Local SEO is perhaps the most important marketing tactic for your club, studio or school today. That’s because local search engine optimization determines how much traffic your business generates from Google. Despite the rise of social media, search engines like Google are still the best source of free website traffic.
Search engines are today’s version of the yellow pages from the 1990s, or the telephone operators that used to provide information to callers in the 1930s. If you want to take it way, way back; you could even say today’s search engines are like the town crier in Medieval England.
It’s not hard to understand the value of search engines when you make these comparisons. Consider all of the value of these resources in each era.
In the 1990s, your business needed to be in the yellow pages in order to be found by prospective customers. In the 1930s, you definitely needed the operator to know who you were and what your business offered. Of course, in Medieval England, it was likely a good idea to ensure the town crier knew your business details and location.
Imagine telling 1930s business owners that they could “program” their telephone operator to always tell callers about their business first, when a potential customer asked about relevant services. They’d jump at the opportunity. And you should do the same.
This idea of “programming the operator” is essentially what you’re striving to do with local SEO. But, just to be clear, we’ll define the term below.
What is local SEO?
Local SEO is the process of optimizing your business online so that it shows up higher when people perform searches for related goods and services in your area.
How do search engines know when someone is searching for a local business?
Search engines have over two hundred “signals” they use to determine what search engine results they show when someone completes a search. No one can say exactly what these signals are because they are like ingredients in a recipe. And if you’re a multi-billion-dollar company like Google, you don’t want other search engines to copy your recipe!
A lot can be written on this, but we’ll keep it short.
We know that one of the strongest signals for local search is a searcher’s location. Meaning, if someone completes a search for “figure skating” in Charlottetown, P.E.I., they’ll get search results pointing to Charlottetown figure skating clubs and information. So, even if the searcher didn’t include “Charlottetown” in their search, they’re still given the most relevant information because of the geographical location they were in when they performed the search.
There are plenty of other search engine “signals” that tell Google when to show local results. But, rather than review each one, let’s focus on simple ways to get the most local SEO bang for your buck. Below, we’ll look at some of the most important things you can do to ensure your business ranks highly in Google’s local search engine results.
Structural Elements to Improve SEO for Clubs, Studios and Small Businesses
There are three things you should do before you even think of local SEO strategies and tactics. These are all no-brainer structural implementations that can give you a leg-up on competitors. If you employ these elements, you’ll give your business a good base to work from.
1) Make Your Site Mobile Friendly
As of 2018, Google made the move to mobile first indexing. This means when Google reviews your site, it now looks at the mobile version first. For small businesses this means your mobile website is priority number one.
If you already have a website, you have to make sure it functions well on your mobile device. So, set aside some time and visit every page on mobile.
Do any pages look off? Can you easily see or find your business name, location and phone number? Are you able to find important service information like class times or schedules?
If pages look awry or if you can’t find important business information, spend some time and fix your mobile site. It will be well worth the time it takes.
Those businesses that are building or redesigning a website need to keep in mind a few things when optimizing for mobile.
Firstly, make sure your site loads fast! The longer the load time, the more likely a person is to abandon your site and consider a competitor. To help with the basics, there are free online image optimization sites that can reduce the file size of your photos and graphics (one of the biggest culprits for long website load times) before you add them to your website.
Second, as we’ve alluded to, make sure your contact details and location are visible or easy to find.
Thirdly, confirm that any purchases of your products or services are easy to complete on mobile. This means if you allow people to signup for classes online, you’ll need to make sure it’s easy to do on mobile.
Tip: You can test your mobile site speed with this Google mobile test tool.
2) Make sure your site uses HTTPS instead of HTTP
Since 2014 Google has signaled that they want to see HTTPS websites online instead of HTTP. The reason is simple, HTTPS is secure and HTTP is not.
When your site uses HTTPS, Google can be confident that if they direct users to your site those users will be visiting over a secure connection. In order to use HTTPS, you’ll have to buy an SSL certificate. It may sound confusing but it’s easy and fast to setup.
Tip: Any site hosted on the Uplifter platform automatically uses HTTPS.
3) Use Structured Data for an SEO Boost
This is another easy setup, so don’t get deterred. Structured data is code embedded in your site that helps Google understand your site’s most important elements. There are plenty of free structured data plugins available for sites built on platforms like WordPress. So, you don’t need to worry about manually coding anything!
Tip: Once you have structured data, you can review it with this Google structured data tool.
Easy Strategies to Improve Local SEO
Below, we’re going to focus on the quickest and most impactful ways to improve local SEO. Don’t stress! We’re going to keep it simple. Here are four easy SEO strategies you can use today.
1) Don’t nap on your NAP details
NAP is an SEO acronym that stands for a business’ name, address and phone number. These details are the most important elements for your business, online.
These NAP details aren’t just limited to your site, however. They also appear across the web, so it’s important to make sure they’re accurate everywhere.
If your NAP details are not accurate, potential customers may find themselves dialing an out-of-service phone number when they want to get in touch with you.
Tip: Review your NAP details on directories, listings, and social media channels. Change any instances where NAP details are inaccurate.
2) Simple Keyword Research for local SEO
What are keywords?
Keywords are the words and phrases that people type into a search engine to find your business products or services.
As a business owner, you want to show up when someone searches for the products or services you’re selling. In order to do this, you need to include relevant keywords on your site.
For big businesses, keyword research can take hundreds of hours to perfect. But small business keyword research doesn’t have to be exhaustive. Since your business is local, your SEO focus can be narrower. This means your keyword list can be limited to as little as 3-10 keywords.
We recommend that your first keyword is made up of your school, studio, or club’s industry and its city name.
So, if you live in Surrey, BC, Canada and operate a dance studio you should start with the keyword phrase “surrey dance studio.”
Add that keyword phrase to the content and meta data of your site wherever it seems natural. Then, you can find some related keywords that people search for, like “dance studio hours,” and add them to appropriate pages as well.
You can easily complete additional keyword research using free tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Moz Keyword Explorer. Using these tools, you can enter your primary keyword phrase and then begin looking for related keyword phrases. So, if you enter “surrey dance studio” you may see related ideas for keywords like “surrey dance class.” You can add this keyword to relevant pages on your site, like a dance schedule page.
Avoiding Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO is the practice of manipulating search engines to improve a site’s ranking by using tactics that break search engine guidelines and terms of service.
Often Black hat SEO is aggressive, and purveyors of these tactics make promises that are too good to be true. Even if there is some short-term gain to be had, these practices can have a major detrimental impact to your business in the long-run.
Google continues to refine their search engine algorithms to emphasize quality websites. Similar to building report with new colleagues, it takes time to earn trust with Google.
Be patient.
Even if you see a competitor spamming or gaming the system, don’t follow suit. Protect the quality of your site by only placing keywords where they naturally fit. This means avoiding unnecessary keyword repetition or “keyword stuffing.”
If you see a competitor practicing keyword stuffing and ranking higher than you, rest assured that their advantage is likely to be short-lived!
Sooner than later, Google catches spammers, keyword stuffers, and those who try to “game” the system. And when they do, it’s very difficult to return to good standing in Google’s books.
Example of local keyword research for a dance studio in Surrey, B.C., Canada. When completing keyword research, focusing on keywords with higher average monthly searches will typically yield the best results. However, for small businesses with limited time and resources, it’s wise to avoid keywords with “High” competition.
3) Create or Claim Your Google My Business Profile
Google My Business is a service that allows you to control the way your business shows up on Google. It’s free to claim your Google My Business profile, so there’s nothing holding you back. To claim your GMB listing visit Google My Business and follow the steps provided.
Just like when you verify your business on Facebook, Google will need to confirm your legitimacy. Typically, this means sending a post card with a special code you can submit to Google.
Once your profile is claimed, it’s important to update your NAP details. In addition to those, you should also add a summary of your business, your business hours, and post announcements including promotions and sales.
4) Business Reviews & SEO
Getting customers to provide reviews about your business is good practice. Reviews help prospective customers understand the value that your business can provide.
According to BrightLocal, 88% of consumers trust reviews just as much as they trust personal recommendations. This means that your club, studio or small business can create a deep sense of trust in prospective customers just by getting reviews for your business.
The sales benefits are clear, but there are also SEO benefits to reviews too. Depending on the type of search, Google’s algorithm may show ratings from your business reviews directly in search results.
So, if your business has higher ratings than your competitors, the ratings in your search results can cause more searchers to click on your site listing. This translates into more traffic for your website which is a big win.
Looking into the crystal ball of SEO, some experts have also suggested that Google will continue to increase the value of business ratings. This means businesses with higher rated customer reviews could be seen more favorably, not only by customers, but by Google’s search algorithm as well.
These experts suspect that Google wants to move away from purely technical ranking signals and toward more human signals. This move could make sense but what Google does next is anyone’s guess. Regardless of the depth of their SEO impact, reviews can help you increase traffic and get more customers which is the true goal of SEO.
Local Search Engine Optimization Can Be Simple
As you can see, optimizing your business for local search engine optimization can be quick and simple. The three structural local SEO changes may sound complex but all three steps can be completed in under an hour. The best part is, each of those steps are “set-it and forget-it” changes.
Once you have a solid local SEO structure in place, the upkeep is minimal.
When it comes to local SEO strategies and tactics, the upkeep can be minimal as well.
Checking your NAP details across directories and social media channels only takes a few minutes, once every few months.
Managing your Google My Business listing can be as time intensive as creating weekly sales promotion posts or as simple as a one-time profile setup.
Keyword research and setup can take a few hours at the beginning, but it too requires only minimal quarterly upkeep for small businesses. Lastly, getting your customers to complete reviews is typically an ongoing quest, but it can be a simple, passive task.
All together, a small business’ local search engine optimization can be maintained with only an hour or two of work once every few months. Of course, if you’re in an ultra competitive market, there are plenty of extra ways to improve your local SEO. But for most clubs, studios and schools, a small time investment can have a big impact!
If you have any questions about local SEO, feel free to get in touch! We’re always happy to help.
