If you’re like most search engine users, you conduct a lot of search queries that include the phrase “near me.” Seeking out close-by businesses is one of the most common uses of online search, so it goes without saying that local businesses need to optimize for these queries. The troubling reality is that many businesses don’t optimize for local search queries, however, which means they forfeit opportunities to be discovered by local consumers.

The good news is that it is possible to position your business for improved visibility among local search engine users—though it will require some work, and it won’t happen overnight. To get started, we recommend the following tips.

Make Sure You Have Unique Web Content

Every page of your website should have written content that is completely unique. For extremely small companies that only have three or four webpages total, this is a fairly easy task. Larger companies with multiple franchises or campuses, however, face a more difficult task. If your company has nine locations, your website really needs to have nine individual location pages—and each of those pages must have its own content. Copying and pasting the same content to each page will lead to duplicate content penalties, and significantly impair your local visibility.

Optimize Local Metadata

Once you have individual location pages with unique content, the next step is to ensure that these pages also have optimized metadata—which includes title and meta tags. The requirement here is to perform keyword research at the location level, and to find the ideal phrases to target for each individual location. As part of this research, we recommend investigating competitor sites to see what local keywords and keyword phrases they are targeting.

Secure Local Citations

Local citations—which simply refer to mentions of your company on the Internet—are sort of an SEO secret weapon. (We’ve blogged about how important Citation Services are before.) Local Chamber of Commerce sites and business directories are especially good places to look for citation opportunities. As you seek them out, though, it is critical to ensure consistency in how you present your business name, address, and phone number. When creating separate citations for separate locations, use that location’s specific phone number and address, and always enter it in exactly the same way. (For example, 123 Anywhere Street and 123 Anywhere St., though they amount to the same thing, will diminish the impact of the citation listing).

Optimize All Your Local Webpages

The bottom line for business owners is that you need your site to be easily discovered by local search engine users—and that means improving visibility for all local or geo-specific webpages. That’s a critical concern to any SEO strategy or integrative marketing plan. We’d love to talk more about that with you, and invite you to contact us at your convenience.