How Do I Improve My Local Findability?

For businesses that depend on customers from a specific geographic region, local findability is a crucial factor for their success. Whether it’s restaurants, shops, dental practices, or contractors, most businesses need local customers to survive and grow. Fortunately, there are numerous opportunities and strategies available to increase your local findability and reach the most relevant audience.

You can improve your local findability using several channels: SEA, SEO, and social media. In this article, we will not only list the commercial possibilities but also delve deeper into the SEO activities you can undertake to reach potential local customers.

Focus on the Right Locations

Before we start working on your local findability, it’s important to determine which location(s) you should focus on. Once you’ve determined this, you can look at which actions suit your business.

There are different types of local businesses that require a different approach. For example, a plumber will need to approach their local findability differently than a bicycle repair shop.

As a plumber, you go to your customers and are available in a limited region. Based on the distance you’re willing to travel for your customers, you focus on different areas/cities and villages.

A traditional bicycle repair shop, on the other hand, receives customers at a physical location to have their bikes fixed. Then you’re only interesting for a certain geographic range. People won’t drive 100 kilometers to have their bike repaired, which limits local findability to a smaller area.

How Do You Use SEA for Local Findability?

Search engine advertising is extremely suitable for ensuring or increasing local findability. Based on the above examples of the bicycle repair shop and the plumber, we will show you how to handle this with both Google Ads and Microsoft Ads.

Local Keywords for Local Interest

For both the bicycle repair shop and the plumber, you can use local keywords to cater to local needs. What are local keywords? Not very exciting, but they are words that contain a location in combination with the need someone has. For the bicycle repair shop, it could be ‘bicycle repair in alkmaar’ or ‘fix bike in haarlem’. And for the plumber, it’s similar with keyword combinations like ‘plumber in hoorn’ or ‘plumber needed in amsterdam’.

This way, you can target your ads to people actively looking for products or services in a specific region.

Location-based Advertising

Another way you can increase your local findability with Google Ads and Microsoft Ads is by showing your ads based on a specific location.

When setting up a campaign, you can choose to show your ads only to people who are in a location or within a certain radius of your business. This means that only people located in the locations you specify will see your ads.

You can choose to use only keywords for this, for example ‘plumber needed’ or ‘my sink is clogged’ in one or more locations. Anyone using these words AND located in the specified location will see the ad. Not everyone uses a location in their search query. This way, you prevent missing out on potential customers.

In addition to using keywords, you can also use other campaign types in the same way, such as display ads or Performance Max. Here, you use visual ads targeted at certain (relevant) audiences.

Use Ad Extensions

Finally, you can add ad extensions to your campaigns. Ad extensions are pieces of extra information that you can add to your ads.

Some useful examples are sitelinks, call extension (so people can call), and the location extension (with directions). By using ad extensions, you can not only show potential customers extra information, but you also make it easier for them to come into contact with you – locally.

Extensions also make your ads more accessible for use on mobile devices. Very handy for your local visibility. Think about it: when you’re looking for local products or services (a night at the cinema, a nearby hairdresser, etc.), you almost always grab your mobile. How easy is it then to show an interesting ad and let people click directly on a phone icon so they can call you.

The extensions that are most relevant for local findability:

• By adding a location extension, you ensure that potential customers can easily find your business from their mobile phone when they are nearby
• With a call extension, visitors can reach you within one click by calling from their mobile.
• Use sitelink extensions to offer extra links to a page on the website instead of just 1 page.

How Can You Use SEO for Local Findability?

In the field of SEO, search engine optimization, there are also several possibilities you can undertake to be found better locally. According to Google, there are three local ranking factors that influence local search results:

• Relevance
• Distance
• Authority

When you’re optimizing for local findability, it’s important to keep these factors in mind.

Relevance indicates how well your business profile matches the user’s search intent. Google estimates how well the services and products you offer match the search query that is placed.

Distance is the most obvious criterion for local findability. Google takes into account how far your business location is from the search query used, or the location from which someone places the search query.

Authority refers to the reputation of a business. The number of online mentions is an important criterion here. The consumer’s opinion is also taken into account; positively reviewed businesses are more likely to get a higher ranking in local search queries.

NAP Details

Let’s start with an important action for local SEO: mentioning your NAP details (business name, address, and city). This is the most important data that should be found everywhere. Make sure they are mentioned correctly and in the same way everywhere to be as clear as possible for Google. Therefore, mention your details on a separate contact page and put them in the footer of your website.

Google My Business

Google My Business is also seen as THE digital business card of Google (Maps). There are many businesses that don’t know they can adjust their information. When you customize the information and expand it with relevant content, you increase the chance that Google will show you in relevant local search queries.

Make the page as complete as possible; fill in as many fields as possible with current, correct information about your business. It starts, of course, with checking your business name, contact details, and opening hours. But there are more additional options. Adding photos and videos of your business and location (internal and external) helps to increase your authority. Does your business have multiple locations? Then claim each location and expand the content for all locations.

Through Google My Business, you can also share your products and services. This helps to make them more visible within Google and provides an overview to potential customers in a trusted way. Additionally, within Google My Business, you can share relevant information with users, such as blog posts, events, and offers. Make sure you keep this up to date and that you regularly share new content.

Tip: Also look at Bing Places for Business for adjusting your location details.

Google reviews help increase trust and your authority. People look at Google reviews of a business more often than you think. If you have many (positive) reviews here, it gives the potential customer a good impression. And because the authority of a business is also influenced by the number of reviews, it’s useful to collect as many reviews as possible. You can kindly ask your customers to leave a review or even offer an extra discount if they do so. Do you get a negative review? Make sure you always respond to it and try to resolve the situation as best as possible.

Local Content

By local content, we mean content, separate pages, that specifically deals with a place. It’s often a page that is specially set up for local findability. If your business has multiple locations, it’s wise to create a landing page for each location. This way, you can clearly communicate the NAP details per location, what products and/or services are offered at this location, and what people can expect at the location. This way, you increase the chance of being found organically on local search queries (like our earlier example ‘plumber in alkmaar’).

It makes no sense to create a landing page for every village or street just to have as many pages live as possible. Google in particular is smart enough to realize which villages or cities are in the region where you focus with your location(s).

How Do You Use Social Media for Local Findability?

When you’re working on your local strategy, you can’t forget social media of course. To begin with, it’s important that you can be found on social media at all.

Potential customers in your area might look for businesses through social media channels like Facebook and Instagram. Instagram, for example, is often used to find nice restaurants in the area. Therefore, create a business profile on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, and LinkedIn.

There are of course even more social media you could use, but these three are the most important (because they have the largest reach). Look especially at which social media fit your business. Does your business have the ability to take beautiful photos that can serve as inspiration? Think for example of furniture, home decor, fashion, and cars. Not all services or products lend themselves to social media. Keep that in mind.

Make sure all important information about your business is present on your social media profiles (NAP details, opening hours, link to website, etc.) and add local keywords to your profiles if applicable.

Hashtags and Content

When it comes to local possibilities via social media, hashtags play a big role. By adding a hashtag to your social media posts for the area you want to focus on, you increase the chance that potential customers will see your content. Users looking for a restaurant in Amsterdam, for example, will look at the hashtag #restaurantamsterdam for inspiration. Therefore, it can be a good investment to have professional photos/videos made for your channels. Especially on Instagram, good visual material can be important. Users or followers get a good picture of who you are and what you do. When that comes across well, it possibly leads to new customers!

Social Media Ads

Do you really want to reach only people in certain locations with the various social media channels that are interesting? Then that’s only possible by using ads. When setting up your campaigns, you can indicate which location (city, postal code, region, etc.) you’re targeting with certain products or services. You can adapt both your ads and your landing page to the location you’re targeting.

Conclusion

Hopefully, after reading this article, you have a better picture of the ways in which you can improve your local findability. Everything happens online nowadays, including the search for offline products and services. So it’s high time to tackle your local findability!

Would you like to create a strong local presence but could use some help? We’re happy to help you stand out from competitors and increase your customer base. Contact us without obligation and we’ll provide you with appropriate and honest advice.