Attractive, relevant storefronts draw plenty of potential clients and customers… the same is true when it comes to your website. Enable your small business to compete with the likes of Amazon and other companies by optimizing your site for local search.

Links and typical on-page SEO strategies still come into play, but local SEO requires specific implementation techniques. Want to drive more local traffic to your small business’ website? Check out this guide to local SEO:

Consistent NAP

It’s important for your business’ name, address and phone number (NAP) for each location appears on every page of your website. The best way to do this is to include your NAP’s in your global header, side bar or footer. Make sure that your NAP listings remain consistent across the Internet, whether it’s your website, citations, links or wherever else it might appear. Including these details on your social media profiles is also highly recommended.

Local Links

Quality inbound links are even more important in local SEO than in standard SEO, but the type of links you will be focusing on are much different. High authority links are helpful, but the main focus is to get linked on other local sites that are relevant to your business.

Set Up Citations

Another major component to local SEO is to establish citations on the proper search sites. The first step to this is to set up your Google My Business listing with the proper NAP for each location and choose your categories carefully. Keep this profile as up-to-date as possible with high quality images and location-based keywords. Other search sites to list your business include: Bing Places, Yahoo Small Business and any industry-specific search sites.

Collect Reviews

We know that reviews are essential for your ecommerce SEO, but they’re also very important for local search optimization. Make Google and Yelp reviews your priority. Encourage existing customers to leave feedback on these sites; give them an incentive, discount or rewards membership. You can promote this through email, on social media, on your website or in your physical store location.

Keywords & Content

Publish locally relevant content and become the industry authority in your community. Be sure to promote local industry news and gatherings in your blog content and emails. Your keywords should include phrases that include your industry category and location. Local keywords should appear in your title tag, H1 page titles, within page copy and within the alt-text of your images.

There are many SEO tactics that tend to get overlooked, but follow this guide and you’re sure to gain more local traffic and boost business.