Why does your business have a website?
This might seem like a simple question — but the answer forms the foundation for all of your digital marketing strategies.
That’s because the primary purpose of your website is to attract new customers. Achieving this goal depends on whether your site is discoverable and accessible to people looking for the products or services you’re selling. That means reaching them where they are and how they search.
For small businesses operating on limited budgets, this makes the effective use of mobile, local SEO strategies not only a cost-effective means of attracting new business, but a key aspect of your digital marketing strategy.
This article will guide you through the essentials of mobile and local SEO, demonstrating why focusing on these areas is so important for small businesses. We’ll also provide you with several straightforward, actionable steps to improve your mobile and local search results so that more potential customers can find your business exactly when and where they need you most.
Search Engine Optimization 101: Understanding Mobile and Local SEO
Optimizing your website for search engines — through both mobile and local SEO strategies — is not only vital for improving your business’s overall visibility to potential customers, but it also improves additional aspects of your digital marketing and business operations.
This section will delve into the essentials of mobile and local SEO, explaining their importance in helping small businesses outperform competitors and attract more customers.
Mobile SEO
Mobile SEO refers to optimizing your website to ensure it provides an excellent user experience on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. This involves making sure the site loads quickly, displays correctly on various screen sizes, and is easy to navigate using touch controls.
The ultimate goal is to improve engagement and performance in search engine results when users are searching from their mobile devices.
Why Mobile Optimization is Important for Small Businesses
More Mobile Users
More people access the internet through their mobile device than they do through a desktop or laptop. That means that a significant portion of web traffic — most estimates suggest more than 50 percent — comes from mobile devices. By creating a mobile-friendly website, you’re setting yourself up to capture a larger audience.
Google’s Mobile-First Indexing
Google predominantly uses the mobile version of a website for indexing and ranking. If your site isn’t optimized for mobile, it could negatively affect your search engine rankings, making it harder for potential customers — no matter how they’re browsing — to find you online.
Better Engagement with Mobile Devices
Mobile consumers expect quick, easy-to-navigate websites with minimal loading times. A mobile-optimized website provides this, leading to enhanced user satisfaction. Not only does a better user experience boost SEO, it also leads to higher engagement rates, inspires better brand loyalty, and increases the likelihood of converting visitors into customers.
Competitive Edge in Local Markets
Small businesses can gain a significant competitive advantage by providing a superior mobile experience that allows you stand out from competitors who may not have optimized their sites effectively for mobile users.
Local SEO
Mobile SEO is strongly connected to local SEO for obvious reasons: Mobile searches are often local in nature, as users look for businesses and services “near me” or within their current location.
An optimized mobile presence will enhance the visibility of your business in these searches, but to drive more traffic from local searches to your business, you need a dedicated local SEO strategy.Â
This is how your site shows up on Google and other search engines when they provide localized results based on the user’s location or the location specified in the search query.
Why Local SEO is Important for Small Businesses
Increased Visibility in Local Search Results
By appearing in local searches and map listings like Google Maps, you place your business in a highly coveted spot that can significantly increase both foot traffic and online sales for brick-and-mortar stores as well as local business for trades and services.
Targeted Geographic Campaigns
Unlike broad SEO strategies, local SEO allows businesses to narrow their focus to the local community where your customer base lives. By optimizing for specific local keywords (“reliable general contractors in Calgary”), businesses can more effectively target their primary demographic, without attracting irrelevant leads.
Boosted Reputation
Showing up near the top of local search rankings builds credibility and trust with potential customers in your local community.
High Conversion Rates:
Searches with local intent have a higher likelihood of converting. This is because local SEO connects your business with people actively looking for products and services in your area, leading to higher conversion rates from your online traffic compared to non-localized SEO.
Cost-Effective Marketing:
For small businesses, local SEO is a cost-effective marketing strategy that offers a high return on investment. Unlike traditional advertising, local SEO has a much lower cost and the potential for much higher rewards.
10 Ways to Improve Your Google Ranking Through Mobile, Local SEO
As you can tell, enhancing your site for local and mobile searches offers numerous benefits. However, as we emphasized at the beginning of this article, the ultimate goal of any business website is to attract new customers.
One of the most cost-effective ways for small businesses to facilitate a connection between your website and potential customers is through search engines like Google, where so many customer journeys begin.
To help you leverage this, here are 10 tips for improving your ranking in Google for mobile and local searches:
1. Claim and Optimize Your Google Business Profile
Regularly updating and optimizing your Google Business Profile (GBP) is essential for local SEO, enhancing visibility on Google Maps and local search results.
Why
With a 100% completion score and expert keyword targeting for your GBP, Google is more likely to feature your site in Google Maps and as part of its Local Pack, where three location-specific links are shown at the top of the results page.
Further Benefits
An accurate and complete profile can improve your visibility in valuable local search queries and increase your credibility.
Implementation
Verify your business, and fill in detailed and accurate business information including hours, address, and photos.
2. Ensure Your Website is Mobile Friendly
Adapting your website to be more mobile friendly is probably the most important step you can take to improve, not just your mobile SEO, but your overall SEO as well. It’s simple: More people are on mobile devices, so mobile optimization ensures a mobile friendly website that not only caters to mobile users but is also highly favoured in search rankings.
Why
Mobile-friendliness is a ranking factor for Google, which prioritizes sites that provide a good user experience on mobile devices. In fact, Google actually penalizes websites that aren’t optimized for mobile. That’s why it’s so important to ensure your site supports mobile-first indexing.
Further Benefits
A mobile-friendly website enhances user experience for mobile users and supports overall SEO.
Implementation
For mobile optimization, use responsive design templates or adjust your site’s CSS to ensure it displays well on mobile devices. Responsive web design automatically adjusts content to fit the screen of mobile devices, improving user experience and supporting SEO.
3. Focus on Local Keywords
Integrating local keywords that reflect your business’s location and services targets your audience more precisely by attracting local searches. As we mentioned earlier, using specific local keywords (“emergency electrician in Edmonton”) allows businesses to target their most-likely customers.
Why
Local keywords help Google understand where your business is relevant, improving your visibility in specific geographic search results.
Further Benefits
Increases the likelihood of appearing in search results right at the moment when potential customers are looking for local services or products.
Implementation
Simply, include keywords that reflect your location and the services or products you offer throughout the content on your website.
4. Implement Local Schema Markup
This one is a little more complicated than the others as it does involve an element of coding. Schema markup is a specific vocabulary of tags (or microdata) that can be added to your HTML to improve the way search engines read and represent your page in search results.
Why
Schema markup makes it easier for search engines to interpret the content of your site. When you tell it your location, the search engine is more likely to display your pages in local search results.
Further Benefits
Unlike most of the other steps, the primary benefit — higher local search results — is really the only benefit. But that, in itself, is an advantage. The overall user experience of your site isn’t affected at all by implementing this bit of coding.
Implementation
Use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to generate the correct schema markup. Select the appropriate category for your business and paste in the URL of the page you want to enhance. The tool allows you to tag elements of your page such as the business name, address, phone number, and more.
5. Utilize Meta Descriptions
Sticking with the backend elements of SEO, optimizing the meta descriptions of your website pages is a great way to improve how your pages are perceived by potential visitors in search results. Ensure they are engaging and include local and mobile SEO terms to improve click-through rates.
Why
Meta descriptions provide a brief overview of what visitors can expect on a webpage, directly influencing the decision to click. A well-crafted meta description can improve your site’s click-through rates from search results.
Further Benefits
Effective meta descriptions act as marketing pitches, enhancing user engagement by aligning expectations with the actual content on the page.
Implementation
Write concise, action-oriented meta descriptions that include local keywords and clearly state what the page is about. Keep them under 160 characters to ensure they display fully in search results.
6. Write Engaging Page Titles
Just as optimized meta descriptions improve rankings and click-through rates, so too will an engaging page title. Remember, it’s great to be seen on the first page of Google. You’re already more likely to be selected by a searcher. But you still need that click-through. To clinch the deal, you have to make your content as appealing as possible with a great title.
Why
Page titles are a primary element that search engines evaluate when determining the relevance of a site to a search query. They are also the first impression users get in search results.
Further Benefits
A well-optimized title tag increases visibility in search rankings and can significantly impact the attractiveness and click-worthiness of your listings.
Implementation
Create unique and descriptive titles — both the meta title and actual title — for each page that include targeted keywords, especially local terms. Ensure titles are engaging and reflect the content of the page within 60 characters to avoid being cut off in search results.
7. Encourage Local Reviews
People trust people. And so do search engines. Encouraging positive reviews is a powerful strategy for local businesses because the benefits are twofold: you further enhance the reputation of your business in your local community (where your customers live); and you significantly boost your local SEO.
Why
Google and other search engines use reviews as indicators of a business’s reliability and quality, which can significantly enhance your SEO and visibility in local search results.
Further Benefits
As mentioned, positive reviews build trust and credibility among potential customers, encouraging more local engagements and visits.
Implementation
Actively request reviews from happy customers. Provide easy-to-follow links after service or purchase, and consider incentives for those who leave a review.
8. Achieve Additional Backlinks
Requesting and earning backlinks from reputable local sources is an easy way to enhance your local SEO.
Why
Backlinks serve as endorsements of your website’s content, which Google uses to assess your site’s authority and relevance, boosting your SEO.
Further Benefits
High-quality backlinks can also drive direct traffic to your site and increase your brand’s presence within the local community.
Implementation
Engage with local bloggers, newspapers, and business associations to create content partnerships, sponsor local events, or contribute to community activities to earn these valuable links. You can also directly ask supplies and other businesses you work with to link to your pages.
9. Monitor Mobile and Local SEO Performance
Keeping tabs on how your site performs in search rankings from both a local and mobile perspective can inform necessary adjustments that will go a long way to improve your site’s visibility.
Why
There is always room for improvement. Monitoring helps you understand how well your local SEO campaigns and general mobile optimization are working and how users interact with your site, allowing you to make data-driven improvements.
Further Benefits
Not only does active monitoring ensure your mobile and local SEO strategies are working, it also provides insights into user behaviour and traffic patterns that can inform decision-making for several other aspects of your business, even beyond digital marketing.
Implementation
To track and measure the effectiveness of your SEO in attracting mobile visitors and securing local click-throughs, use Google Analytics and Google Search Console. These tools provide valuable insights into your traffic and user behaviour.
10. Keep Updating Your Site
Regularly updating your site with high-quality content is vital to maintaining high search rankings — not to mention the benefits it has in keeping potential customers returning to your website content.
Why
Google looks for updated and relevant content when connecting searchers to websites because it indicates that the site is actively maintained and offering fresh information.
Further Benefits
Fresh content also keeps your site relevant, engaging and retaining visitors by providing them with valuable, current content that answers their needs.
Implementation
Establish a content calendar to regularly update your blog, news, and articles sections; focus on quality, relevance, and local interest topics.
Take Your SEO to the Next Level with Harvard Excelerate
Going over the list of tips above, there’s a lot small businesses can do to attract new customers whether they’re searching for your services on a mobile device or wondering what you sell while right outside your storefront.
At Harvard Excelerate, we understand that for the majority of small businesses, time is as every bit as valuable of a resource as money. That’s why we offer an effective and affordable Search Engine Optimization solution that provides you with all the benefits of enhanced mobile and local SEO without any of the development or content headaches that can be associated with implementing it.
Our SEO services are proven to help small businesses:
- Climb search rankings;
- Get found online before competitors; and
- Create more leads from Google searches.
Harvard Excelerate’s team of in-house SEO experts tailor advanced mobile and local SEO strategies — that incorporate all of the steps outlined above — to deliver real leads from your local, target audience. We also offer website design services from developers with years of experience creating mobile-friendly websites that drive sales.
Get Found First Online
With Harvard Excelerate, climbing to #1 on Google becomes a realistic target. We optimize your website and content to ensure you capture attention when and where it matters most. That means enhancing your mobile and local SEO through content that seamlessly integrates identified keywords into your mobile-friendly website.
The result is simple: You rank higher on Google, and you generate more quality leads, more potential customers because of it.
Reach out to Harvard Excelerate for a free quote today and begin your ascent to the #1 local search result on Google.
