WHAT IS LOCAL SEO?

Curious about what is local SEO and its value for your business? It’s the craft of surfacing in searches like “plumber in [your town],” guiding locals to your services. This episode shares how to use Google Business Profile and local listings to grow your presence. With local SEO, you’ll forge stronger community ties, attract nearby customers, and turn searches into lasting relationships.

How to Embrace Local SEO for Neighborhood Success

Local SEO is your pathway to becoming a community favorite, and it’s more approachable than you might think. Kick things off by setting up your Google Business Profile (GBP), loading it with local keywords, services, and mentions of your city or neighborhood. Link your website, and optimize it with location-rich terms and schema markup to anchor your local identity. Broaden your reach by listing on Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing Places, and your local Chamber of Commerce, earning trust from search engines. Track your wins with Google Analytics and GBP Insights, watching clicks and calls rise. By focusing on area-specific searches, you’ll soar in the map pack and search rankings, inviting more local customers to your business and solidifying your role as a community mainstay.

Listen to this episode below;

Episode Transcript – What Is Local SEO?

Jesse Dolan (00:19)
Hey there and welcome back to the show. This is Luminate Local and I’m your host Jesse Dolan. Been helping small businesses and local businesses succeed with SEO for decades now. And today’s episode is a big one, especially if you’re a business owner trying to attract more customers in your city, your town, your neighborhood, your backyard, locally is where we’re going with this.

Because we’re diving into local SEO. What is it? Why it matters? How to get your business showing up where it should, which is right in front of your local audience. Because if you ever searched for something like plumber near me, coffee shop in blank, your city, things like that, you’ve seen local SEO in action, you’ve done it yourself, and you want to be found for the same thing. If your business isn’t showing up

in those kinds of search results, you’re missing opportunities for sure. So let’s go ahead and fix that, or at least bring you through some steps here today. That’ll get you on that journey. So if you’re a local business owner, marketing manager, webmaster, somebody who is in charge of getting your website and your business entity found online, especially for local searches, then this episode is completely and entirely for you. You built something great.

You’re serving your community, serving your neighborhood, but your business isn’t showing up when people are searching nearby for the products and services that you have to offer. That’s a problem. So externally on the outside world, maybe you’re not appearing in local searches, right? Even though you have these products and these services, just like some of your competitors that are being found online, if there’s, you know, let’s just say there’s no difference between you and them.

But they’re getting found and they’re getting those local leads, especially in Google Maps. This is something that you’re going to want to get fixed for yourself and for your business and address. A local search is huge, whether it be something like near me, right? Or local or a search with the name of your city. Local SEO is a big part of SEO in general. So I’m gonna start there real quick just to break it down.

So SEO search engine optimization, right? We’re all familiar with what that is. But when we hear the phrase local SEO, just a small little nuance here, what does that mean? Well, the way I like to present it is that SEO is really about making sure that your business, your website, your entity is found. Let’s just say for the keywords, right? The products, the services, the keywords that you want to be ranking for, that you want to be found for.

Local SEO is just a little tweak on that. It just means that you want to be found locally for a particular geographic area, your neighborhood, your backyard, your metro, your city, your town, et cetera, your state even maybe. And so if we take SEO and we just get a subset of being found locally, that’s what we’re talking about. So again, it’s usually a keyword plus a near me type search or the keyword plus the city plus the town plus the neighborhood, whatever it is.

It’s being found for SEO that incorporates the product and service and the geographic reference when being searched. Okay. So that is local SEO. If you’re not targeting that, if you’re not playing the game that way, then you’re going to feel stuck. You know, there’s more business out there. You just need to be visible and people are searching. And let’s be honest, it shouldn’t be

super hard, right? If you’re banging your head against the wall, how do I get found online? How do I show up in the map pack? There’s some things, some specific things that you need to do. And that’s exactly what local SEO is going to help you execute, accomplish, and ultimately get found for, right? So I know it can be frustrating. There’s a lot of moving parts. There are a lot of different things to do to set this up.

As I said earlier, I’ve been doing this for decades with businesses and helped hundreds of businesses do this in addition to my own businesses. So very well versed in the nuance for local SEO. And the good news for you is it’s something that you can also learn and implement yourself. I’m here to guide you through those. Going to go over some highlights here today. Hopefully you’re prepared to take some notes, maybe some action items, things like that. But we’re going to share some tips and tricks on.

You know, what is local SEO? Why is it important and why it matters to you and what you need to do to get found locally in your area. So let’s break this down into some practical and clear action items for you. So first we’re going to talk about understanding the difference between SEO and local SEO. Traditional SEO focuses on those broader searches. Like I said, local SEO is geo-focused. Now a lot of people may not realize that Google uses

multiple points, if you will here, right? Or multiple search engines, I should say, when it’s showing you the results on the search engine results page. The map pack, if we’re all familiar with this, when you do a, let’s just say a Google search, right? For something near me or something local, you’re going to see the map listing and then maybe three, maybe five businesses, it depends on where you’re at for your geographic market and what you’re searching for.

But you’re going to see that map pack with those results. And then you’re going to see the traditional search engine results, right? All the different web pages underneath that. So there’s actually two different brains, two different algorithms, two different search engines within Google that handle that. One is the Maps search and one is just the traditional Google search. When we do a search on google.com and it’s for a local search, Google will combine those two search engines, those two algorithms, those two functions and

show you that on one SERP, one search engine results page. That’s what that acronym stands for. With that map pack and then the traditional web links under that. So the first thing we’re going to talk about here is getting found and getting set up in that map pack. Before I do that, I do want to talk about reviews, which ironically enough, once you get set up in your Google Business Profile, you’re going to be able to get reviews. But what I’m talking here is reviews for

this show, Luminate Local. Getting reviews is a huge part of us knowing that we’re on the right track. It’s your way to tell us that you like what we’re doing, that you support us and that you appreciate it. We love the feedback. We read them all internally and really do value them. And then we also will read them on the show here to give you a shout out and to share the praise with everybody else.

If you’d like to leave us a review going out to luminatelocal.com, we would really appreciate it. Just scroll down, click the button for reviews. You can read a bunch of reviews yourself. And more importantly, you can find buttons to leave us a review on whatever portal you choose, be it Facebook, podcasts, Google, things like that. We’d love to hear from you. And again, we’ll read them on the show.

This one here I have today is a five-star review from Google for Sandra Meyer. She says I was completely impressed with his professionalism and customer service. Talking about me, I took an SEO webinar workshop. He followed up and gave me more tools to work with. So yeah, I remember talking with Sandra, trading some emails. It was great. She was on a webinar that we did about local SEO. Very similar to the topic that we’re talking here today, actually.

And yeah, that’s what we do is whether it be webinars, podcasts, YouTube like this. We love teaching, love showing and enabling business owners, marketing managers to do this kind of local SEO stuff. So if you think that any other episodes that you’ve listened to here have been beneficial to you, or if you’re vibing on this one and you like it, we’d love for you to go on out to our website, leave us a review and yeah, close the loop on that for us.

All right. So getting back into it here, let’s talk about setting up your GBP and how to show up in that map pack, because for local SEO, it’s a must that we have to be showing up in that map pack, particularly for Google here in this example. If you don’t have a GBP, I’d say not to be dramatic, but stop everything right now and go claim it. We’ll be covering that in another episode. So if you don’t know how to do that, I’ll just touch on it real quick.

You can just simply do a Google search for Google Business Profile. Just go to Google, type that in. It’ll bring you to the spot in Google to set that up completely free. It’s one of the most powerful tools you can do for your local visibility. Okay. Just not to hype it up too much, but that is the case. It’s completely free. It’s put out by Google for you to show up in Google, right? You’re gonna wanna do this.

So follow the steps. You have to verify your business. Again, I’m not gonna do a deep dive into that here today, but get it verified. They make you verify so not every Tom, Dick and Harry can go out there and set this up and just spam the system. So you have to prove you’re a legitimate business. And once you do that, you’re gonna wanna fully set up and optimize your profile. Take advantage of everything that they have, fill it out, upload photos, list your services, your hours, your business categories.

You can write a description, which is very important for getting your keywords in things like that. This is very important for Google. This information decides who appears in those map results, right? There’s other things as well to really leverage your map listing once you get it set up. But first things first, you’re not going to show up in that map pack if you don’t have a Google Business Profile listing. Do that. Okay.

Next, as part of the optimization and setup for your GBP is to link your website to your GBP. And actually, let me go back real quick. We talk about setting up your GBP and optimizing it. Let’s just talk about as an example, but you’re gonna wanna apply this thought and process to your entire GBP listings when you’re listing your products and your services and those descriptions. But for your business description, you’re gonna wanna make sure you use your local SEO keywords, right?

Hopefully you’ve done some keyword research, you know what you want to be showing up for, you know, if you’re looking to be found for red balloons, make sure you’re talking about red balloons in your Google Business Profile description. Additionally, let’s make it local. Let’s talk about the cities, the counties, the neighborhoods, whatever it is you’re trying to serve and be found for. Make sure you’re mentioning those geographic references also in your descriptions for your GBP. Okay.

Now another spot getting back to it is to link your website to your GBP. There will be a field on your GBP setup for you to list your website. And this will allow people when they click on your GBP listing to then see your website, click on it and visit your website, which is great for human behaviors. But also what this does is it kind of cements into Google that like, this is my business. Here’s my name, my address, my phone number, my descriptions, my product, my services, photos.

You get reviews, which is all another topic, right? But you get reviews ability. Once you set up your GBP, that’s where you get your Google reviews. But then you also say, this is my website. And now, like I mentioned earlier, there’s those two different systems within Google. There’s the Maps search and then the traditional website search. Once you set up your GBP and you list your website, you’re kind of cementing the fact to Google, like this is me, this is my GBP profile, and this is my website.

And you’re kind of connecting, right? Both of these things together. And what’s good for the goose is going to be good for the gander here. So set up your GBP, link your website. And then we want to turn our attention to optimizing your website. So whether it be your homepage or maybe there’s a local landing page, whatever it is you’re putting into that GBP for your website link, we’re going to want to make sure we optimize that page.

You do want to apply just to be clear. You want to apply local SEO to your web content in general. But for this episode here today and what we’re diving into, talking, we’re talking specifically about the page that you’ve linked to from your Google Business Profile, okay? So if you serve multiple cities, consider having those listed on there, right? Do you wanna make sure you are declaring what your service area is? You wanna be talking about the towns, the neighborhoods, the cities, the names of those that you’re trying to be found for, in addition to making sure that those core products and services are mentioned as well.

But again, just like your descriptions for your GBPs that I mentioned earlier, use the keywords for the products and services also use the keywords for those geographic, those geo references. And don’t be afraid to be super granular. There’s, if you’re in a neighborhood that’s larger and it’s very, maybe it’s not the actual name of the city, but it’s a district or a neighborhood within there. If people are familiar with that and it’s popular and searching for it, you can use that in addition to actual proper city names, county names, zip codes.

There’s a lot of ways you can drive geographic references. If you’re unsure of what to do there, always check Google, right? If you know the keyword you’re trying to rank for and you’re not ranking for it, do a Google search for it. Find out what those top competitors are doing. See what kind of content they’re listing on those pages that are linked to the GBPs. Just do some reverse engineering there and that can help you out. Also, this is where schema markup can potentially help you out.

What schema is, which is again, another topic. I’m not gonna deep dive on it here today. But that’s coding that you can list on your web pages that help Google search engines and other bots and AI agents know what this page is about. In addition to whatever we human beings would see on the front of that, if you will, the page that we’re viewing. So schema is a way to just kind of ensure that some of this information is relayed to any of the bots. Again, what’s your address? What’s your geo coordinates? Things like that. Take advantage of that on these pages as well.

And really this is all going to tell Google where you are, where you operate, what you have to offer, things like that. That’s what really kind of pulls all this in together. And if you can update your website in this way and set up your GBP in this way, those two together again, is going to be a little bit of a symbiotic relationship. You’ll find that if you’re optimizing your website properly, your GBP ranking will bump up. And you’ll also find that if your GBP becomes dominant, your website rankings will bump up.

And that’s going to be a great mix for you. If we talk about local SEO specifically within Google, the Holy grail, the thing that we’re looking for is to show up in the map pack and also be at the top of the natural website rankings right underneath that map pack from a psychological standpoint as an end user. If I’m doing a search for something and I see, you know, your business listed in that map pack and I see your business listed below it in the search engine results.

That just tells me that you’re dominant, you’re probably going to get my click and probably going to get my business. So we want to optimize and focus on both ends of that spectrum for your GBP listing and your website. Now we’re talking local SEO. A lot of that conversation there was dominated by references to Google. But local SEO is not just Google. It’s a big part of it, but it’s not just Google. We also want to make sure we’re listed in really anything else that’s locally focused.

I’m going to give a few examples, but there’s probably more beyond this. And it really just is going to depend on your industry or geographic location. What’s available to you, but things like Apple Maps, right? People are searching in Apple Maps all day long, specifically, you know, from mobile devices. So, I think 80 plus percent of all searches, if I remember correctly, currently are done on mobile devices. Right? So Apple Maps is pretty key. Bing Places being found in Bing, Yelp.

Local chamber of commerce, any of these other directories or portals that may apply to your business. If there are like Yelp is a good example. If there are websites and directories that not only will show up in Google and in search, but also act as their own search engines. Like if I’m going to go out to eat in the city that I’m not familiar with, I might pull up Yelp, right? I’m not going to go to Google and look for, you know, barbecue near me. I might go to Yelp and look for the best barbecue restaurants. Well, Yelp is kind of its own search engine in that way too, right?

So you wanna be listed in these things, you wanna be optimized within those things as well for the broader exposure in search, but then also within those portals themselves. Every quality listing that you get in these, going back to Google, is a trust signal to Google and expands your local footprint. So if you’re in Apple Maps, if you’re in Bing, if you’re in Yelp, if you’re in your local chamber of commerce, if you’re in all of these areas locally, Google and all the other bots will see that and that really helps elevate you overall, right?

So again, a very symbiotic relationship here in local SEO if you’re hitting on all cylinders. So that’s kind of a 20,000 foot overview of local SEO, what it is, some of the key components and some of the key areas to focus on. Now, if you’ve done all that or you’re doing all that, what you’re going to want to circle back to at the end is tracking your results and staying consistent. You’re going to want to use tools to track your rankings in local search and in Google Maps.

Do searches yourself. There’s products out there that can give you kind of a rough idea of how you’re ranking in different areas around town. Check your Google Analytics within your Google Business Profile. There are called insights where it’ll show you various stats like how many people have viewed your Google Business Profile, how many have clicked to call on your phone number, how many have clicked to visit your website.

If you’re the type of business where people can navigate to you and drive to you, how many times have they clicked to use directions, things like that. So you’re going to want to track these results, look at the analytics, see if it’s working and just like everything with SEO, do more of what works. And if something’s not working, you know, go back to the drawing board, fix it and try again.

Great part about digital marketing is we can track all of this and see if and when it is working, right? So pay attention to the traffic in Google Analytics, pay attention to your Google Business Profile. Google Search Console, GSC is another great one to understand how you’re showing up in Google search results. And then whatever analytics are available to you on any given platform like Yelp, pay attention to those as well.

Okay. So if you’re not sure where you’re at, just to kind of get a baseline or maybe you make these changes and you want to reevaluate where you’re at. A great tool that we have to offer for free is our SEO audit. If you go on out to luminatelocal.com, look for the yellow button at the top, or you can find it in the footer as well. Free SEO audit. It gives you a score of your page against whatever keyword you’re trying to optimize and rank for.

And it’s going to give you the highlights of where your site stands in terms of local SEO factors, like the GBP, the local directories, content, things like that. And also show you where some holes are, show you what’s good, you know, just again good, bad and ugly. It’s fast. It’s free. Use it over and over and it gives you a pretty good punch list for your clear directions on what your next steps are. Again, just head over to luminatelocal.com, look for the free SEO audit button and leverage that. So if you don’t take local SEO seriously, that’s okay. You’re just not gonna get those benefits, right?

Local search is happening all the time. If you’re not showing up in that map pack, you’re not showing up in that SERP, the results page. You know, nothing will really change for you, which maybe that’s okay. But if you are looking to drive success and get more leads locally in your own backyard and not have that business go to your competitors who are showing up in search, make sure you take action on these items here. If you do take action, you’re going to show up. You’re going to get more local traffic. You’re going to

be able to get reviews, right? Which is a big trust thing for people. You’re going to show that you’re a five-star business and hopefully dozens or hundreds of people have patronized you and agree. That’s great for the signals to us human beings for trust to click on you in the first place or to call you in the first place. But then also those are little mini testimonials that you can use in your marketing. There’s just a lot of great things that come with being dominant and showing up in local search. You can become the go-to business in your area, right? Earn that brand recognition.

Get more referrals, you know, people say, just down the road, you got to go visit this place. They do A, B and C, you know, really that’s the power of local SEO. It’s not just showing up and getting found, but becoming a great local business and being found everywhere, physically, digitally, you know, through the telephone chain of local neighbors and things like that too. So hopefully that helps everybody out. I think that’s a wrap for today’s episode. We covered what local SEO is.

A slight tweak on how it’s different from just broad and traditional SEO, some steps to take, why it matters for small businesses, especially for local businesses. And yeah, I think that should get you off on a good start. If you’ve got a question, maybe you want to dive deeper into any of the topics here for local SEO. Maybe if you’ve got something else that’s kind of been stuck in your craw a little bit, we’d love to hear your question and answer it on the show.

Big part of what we do. Go to luminatelocal.com, scroll down to the bottom, click the button for submitting a question. Give us your question, let us know what you’re thinking, what you want to have answered. If you’ve got that question, I’m sure there’s a bunch of other people that would love to hear about it as well. And if we use your question, we’re gonna send you out a free Luminate Local swag bag with some goodies. And that’s got some fun stuff in there. So yeah, check us out. Luminatelocal.com. Submit your question or again, if you want to leave us a review, let us know if we’re doing a good job. We would appreciate that as well and appreciate you all for tuning in. We’ll catch you on the next episode. Take care.

Start Thriving in Local Search Today

Local SEO is your chance to weave your business into the fabric of your community! This episode reveals what is local SEO, offering a guide to glowing in searches like “cafe near me.” Begin with a Google Business Profile brimming with local keywords, paired with a website that celebrates your area. Extend your roots through Yelp, Apple Maps, citations, and local directories to gain search engine confidence. Monitor your progress with Google Analytics, seeing visits and engagement grow. Whether you’re a baker or a landscaper, local SEO is your tool to connect with neighbors and thrive. Embrace these ideas today, and watch your small business become a cherished local gem, drawing crowds from your community!

Episode Notes and Resources

• Free SEO Audit Tool: Evaluate your website’s SEO performance with our free tool
• Google Business Profile

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