With online stores opening left and right, how can brick-and-mortar stores compete online? Running marketing efforts years ago may just relied on word of mouth and the quality of the products, but the online game, even for local businesses, is getting more challenging than ever. Applying the best local SEO strategies for your online store will help you against your competitors.

Being a local brand already has its pros, but when you boost your visibility to customers searching nearby, you can stand out from the competition! Local SEO helps you connect your brick-and-mortar business with locals looking for your products and services in your area.

From applying keywords to creating your own Google Business Profile, you can engage with your local communities and even tourists in your area effectively. Apply the following 10 proven local SEO strategies that can help your store thrive not just through the locals and online!

10 Best Local SEO Strategies for Your Brick-and-Mortar Stores

1. Optimize and Manage Your Google Business Profile (GBP)

Before working on your keywords, you should start with your Google Business Profile. If you have not heard of a GBP before, it is like your virtual business card on Google. The best part about GBP is that you can add photos, directions to your store on Google Maps, contact details, website, and even get reviews from your customers there.

This is a free online business card from Google, and through this, you can improve your visibility when tourists and even potential local customers search for your business on Google. Most people nowadays rely on GBPs to determine if a business is legit or not. Creating one for your brick-and-mortar store is one of the best local SEO strategies you can apply to your store without cost!

While filling out the details of your business, always ensure that the information about your business name, address, contact details, and website is included in your GBP. Don’t forget to add your business category as well to ensure that customers arriving at your store know what you are selling, and also to ensure you reach your target customer.

If you want to know what your competitors are using on their GBPs, you can use tools to conduct an audit for local SEO. Also, treat your GBP as your social media account as well. Ensure you add your storefront images and make sure it is a clear one! You can also upload your product images and your store interior. Another great tip is uploading your store image with some sort of a landmark so new customers can easily spot your local store.

Remember to use your GBP as your social media. For every new product or promotion you have in mind, upload an image or graphic about it to your GBP account. This way, you can tell your potential customers that your business is still open, and they could be encouraged to shop whenever they spot your promotions.

2. Maintain Consistent NAP Citations Across Platforms

You need to be consistent with your NAP citations, and that means you must use your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) in all of your online listings. Your details must be the same from your GBP to your other listings, like your YELP account, and yes, being consistent with your details is one of the local best practices you can do for your brick-and-mortar business.

You can create a template of your NAP details for easier updates or add a new online listing. Once you have updated all of your listings or created all the necessary listings you have made, check them regularly for errors. If you have a new website, address, phone number, and other NAP details, ensure you update all of your listings, including your GBP details too.

What happens when you do not have consistent NAP details? You confuse search engines like Google. When they find similar details and inconsistent ones, you can just lower your credibility on search engines and even to your potential and long-term customers.

When you remain consistent with your NAP details, you build trust with your customers and even search engines. So update the details that need to be updated on all of your listings, so your customers know where you are and what numbers to call.

3. Actively Generate and Respond to Customer Reviews

Another no-cost top local SEO strategy that you can apply is generating and responding to customer reviews. Before the online landscape, brick-and-mortar stores had already implemented a suggestion box to get reviews and ways to improve. Although it does not really affect your business reputation, your reviews online do.

If you have frequent and positive reviews, it shows your customers and potential ones that you are trusted by your community. Not only that, but also your products and services can be trusted as well. One way to encourage reviews is to encourage them to review your restaurant after dining or by sending emails after they receive your product deliveries.

If you only have a few people around working, you can encourage reviews for your GBP and other online listings by getting your QR codes and printing them. Then, post your QR codes on your front desk, cashier, or right outside your store.

You are not only getting reviews to improve your local seo strategy, but responding to those reviews also does. Spend five minutes or a couple more a day just to say thank you to your customers and address some of the issues they have. The fast and dated responses show your new and old customers the level of engagement and care they can expect from you and your business.

4. Conduct Hyper-Local Keyword Research

Let’s get into local keyword research. You need to understand what people in your community are looking for online that is related to your business, services, and products. You can look into exact phrases or words that they use on your keyword tool.

So how do you do it? You can think of local modifiers first. This could be your city’s name or your town, even your landmarks. Unlike regular keyword research that starts from the broad terms, you can specify it to a specific town or city. Instead of posting or writing about ‘best coffee shop’ only, you can add the city’s name, like ‘best coffee shop in (your town).’

You can use Google’s Keyword Planner and GBP to get insights on the high-intent searches and see what your competitors are ranking for. Searching and applying the right keywords to your content online is one of the best local SEO strategies that you can apply to boost your visibility to the customers and communities nearby.

5. Create Location-Specific Website Content

If you plan to expand or already have more store locations, you need to build content specifically focused on those locations. One of the best local SEO strategies is building visibility for the customers near your store locations.

Does it mean you have to create new GBPs and online listings for each store location? The answer is yes. You want the locals and tourists to find the nearest branch of your business, and when you list your store branch’s NAP details online, your local customers can easily find them. You want all of your store branches to thrive.

Do you have a website, or do you know a blogger who writes about similar businesses? You can reach out to them to have your business mentioned, or you can post a blog about the best things to do or places to eat near your business or store. When you have or mention localized blog content, you have a stronger connection to potential customers and even to your community. Your business will also appear more in local searches.

6. Earn Local Backlinks

Earning backlinks has already been one of the difficult parts of SEO work, and getting local backlinks is a much higher challenge. They must be from reputable websites, but looking for one may be limited. Still, it is one of the best local SEO strategies to ensure your business becomes trustworthy to your customers while keeping yourself connected to the community.

Some of the ways to earn backlinks are through collaboration and joint promotions with nearby businesses. But this part of the job may need you to pay for services and content for backlinks. You can sponsor events and charities, or pay writers and content creators to link back to your website.

You can also suggest backlinking to your local bloggers, newspaper companies, and media outlets, too. If you do not have a budget for sponsorships or even advertisements, you can offer a link back to their own websites. This way, you can strengthen your and their websites to improve your and their local SEO performance.

7. Implement Local Schema Markup

Schema markup also works for your local seo efforts. You can add a Local Business schema markup to improve your search visibility, and search engines will also help understand your business details. Ensure you have consistent NAP details so that search engines can better understand your business, too.

Once you structure your data, you can improve how your information appears in the search results. You can also display rich snippets, events, and even customer reviews so you can stand out more in the search listings.

8. Optimize for Mobile and Voice Search

Now that more people are using their mobile devices to search for anything online, you must ensure that your website is optimized for mobile viewing. But you also must ensure that your website loads quickly while on mobile view. It is one of the best local SEO strategies to apply. As your website quickly loads, you can easily navigate.

Another detail to apply is using calls-to-action. You need to tell your audience and potential customers where to buy, how to contact you, and even how to get to your stores. A simple update to add phrases like ‘Call Now’ or ‘Order Here.’

Next, let us get into voice search. People nowadays have phone accessories, or are just too busy to tap on their phones. So instead of writing the queries, people turn to voice search. They use easy phrases like ‘What is a coffee shop near me?’. When you use natural questions on your content or website, you can rank on search engines.

9. Engage With the Local Community on Social Media

How does social media help you in your search rankings? Now, if you have been working as an SEO expert for a long time, you know how social media does not directly impact your brand’s ranking. Social media posts, however, directly improve your brand visibility. It is the best local SEO strategy to boost awareness and even build customer loyalty.

You can build or join a Facebook community to connect with local customers or get into LinkedIn groups to build connections with local businesses. From there, you can encourage customers and local businesses to tag your business location in their posts. You can also check when they visit your store to know your busiest hours of the day.

10. Monitor and Analyze Your Local SEO Performance

Finally, once you have applied all of the local SEO best practices to your brick-and-mortar business, it is time to monitor and measure the results of your efforts. You can use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to look into your data. These tools can provide you with details of your website ranking, traffic, and local keyword performance.

One thing about your Google Business Profile that you will love is that it shows how your customers find your listing. You can review that data and improve it if need be. Or, you can also look into how your customers are interacting with your listing. The data is also available in your GBP.

You can also use a couple of local SEO audit tools to improve your online presence and spend more time on more important efforts rather than checking on everything manually. When you identify what works and what does not, you can apply the best local SEO strategies and updates for long-term success.

Make Use of Reliable SEO Tools

Most of the tips above can be done manually, and it does take some time. Once you have managed to put everything in place, the monitoring and a couple of local SEO improvements can be done and identified fast through using the best local SEO tool.

You can conduct keyword research and citation management quickly when using a reliable tool. Consider investing in a local SEO tool. But you can also rely on your Google Business Profile Insights, too. For more in-depth tools, Ahrefs and BrightLocal are the best combination to grow your online presence.

Your Path to Local SEO Success

As someone who owns a brick-and-mortar business, competing with online shops is already a challenge. But competing with them and some businesses in town should not be about outspending them. You can use these local SEO strategies to connect with your customers without spending a lot.

You can optimize your Google Business Profile and engage on social media posts to strengthen your local visibility. Then, the local SEO tips and sticking to the best local SEO practices ensure you stay relevant online. Consistency is key to your local SEO success, ensuring every business detail is up to date and relevant to your business now.

AUTHOR BIO:

Abby Tan is a content writer with a knack for turning ideas into engaging, SEO-friendly stories. With years of experience in blogging and Pinterest strategy, she writes about travel, skincare, food, and the latest in tech with equal passion and creativity. Abby is currently part of the writing team at Softvire, a leading IT distributor, where she helps bring digital content to life.