How to optimize your website for local search

Local SEO is how your business shows up when someone nearby searches for what you sell: "plumber Albany," "bakery near me," "vet in Lebanon." For a small business with a storefront or a service area, it's the search traffic that matters most, because the people searching are close by and usually ready to call, visit, or buy. Below is what actually works, roughly in the order we'd tackle it.

Think about how you pick a restaurant in a town you don't know. You search, glance at the map, read a few reviews, check the hours, and go. Your customers pick roofers, accountants, and dog groomers the same way. If you aren't in that map and those results, they call someone who is.

Start with your Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Profile (it used to be called Google My Business) is the listing that shows up in Google Maps and in the box beside search results. Many people will see it before they ever see your website, and plenty will call you straight from it. It's free, and for most local businesses it's the single most useful thing to get right.

Claim and verify it, then fill in everything: the most accurate category, your address or service area, hours (including holiday hours), phone number, a link to your website, and real photos of your work and your place. Post an update when something changes. Wrong hours on Google is one of the fastest ways to lose a customer for good.

Use the words your customers type

Local keywords are just the phrases people search with, and they almost always pair a service with a place. If you run a bakery in Salem, Oregon, phrases like "bakery in Salem" or "custom cakes in Salem" belong on your site, especially in the page title, the main heading, and the first paragraph. Write them the way you'd say them out loud. Cramming the town name into every sentence reads badly to people and doesn't fool Google.

If you serve more than one town, give each one its own page with real information about working there, instead of listing ten city names in the footer. That's why we have separate pages for web design in Corvallis and web design in Salem rather than one page trying to rank everywhere.

Then write about local things you actually know. A landscaper can write about what grows well in Willamette Valley clay. A junk removal company can explain what the local transfer station takes and what it doesn't. Posts like that help your neighbors and tell Google you're part of the area. Generic articles copied from national blogs do neither.

Reviews, directory listings, and social media

Reviews affect who shows up in the map, and they're a big part of how people decide who to call. Ask happy customers right after the job, while they're still happy, and send them a direct link to your review page so it only takes a minute. Reply to every review, good and bad. A calm, specific answer to a one-star review can do more for you than another five stars.

Directory listings (SEO people call them citations) are the other places your business is listed: Yelp, Facebook, Apple Maps, Bing, your local chamber of commerce. Your name, address, and phone number should match everywhere, down to the suite number. An old address or a disconnected number sitting on a directory site confuses Google and customers alike.

Social media won't do much for your Google rankings directly, but it helps people find you and trust you. Post finished jobs, tag the local businesses and events you work with, and link back to your website.

Make it work on a phone

A lot of local searches happen on a phone, often from someone who needs an answer in the next ten minutes: are you open, where are you, how do I reach you. Google also ranks sites based mainly on their mobile version (they call this mobile-first indexing), so a site that's clumsy on a phone loses twice.

Here's what to check:

• The layout fits the screen. A responsive site rearranges itself for a phone instead of shrinking the desktop version until nobody can read it.
• It loads fast. Compress your images and cut the scripts you don't need, like old chat widgets, slideshows, and unused plugins.
• The phone number dials when tapped. It sounds obvious, and plenty of sites still get it wrong.
• Text is readable without zooming. Use a comfortable font size and dark text on a light background.
• Buttons and form fields are thumb-sized, with enough space between them that people don't tap the wrong one.
• The menu is short. A few clear links, with your contact page one tap away.
• Your hours and address are easy to find and match your Google Business Profile exactly.
• You've tested it. Open the site on your own phone and try to contact yourself, then run it through Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool to see what's slowing it down.

Check it once a month

Local SEO isn't a one-time setup. Hours change, new reviews come in, and competitors add pages. Once a month, look over your Google Business Profile, answer any new reviews, and make sure your site still says what's true.

If you'd rather hand the website side of this to someone, that's what we do. We're an Albany team building websites for businesses across the Willamette Valley. Tell us what you have now in the "Start a project" form at the bottom of this page, and Tomena or Logan will get back to you within 24 business hours. If your site already works and just needs someone to keep it current, take a look at our website hosting and maintenance plans.