Local SEO in 2025: Expert Tips to Rank Your Local Business Better on Search Engines
Local competition is very hot, and those not at the top of their ranking games have much to lose.
Being on Google’s first page for keywords relevant to your brand attracts the right audience and significantly boosts conversions.
Therefore, topping your local ranking game should become a business priority.
To make your journey to ranking your business online easy, I highlight some simple steps to help you increase your business's online visibility using local SEO.
These strategies benefit new business owners with little or no online visibility. It is also for small businesses on a very tight budget.
What Is Local SEO, and Why Does It Matter?
Local search engine optimization (SEO) is a technique or strategy used to aid your business or brand to become more visible in a specific geographic area.
An effective SEO tactic enables your business to appear whenever users search for brands around their areas. This search engine optimization strategy aims to convert traffic into paying customers.
As a small business owner, local SEO should be a go-to marketing strategy, especially when you wish to operate on a regional rather than a global scale.
Most business owners are often scared of the stiff competition online. However, when it comes to local SEO, every business has a good level of playground to rank.
For this reason, I tell small business owners looking to compete or even displace bigger brands on searches to focus on local searches.
Below is an example of what a local search looks like on Google:
Why Local SEO Is Important
Here are a few reasons to prove that local SEO is very vital for business
- Increase online visibility: Local SEO is a tested and trusted strategy to boost your business's online presence when customers search for brands around them.
- Enhances brand reputation: The best way to build trust and credibility within your local area is by consistently appearing in search results.
- Targeted audience reach: When you have customers explicitly searching for services in your area, local SEO helps to attract them and lead them to your website.
- Community engagement: Besides attracting customers in your area, you can connect with them through social media platforms to build long-lasting relationships.
- Pocket-friendly marketing: You spend less on local SEO compared to traditional advertising. This is important for small businesses on a tight budget.
- Valuable insights: Besides generating traffic to your business, local SEO helps you to identify trends and opportunities that can help your business grow. You will also find areas you need to improve on.
Five Steps to Improving Your Business Online Visibility Using Local SEO
As I will always tell small business owners, knowing is not enough; taking the necessary actions remains golden. As a small brand, you must be on your toes to match up with existing competitions. Take the following steps to kickstart your journey in increasing your business's online visibility using local SEO.
Step 1: Set up and Optimize Your ‘Google My Business’ Page.
Google is the most popular search engine, and ranking high there will significantly boost your business. Creating a well-optimized Google Business Profile is the first and most crucial step in increasing your online visibility.
Your Google Business Profile is your digital storefront. It lets users search for local businesses near them to see your products and services.
Therefore, giving your business page attention will make it stand out and attract more users looking for local products or services.
The good news for new business owners is that the whole process is free and will cost only your time, dedication, and commitment. Plus, there are online resources that can get you started.
If you’re ready to start, follow these steps to claim and optimize your Google Business Profile. Please ensure you don't skip any part.
Claim your listing
If you haven't already, create and claim your Google Business Profile by visiting google.com/business and following the prompts to get started.
Get set to complete a verification process before your business page can get listed. Google uses the verification process to confirm that you run a real and legitimate company.
The process is simple, and you can either do it yourself or hire any digital marketing agency to optimize your business page.
However, I advise that you only grant permission to anyone working on your page to be a manager of your business profile. This way, you retain control of your profile after completing the work.
Complete your profile by filling out the form.
Ensure that all the information you provide is accurate and updated. This will also make potential customers trust your brand more.
The required information includes your business name, phone number, address, category, and website. Don’t forget that you must verify your listing on Google via text or email.
So, once you've submitted, head to your mail and click "verify now". Once verified, Google will mail you a card with the verification code in a week or two. Follow the verification link to type and submit the code to make your listing live.
Step 2: Optimize your Google Business Profile
This is where it gets technical and interesting. Dominating the Google search engine is not rocket science, and your business page must be well optimized to appear when users search for local services.
While there are many strategies you can apply to optimize your page, I’ve listed the tested techniques you can use for a new business page. Also, these strategies are easy to apply, even if you don't have any technical knowledge.
- Optimize your business description: Write a summary of your business describing the products and services you offer. Ensure you strategically include relevant keywords customers will search for. Don’t forget to add a call to action to prompt users to contact you.
- Keep business hours updated: This will give local searchers reliable information on when to contact you. Be sure to update your hours for holidays or breaks. Users may lose interest in your business when it is listed as open but they see it closed.
- Upload high-quality images: A picture they say, is worth a thousand words. Add professional-looking images to give potential customers a visual insight into your business. Everything about the images you upload should represent your products and your services.
- Update users with posts: Often neglected by many businesses, you can also optimize your business page by updating your audience through posts. Google automatically shows your posts when a user scrolls your listing.
- Request for Reviews from customers: Many users read reviews from previous customers before making an offer. Therefore, encourage your customers to drop reviews and ensure you always reply to them, whether the reviews are positive or negative.
Step 3: Perfect Your Local Keyword Research
Keywords are vital components for an effective local SEO strategy, and paying attention to them can help your business's online visibility.
Solving your target audience's problems becomes easier when you know what they are searching for.
So, if you wish to appear in local search results, start by conducting keyword research to identify who your local customers are and what they are searching actively for.
Keyword research also helps to know the terms or phrases they search for when looking for your products or services online.
For example, let's say you own a swimming pool construction company in San Francisco and want local customers to find you. You must identify the interests and specific needs of your local customers looking for products or services in your niche.
Below is an example of how you can identify phrases or terms they might use:
- Target customers: Your target customers are homeowners who value quality and seek to enhance their outdoor living space using a swimming pool.
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Potential terms or phrases: Focus on long-tail keywords when conducting local keyword research. Long-tail keywords contain three or more words that clearly outline your audience's wants. Some examples include:
- Swimming pool builders near me
- Luxury pool builders in San Francisco
- San Francisco swimming pool builders
- Swimming pool contractors in San Francisco
With your rough idea of terms your target customers might be searching for, you can leverage SEO tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, and Semrush to understand the monthly search volume and keyword difficulty (KD).
For this article, I used Ahrefs to look for matching or related keywords for "Swimming pool builders near me.”
Expert tips: Look for long-tail keywords with a minimum of 100 monthly search volume and a keyword difficulty under 20 when performing keyword research for a new website, especially for the first time.
Also, remember that this is only one of the first steps to take in the long game known as local SEO. You must strategically incorporate these keywords into your Google Business Profile and website. This will make it easy for search engines to find you.
Step 4: Create and Optimize Your Business Website
Users can learn more about your services through your website even after finding your Google Business Profile listing.
Creating a website lets you provide sufficient information about the products and services available. It is also a great way to improve your search ranking and let potential clients find you even when they skip past the local SEO 3-pack.
However, your website must be well optimized to attract and retain users. Most users get discouraged and never visit again when the site is not user-friendly. Therefore, you must not only focus on creating the website alone; it is important to make it appealing to the users.
Simple pointers to increase your website optimization
Having a well-optimized website will help you to see success with your local SEO strategy. Here are some tips that can help you improve your website to make it more user-friendly and ready for search engine optimization.
- Have an updated design: An old and outdated website design can make your audience lose interest when viewing it. It would help if you invest in making your website always look new and fresh to attract more customers.
- Ensure your website loads fast: Users will lose interest in your site when the pages take a long time to load. You can increase your site speed by using Google PageSpeed Insights to know where your site needs improvement. I recommend hiring a page speed optimization service if you need help.
- Make navigation simple: Make it easy for users to find information on your site. Using a nice layout and easy-to-use navigation makes it easy for potential customers to find any information or service they need from you.
- Build out individual service pages: Instead of just putting a list of your services on one page, building out separate pages for each service you offer is the best thing you can do for website optimization. This also allows you to incorporate keywords in your service page for your targeted location.
Optimizing your website to make it look attractive, load fast, and easy to navigate will ensure you see better results with local SEO.
Step 5: Create a Robust Library of High-Quality and Informational Local Content
You must have heard the words “content is king” several times. This is true because content marketing makes up most of the overall marketing strategy of many marketers.
Writing and publishing more local content on your website does more than improve your local search results. It helps to connect and engage with your potential clients.
Besides keeping your users informed about the latest happenings in your business, high-quality local content is a powerful tool to dominate local search and create lasting customer relationships.
Follow the tips below to create high-quality content that will resonate with your business and address customers' needs.
- Identify local topics of interest: Find out what your potential customers care about. You can use the keyword research strategy I mentioned to determine what interests the residents around you.
- Create blog posts and expert guides: Create highly informative and quality blog posts that address your customers' interests. Providing guides, tips, and expert advice positions you as a local expert and will make them trust your service.
- Keep content fresh and updated: Your content should always be fresh and relevant. Always update your blog posts with the latest information to address present challenges.
- Feature local insights and stories: Sharing real experiences authenticates your content. Therefore, you should get insights, testimonials, and success stories from your local customers and share them on your website.
Remember that choosing the right keywords in your content and optimizing your meta description is very important to get better local search results.
With dedication and consistency in creating and publishing high-quality content, you will begin to see results in a few months to come.
However, if publishing dozens of articles per month ever becomes a problem, you can hire a professional content writer to do the heavy lifting for you. This helps you to get high-quality content that resonates with your business and addresses your users’ challenges.
Pro tip: You can get involved with local community events to localize the content on your website. For instance, you can write articles about the event you attended and publish them on your blog. Don’t forget to integrate locally relevant keywords when posting the article on your site.
Step 6: Don’t Neglect Your Titles and Description Tags
Even in 2024, titles and description tags still matter. They may not affect your website ranking on Google, but they affect your website's visibility when specific keywords are used for searches.
Title and description tags are HTML elements that give search engines and users a perfect summary of your website or blog post. They also act as a significant "hook" that grabs users' attention.
Below is an example of how the title and description tag look like:
When writing your title and descriptions, include local keywords you want the blog post to rank for when customers are searching. They should also include helpful information that will make the blog post relevant to Google.
Titles are generally around 50 to 60 characters, and description tags can be approximately 155 to 160 characters. So, put careful thought into making each space count.
If you’re unsure how to write title and meta description tags, here are some tips to help you write desirable titles and descriptions.
When writing titles:
- It must be relevant to the content found on the web page
- Each page should have a unique title
- 50 to 64 characters are ideal
- Make it compelling
When writing meta description tags:
- Add essential keywords first before other information
- Make the description very informative
- No keyword stuffing
- Add your brand name somewhere in the description
- Provide a solution in the description tag
- Add a call to action
- The meta description should be between 155 to 160
Conclusion: Dominate Local Search With Top SEO 2024 Trends
Dominating local search isn't complicated, provided you follow the procedure I have provided in this article.
Many businesses lack the commitment to take action, leaving you the opportunity to take a spot at the top of customers' search results.
You can also leverage an experienced SEO strategist to implement local SEO strategies that will bring your business to the front of your local customers and clients.
FAQ
What is the main difference between SEO and local SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) involves improving your website's search visibility to get traffic and conversion. However, local SEO creates awareness so that customers in your local area can find your business.
What types of businesses need local SEO?
Any business with a physical address or shop will benefit from local SEO. These businesses include restaurants, real estate agents, construction companies, home improvement and renovation providers, healthcare centers, plumbing services, hotels, etc.
How do you know your business needs local SEO?
You need local SEO when your business is not ranking locally and local customers can't find your business page or website. I can also improve your business search visibility if you only get a little traffic and need more leads and clients.
How much does local SEO cost?
Local SEO can cost between $500 to $5,000 depending on factors such as your industry, the fierce competition, and the SEO initiatives used for your business. I can recommend asking a reliable expert for an SEO strategy and plan that suits your business.
Can I do local SEO on my own?
Yes, you can, and this article will help you start quickly. Carefully read through the content and practice every single part of it to improve your business's local search visibility. If you're feeling confused, ask questions in the comment section, and I will respond swiftly.
