Local businesses can often become the backbone of their communities. They may have a loyal following that knows them well, but still have trouble competing for space online. As search engine result pages (SERPs) continue to evolve, add more elements that take up space, incorporate AI, and the competition continues to increase, it can be hard for a local business to get noticed. A solid local SEO strategy can help them claim their space online and show up when it matters. Here’s what to know and some tips for your local SEO strategy:
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is a subset of search engine optimization and marketing that focuses on a specific location or service area for your business. It’s all about getting your business’s name and website to show up for your local target audience when they are searching for products or services related to your business.
Local SEO is focused on strategies and tactics that help people in your service area find you in real life, whether they are stopping by your business in person or visiting your website.
11 Tips For Your Local SEO Strategy
If you are a local business, local SEO is a digital marketing trend you cannot afford to ignore. A solid Local SEO strategy helps you optimize your website and focus your marketing efforts to increase brand awareness. It helps you show up when people in your area are searching online and increases traffic to your website and to your location. Here are a few tips for your local SEO strategy:
- Claim your Google Business Profile.
- Post regularly to your Google Business Profile.
- Make your NAP citation a priority.
- Accelerate NAP citation and directory management with a service.
- Create location-focused content.
- Feature case studies with a local focus.
- Encourage customers to leave reviews.
- Add relevant schema markup.
- Make sure your website is responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Get involved with your local community.
- Use Google Trends to identify local opportunities.
1. Claim Your Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile allows you to manage information about your business. In Google, one of the elements that often shows up in the results is the “knowledge graph” or “knowledge panel”. This is the informational “box” or “panel” that sometimes shows up along the right side of the search results in Google. In results on mobile, it often enhances your business listing with extra features that help it stand out.
There is a lot that businesses should know about Google Business Profile, and definitely a lot you can do to update, enhance, and optimize your business listing in the search results. In addition to managing your business’s information, you can also add photos to your profile, manage and respond to reviews, create posts, and more.
Making sure you have control of this profile and that the information is correct is a vital step towards good local SEO.
2. Post Regularly to Your Google Business Profile
Freshness and relevancy are important factors in SEO overall, and they matter in local SEO, too. Because an updated Google Business Profile is a key component of local SEO and showing up in the local map pack in the SERPs for your area, it’s a valuable resource, and one you want to make the most of.
By adding information posts and updates, updating images, using the events post option to share events you are doing or sponsoring, featuring offers when you have them, and responding to Google reviews, you can keep your Google Business Profile updated regularly. Not only does this consistently add fresh content that is useful to potential customers, but it also signals to Google (and other search engines or AI engines) that your business is active.
All of this can work together to give you a local visibility boost, and may also contribute to bumping your listing up higher in the local map pack when someone is searching for relevant queries nearby. As of November 2025, you can also schedule posts to publish later natively in the Google Business Profile manager. This makes it easy and convenient to keep this digital brand property updated.
3. Make Your NAP Citation a Priority
A NAP citation is your business’s name, address, and phone number. It also often includes your website address and perhaps a contact email as well.
Your NAP citation is the foundation of your local SEO strategy – it’s:
- Who you are
- Where you are
- How you can be contacted
It’s important for it to be consistent. Inconsistencies in your NAP citation can lead to duplicate listings in directories, a lower or even nonexistent listing in the local search block, and a lot of confused, lost customers.
You want to claim as much “digital real estate” as you can and in areas that make sense for your business. Get your NAP citation and company information figured out, and then start claiming your listings in relevant, authoritative business directories. Also, get involved in your local Chamber of Commerce.
Additionally, claim your social media profiles and claim any custom URLs available in those profiles. Your goal here is to gain that digital real estate for your brand and claim your name – before someone else does.
Claiming, filling out, and using social media profiles for your business can help you maintain a consistent brand across platforms and make it way easier for your customers to find you. It also helps search engines recognize and build the connection between your brand name, website, and these other web properties. These are some key reasons why SEO is a great investment for your business.
4. Accelerate NAP Citation and Directory Management With a Service
If your business is still in startup mode, you may be moving around a lot, which can cause inconsistencies in your NAP citation as it takes time for you to update the listings you have and for that information to filter everywhere else. But, it’s not just startups that have trouble with their citations – established businesses that may have changed addresses also have issues with inconsistent or duplicate listings.
The filter-down effect from larger data aggregators to the smaller ones can take months, which means a lot of incorrect NAP citations for your business. You can spend a ton of time searching for and updating everything yourself, or you can use a service to help you manage it.
Whether you use something like Moz Local, Yext Powerlistings, or something else, there is usually an annual or monthly fee involved. But, for that fee, you will be able to log into a single dashboard to find, update, and manage the major listings and directories. This can make listing management and monitoring a lot easier and save you a lot of time.
5. Create Location-Focused Content
Search engines love to crawl fresh content, especially when it is relevant, authoritative, and useful. So, if you have a heavy local focus, make sure the content on your website reflects that. Your on-page SEO should include location-related keywords. You can also write content related to your region.
In addition, you can create a location-focused landing page on your website for use in a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign focusing on driving local traffic. With a combined strategy like this, you’ll be able to target your locale and support it with relevant content from the initial click to the final conversion.
6. Feature Case Studies With a Local Focus
Case studies can be powerful pieces of content for your brand, which is why they are also often lead magnets. Case studies that feature and highlight your location and service areas are even more valuable. Not only can they help build trust with potential customers, but they can also improve your visibility in local search.
Plus, case studies are unique to your brand, which means it will be more difficult for AI to deliver an answer for related searches without citing your brand. And, because case studies tend to be interesting to potential buyers closer to the bottom of the funnel (i.e., when they are making their purchasing decisions), they are more likely to result in clicks, engagement, and other interactions that generate relevant leads for your business.
In the current search landscape, where searches don’t always result in clicks to your website, the more visible and valuable your touchpoints can be, the better your chances of converting potential buyers into leads and then actual customers.
7. Encourage Customers to Leave Reviews
Customer reviews are trust signals that potential customers use during their decision-making journey to evaluate businesses, services, and products. On top of that, they often:
- Provide fresh content about your brand and services
- Increase mentions and citations of your brand around the web
- Boost your local visibility in search engines
All of this works together to lift visibility in search, whether people are searching on social media platforms, review sites, forums, chatbots, or more traditional search engine queries. Encourage your customers to leave reviews, and make it as easy for them to do so as possible. Provide a direct link to where they can provide reviews, whether via a clear hyperlink, QR code, etc., and include clear, straightforward instructions to remove friction and keep the process simple and easy.
Be Cautious of How You Ask For Reviews
However, you need to be careful of how you are encouraging reviews so you do not damage trust, violate policies, or break laws. Bribing customers to leave reviews, outright paying for reviews, or manufacturing fake reviews are mistakes that violate policies, increase your risk of getting penalized, and also damage trust in your brand.
If you are sponsoring content and that is not made clear in the review, you are also likely violating FTC guidelines. So, make sure you are keeping things transparent and honest, and that you are following all guidelines for any sponsored user-generated content or influencer partnership you undertake for your brand.
8. Add Relevant Schema Markup
Schema markup is structured data that can be added to your website to help machines understand elements on it better. There are various types of schema markup available. Using structured data appropriately makes it easier for search engine crawlers to crawl, parse, understand, and index information from your website and about your business.
Schema markup is available to define organizations and businesses, locations, and more. Schema.org is a valuable resource that sets the standard for the different types of schema markup available and how to use each properly. There is also a local business schema available, which can help local businesses gain visibility in local search and search engine results page features for searches in their area.
9. Make Sure Your Website is Responsive and Mobile-Friendly
Although they aren’t always, local searches are often done via mobile devices and sometimes via voice search. Additionally, Google is mobile-first, and so are a lot of other search engines, whether you’re on social media, forums, or somewhere else online.
Your site needs to be built to be responsive and mobile-friendly. Not only does it need to be able to adapt to a variety of different screen sizes, but it also needs to present a great user experience across all of them. This is essential for features like click-to-call options, integrated maps, and more.
Also, your site is more likely to appear in local search results for your area if your site is mobile-friendly. This is how responsive design and SEO work together, and for local businesses, too. If people can’t use your site, they’ll just leave. And, if it’s not mobile-friendly, you risk losing out on that prized local visibility to a competitor with a better, mobile-friendlier digital experience.
10. Get Involved With Your Local Community
Don’t overlook the power of community in your local marketing strategies, and keep in mind that all of your activities don’t have to be online. For them to benefit your local SEO, you will want to try to tie them into your online efforts. You can do this through press releases, local news coverage, social media posts, and more. But you will want to get involved with your local community regardless.
You can:
- Start and sponsor a much-needed community program
- Help out with an existing program
- Partner with local charities
- Host an event
- And more!
A lot of the time, doing something with the community that also benefits the community will boost your company’s reputation and increase brand awareness as well.
You may even earn some extra boosts to your efforts online by gaining local links and mentions. These could come from charity sites linking to you as a partner, interviews by local bloggers or journalists, local fans and communities on social media, and more.
The possibilities are endless – you just need to get involved in creative ways that best fit and represent your brand while also providing something valuable and helpful to the community.
11. Use Google Trends to Identify Local Opportunities
One of the helpful ways to use Google Trends is to identify local opportunities. This is not just limited to events; you can also identify topics in your specific area or your larger metro area to capitalize on emerging topics. This information could help you gear social media posts to local interests, make mentions of local happenings, and maybe even connect with journalists, bloggers, and local media outlets who are looking for quotes and sources for their publications.
Use Local SEO to Boost Your Local Visibility
It’s hard to keep up with everything, and it can often feel like you are juggling a ton of different things. But, you don’t have to be a master juggler to be able to catch all of it – you just need a solid local SEO strategy and the tenacity to implement it.