You own one of the most vibey coffee shops in town. The few customers who step in are always starstruck by your interior design, your strategically placed art, and the overall pleasantness of the room.
You know that more people would enjoy your coffee shop, but why aren’t they there?
It’s because they can’t find you. You’re not in the local search.
If you’re wondering, what is local search, this article is for you. Keep reading to learn about local search optimization and how you can utilize strategies to hack local search algorithms and boost your ranking.
What Is Local Search?
Nowadays, we use the phone for everything–from navigation to research, to re-connecting with friends and family. Local search allows users to do all of this by helping them find nearby coffee shops, like yours, to meet up and catch up in.
How do search engines like Google know what coffee shops are around?
Business owners like yourself utilize local SEO strategies that optimize their digital assets such as their website or their Google My Business account to let Google know where the business is or where it operates.
The more relevant and consistent information that Google has on your business’s physical location or geographical area, the better.
Google can more easily find your coffee shop when crawling your digital assets and suggest your business when its users are looking for local coffee shops in the area.
The importance of local SEO is the difference between a mostly-empty coffee shop and a bustling one. As a business owner, you already know which is the more favorable.
How To Optimize Local Search for Your Business
General search engine optimization usually involves ranking for keywords that users are searching for. Not only does your website need to include these keywords, but it also needs to provide Google with information on the physical location or area of your business.
Creating content that features local areas and physical locations as keywords can help Google recognize the general vicinity of where your business is.
Another tactic to hack the local search algorithm is to directly tell Google, this is where I operate my business. Update your Google My Business account–or similar accounts on other search engines–with the most accurate information.
Make sure your physical address is correct, that you’ve linked your website, and double-check your hours of operation. Inconsistent information across platforms (like Yelp and Google) and between online directories and your website, may cost you.
Google is always looking for ways to be more helpful to its search users. Help them help its users by corroborating your facts and Google might reward you with a rank on the top of the local search page.
For more local SEO tactics, check out this local SEO guide.
Help Happy Customers Find You
What is local search? Why is it important? We hope we’ve given you a glimpse into what local search is and how it can help your business.
There’s much more to local search than what we’ve shared, but this was only an introductory guide.
Like you, we wish to see more happy customers enjoying what your business has to offer, so we’ve created a bunch more content on how to grow and market your business. Be sure to check out our blog for more.
