, get listed on their site
- Our agency has profiles on SEMRush, Klaviyo, and WooCommerce as we’re official partners.
- Sponsorships
- For local businesses, sponsor a youth sports team or local event
- In many instances, they’ll link back to your site, and this is a powerful backlink
Directories For Local Businesses
A directory is a third-party list that references a business.
Common National Directories
- Yelp
- Angie’s List (now Angie)
- Thumbtack
- Better Business Bureau
- Chamber of Commerce
Common Local Directories
- Industry Directories: Don’t forget about industry-specific directories.
- Attorneys have Lawyers.com, FindLaw, Avvo, and Justia
- Find local directories relevant to your industry
- Local Directories:
- Get listed in local directories where it lists the “best of” or is unique to your hometown
- In many instances, the city where your business is located may have a directory
Justifying the ROI
- Directories often cost money. When you find directories that rank on the first page of Google for coveted queries for your business, it can help drive more referral traffic and is increasingly being pulled into AI search results.
Citations, NAP Consistency & Local Listing Management
What is NAP
- NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone Number
- Google used to value when your business information was consistent across many websites and platforms
- This was an important SEO tactic in the 2000’s and 2010’s and used to be considered crucial for local SEO. It’s not seen as such a crucial component now.
Legacy Tools
- There are sites like Yext, Synup, BrightLocal, and Uberalla that allow you to get listed in hundreds of directories
- The benefit of these platforms is that your information can be updated and stay consistent in one centralized platform
- This is truly beneficial when you move office locations, for example.
More Up-To-Date Tactic
- For our clients, we focus our efforts more on relevant directories that rank on the first page of Google
- We don’t feel that citations (aka getting listed on thousands of sites) add much value. Being more intentional about the ones relevant to your business will yield better results.
- There are still instances when a client rebrands or has an address change where we will recommend this
Blogging for Local SEO
Why most local businesses miss the mark with blogging
- They are under the false pretense that blogging means “fresh content,” which will improve their SEO. Google values high-quality, substantive content and will take quality over quantity any day of the week
- Blogging is one of the easiest deliverables for an agency or someone in-house to complete, which means it gets pushed to the business and oftentimes approved, despite not aligning with business objectives
Common issues we see with local blogging
- Blogs aren’t focused on driving actual local customers
- The blogs get optimized for local keywords and end up competing with service pages
- Low-quality, AI-generated content that brings down quality levels of the entire site
How to ensure success: Ask yourself the following questions
- Am I confident enough in each blog that I could share it with a current or prospective client?
- Does the blog serve as sales collateral and answer common questions your customers are facing?
- Could the blog help generate backlinks, bolstering the authority of my site?
Example
Tracking Results
When you’re tracking local progress, you need to track rankings for Google Business Profiles, organic, and AI visibility. Below are some options we recommend:
- SEMRush: Ideal for a multi-faceted view across GBP, organic, and AI
- Pros:
- Good gauge of how your local business is ranking in each city where you have a physical location across local and organic
- Google’s AI overviews are tracked within the baseline price
- Cons:
- It’s not cheap at $139.95 / month (Base Pro plan)
- There are many features in SEMRush that aren’t needed by the average local business, which inflates the price
- Costs $99 per month extra for more in-depth AI tracking into ChatGPT, Claude, etc.
- Pros:
- Local Falcon: Best for tracking local pack rankings via their geo-grid tracking tool
- Pros:
- Their geo-grid tracking tool focuses specifically on the local pack
- Shows how you’re ranking in one suburb versus another
- Rank varies drastically within a local market and this is the best tool to detect visibility citywide
- Affordable for the local business owner at $24.99 / month
- Con:
- Doesn’t track organic rankings
- Hard to get a gauge of how you’re performing outside of the local pack
- Pros:
Our agency uses SEMRush for each client and uses Local Falcon on more of a case-by-case basis. If your focus is just local pack, you can’t beat Local Falcon. If you want a more holistic picture, we recommend SEMRush.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How long does local SEO take?
- We don’t make guarantees. When a website has a strong authority score, it can be weeks after making on-site changes or adjusting the Google Business Profile that we see an increase in rank.
- On the contrary, if a personal injury attorney with a brand new website comes to us, this could take more than 6-months based on the low authority
- During sales calls, we analyze all of these metrics and try to provide a realistic benchmark
- We like to tell clients that after three months, results should become more evident, but as alluded to above, this is on a case-by-case basis
- Do you focus on structured data and schema?
- Evergrow Marketing conducted a case study revealing that LocalBusiness schema produced no significant ranking improvement on Google, Bing, or Yahoo, and didn’t affect Google Maps rank either.
- We have a technical team that can implement this, but there’s a misconception that schema will catapult your local SEO, and that’s not the case.
- How much does Local SEO cost?
- Our starting price for local SEO is $750/month
- Our average client is in the price point of $1500-$2250/month
- According to Digital Elevator, the average cost of SEO services is $2,917 per month.
- Do due diligence to find an agency that’s the right fit for your local business
- What about page load speed time and technical SEO?
- This is not unique to local SEO. This applies to every sort of SEO campaign.
- We feel that while it’s important that your page loads quickly, it’s not going to move the needle in terms of rankings [learn more about our technical SEO services].
- What about AI when it comes to local SEO?
- Having a strong AI strategy is very important for local businesses
- Local directories and reviews, which we referenced earlier, directly correlate with appearing in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.
- Most of our local SEO clients pair AI SEO services with local SEO
- Opinion on E-E-A-T for local SEO?
- As a local business, you want to showcase your experience, expertise, authority, and trust.
- For Schiff & Associates, 78% of their new cases come from former clients and their family members. They’ve helped 50,000 clients and recovered billions since 1982. We work hard on adding differentiators throughout each local SEO client’s website.
- We go into more detail on E-E-A-T on our overall SEO best practices page, as it applies to more than just local businesses.
In Closing
- Local SEO often gets lumped into generalized SEO, yet there are so many unique elements that we wanted to callout
- Our motto is dominate your own backyard before expanding. Too often, we see businesses rank for nothing with a national approach versus ranking extremely well with a local approach
If you’re interested in local SEO services, contact The Media Captain!
