SEO hierarchy for small businesses with a limited budget

According to BrightLocal’s research, up to 98% people will use the internet in 2022 to search for information about local businesses. Google was used by 87% of customers to rate local businesses.

Local businesses that have limited resources and time can find it difficult to decide where to concentrate their marketing efforts.

It is important that people can find local businesses on the internet.

SEO is a great way to promote a local business online. It offers incredibly high returns on investment.

What SEO factors are important for local businesses with a limited budget?

Here I will outline six areas small businesses can do themselves (or hire some outside help for techie stuff), and at least get the SEO foundations set up.

What are the foundations of these systems?

Local businesses can improve their ranking in search results by focusing on the following factors:

• Google Business Profile
• Reviews and ratings
• Content of high quality
• Internal Linking
• Website and webpage optimization
• Inbound links

Every local business should implement at least 6 SEO tactics

Local businesses should focus on two key areas to optimize their search results:

• Google Maps or the local pack.
• Google organic listings

Google considers distance, prominence, and relevance when ranking local business within the local pack.

There are also a number of other signals that it uses, such as the “blue link” for organic listings.

The following list is not exhaustive, but it contains some SEO tactics that are essential to help local businesses rank.

Local pack rankings

1. Google Business Profile

creating, validating, and optimising a Google Business Profile are three of the most important tactics to rank local businesses on the Local Pack.

Here are the three most effective optimization techniques for your Business Profile:

• Select the primary category that is most relevant to your business. Add two or three categories (or just the most relevant) and then continue. It is important to consider the primary category when determining how you rank on the local pack. It’s possible that you won’t get it right on the first try. Don’t be afraid of experimenting with different categories to test the results. PlePler can be a useful tool in this regard by providing valuable data.

• Fill out the Google Business Profile completely. Fill out as much information is available in the profile. Use rich keywords to describe the business in an organic way.

• Verify that the name of your business, its address, telephone number and website (NAP+W), are correct. Google will use a physical address to determine ranking. It looks for businesses that are closest to where the searcher is. Google will give a higher ranking to businesses that have a consistent NAP+W across all online sources, not just Google Business Profiles. This is because the consistency of NAP+W information increases Google’s confidence about a listing’s accuracy. Use a local number, not a toll free one.

2. Ratings and reviews

The number of reviews and ratings for a local business can affect its ranking, as well as the text-based star ratings and actual scores. This is directly from Google. Take reviews and ratings very seriously.

Here are a few tips:

• Encourage customers to write reviews. Google explains on how to share links to customers so they can leave reviews. This helps to ensure that reviews are current, which is a good signal for Google.

• Google does not want businesses to give incentives to customers for leaving reviews. Though many local businesses offer incentives for leaving reviews. You want to make sure that the review profile of a local business is accurate. Users may be less trusting of a business if all reviews are positive and there are no negative ones.

• Read and respond to reviews from customers. This will show them that you value their opinions. Here’s on how to reply to Google reviews.

• To add value to your listing, consider displayinging reviews from third parties. This will help users to choose a business.

Organic rankings

3. Content of high quality

Quality Content is one of the most important factors for ranking a page, if not .

Here are some ways you can ensure quality on your site.

• To understand Google’s view of quality, study the guidelines for search quality raters. in particular, look at the definitions of experience and expertise. Local businesses should strive to convey their expertise and experience in their content.

• Ensure that key pages, such as service page, are filled with enough content to be useful and helpful to visitors. To determine how much content you need to create, spy on your top competitors in the search engine results for that keyword.

• Consider how your business can contribute to the local community by creating content outside of service pages or locations pages . By focusing on the local expertise of the business, sharing local stories or serving as a guide, you can establish it as an authority in the community. Also, good local content can attract links.

• Use a range of content to increase your chances of ranking and being found. For example, you can use YouTube videos, images, or anything else.

Remember, if you use AI content on a website, it must be reviewed and edited manually by humans to ensure its quality.

See my article at Search Engine Land for more information: ChatGPT content and SEO: What next?

4. Internal Linking

A website that has a lot of useful content and is well organized will be more relevant to a search.

It is a technique that I developed more than 20 year ago. It organizes a website by categorizing related pages in hierarchical categories using its links and directory.

It is important to consider how you organize your website’s navigation and directories.

Search engines can better understand the content of a site by using the siloing system.

The user can also navigate easily to the information that they require.

Google may not always rank websites based on a single page, but rather the entire website.

The navigation of a site is crucial to help visitors find the information they are looking for. Search engines can also learn what the owner of the website thinks important. Google provides search results at the page level. However, Google likes to know what a particular page is doing in the overall picture of the website.

Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) Beginner Guide

In practice, a website for a local company would be organized around:

• This section contains individual service pages.
• The location page section, if applicable.

Create one or more web pages for each business location.

A good example of this strategy would be to use a keyword such as “engineering company” and then create a silo.

Create a section on locations by linking to a landing page that contains the term from your top navigation. You can then add subpages that describe each location’s services.

This would be applicable to all locations of a company. Make each section of the location unique to avoid duplicate content.

5. Website and webpage optimization

Here are some things local businesses can do to improve their SEO.

• Include the city and neighborhood in the meta tags, and include the heading tags, anchor text, and other keywords on the page.

• Use local business type schema to clarify the information that is presented to the search engine and the users. The minimum would be to include the business name, address, telephone number, and website. Local businesses might want to start with Structured data Markup Helper. Google has also created a help file here.

• Optimise the performance of your website. Local businesses need a mobile-friendly site since most local searches occur on mobile devices. Google offers tools as well as help files for people to get started. Enabling HTTPS and ensuring that the site is secure is also important.

Last two bullets are areas that a local company may spend a small amount of money to hire an expert.

6. Link

Local businesses need to have local links that are of high quality and local in order to demonstrate their trustworthiness. Here are some suggestions for earning links.

• As we have already mentioned, good, useful content aimed at a particular community can naturally earn links.

• Links from IP addresses, domains or WHOIS records for a specific geographic area are the only ones that will be helpful.

• Other ways to get local links are: joining a local group, being listed on a local directory or hosting an event in your area and driving traffic to the website, sponsoring local events, creating a blog, or being interviewed by the local press.

Focus on what is important

Numerous SEO tactics can be used to help local websites appear in search results. Local businesses can benefit from a few methods, regardless of whether they implement them themselves or hire an outside expert.

Focus on local SEO needs and put in place the SEO foundations to have a chance of competing.

The post Local Businesses on a Budget: The SEO Hierarchy first appeared on Search Engine Land.