Your competitor down the street is not outranking you on Local Pack because they’re smarter than you. They’re outranking you because they picked five things to do right while you were busy trying to do fifteen.
This is one common mistake we’ve seen most local business owners make over and over again. They read some “complete guides” online full of 40+ tactics and try to half-ass everything and six months later they have nothing to show for their efforts. Meanwhile, the place two blocks over has a boring but optimized Google profile, proper listings, and responds to reviews within 24 hours. That’s it. That’s their secret weapon.
If you aren’t willing to roll up your sleeves and do this stuff yourself, this is precisely the type of work affordable digital marketing services for local businesses are perfect for, since most of it is quite boring and easy to ignore. However, if you want to handle it in-house, these are the five actionable tips that will boost your local search rankings (plus realistic costs and drawbacks for each).
Table of Contents
1. Publish content built around what your area actually searches for
Generic blog posts are bad for local SEO because a roofing company in Phoenix and a roofing company in Portland have very different audiences and therefore need very different content. The same goes for email. If you’re a solar company trying to figure out what kind of solar email marketing content to send to your subscribers, you’re likely seeing that your best open rates come from localized tips, reminders, and announcements rather than a generic solar marketing post that everyone gets. Local content is far more likely to get engaged with by recipients and then shared and linked to by those who found it helpful.
What this costs: Nothing if you can write it yourself. $300 to $800 per post if you hire someone who knows what they’re doing to write it
The good: Topical authority for a specific location, content for your Google Business Profile and social media, and internal linking opportunities.
The bad: Less predictable results than other techniques, requires research on local trends
2. Build your Google Business Profile
A claimed profile listing with just the name and phone number is not an optimized profile. Google penalizes profiles that aren’t fully optimized by pushing down their search rankings. Profiles that are optimized have accurate categories selected, service areas designated, business hours updated, attributes selected, high-quality images uploaded, and posts published on a regular basis. One reason why your competitor’s business profile appears in the local search results while yours doesn’t is because they dedicate time to maintaining their business profile whereas yours stays stagnant after the initial claiming and setup.
What it costs: Nothing, if done manually (but it’s time-consuming); tools like Localo (to manage your listings) may cost 39$ per month, per profile.
The good: It’s free (if you’re willing to put the time in), gives direct exposure to your business, simple to set up, and generates results, relatively quickly, after initial setup.
The bad: It’s a time-commitment. One that most people don’t have, hence why the aforementioned competitor has more time to update their listing frequently.
3. Make your business information identical everywhere
Make sure that your address, name, and phone number are exactly the same on your site, Google, Yelp, Facebook, and other directories. It’s bad practice to have a listing with a different Suite Number, or an old phone number in a few places because it confuses Google about which business is legit and hurts your ranking. Plus, it’s a pain to clean up, which is why it’s often left unaddressed until someone calls the wrong number.
What it costs: Moz Local charges $16 to $33/mo per location based on your plan. Whitespark’s citation tools start at $10 to $200/mo.
The good: Targets an optimization that many competitors will neglect, takes little time or effort to clean up, directly impacts local search rankings
The bad: Can get expensive for companies with multiple locations, old or incorrect listings can take a long time to fix.
4. Reply to the clients who leave reviews on your profile
A business with 40 reviews with responses from the owner to each and every one of them will always rank higher than a business with 150 reviews and no responses. Google’s local algorithm favors freshness, and customers who read reviews before calling want to know that there is a real person on the other end who cares. Request reviews from customers after a good experience, and respond to each and every review in a timely manner (ideally, within a few days) to maximize your ranking potential.
What it costs: Totally free if managed manually. SE Ranking offers local reviews monitoring from $129/mo.
The good: This tactic directly impacts your local search ranking and conversion rate, is completely free except for the time you spend on it, and is an excellent way to build trust with potential clients.
The bad: It can be emotionally challenging to respond to negative reviews, and monitoring reviews and responding to them across multiple platforms can be time-consuming if you are not using the right tools.
5. Chase local links, not national ones
A link from a chamber of commerce, local newspaper, or community sponsor page will have more link equity than a guest post on a national website. Sponsor a local charity, get added to a community resource guide, or collaborate with another local business on a cross-promotion that earns you a natural backlink.
What it costs: Sponsorships and partnerships can be free or cost several hundred dollars. Outreach-based link building through an agency can cost $500 to $1,500/mo.
The good: Builds local relevance beyond just SEO, can generate referral traffic in addition to SEO value
The bad: Takes longer to build than buying links at scale, fewer opportunities in smaller communities
The Bottom Line
None of these five work in isolation. A Google Business Profile with zero reviews will still lose to a competitor with an otherwise inferior listing but better reviews. And yes, Google still penalizes listings that are clean but bereft of local content. Choose the single most pressing issue in your listing and fix that first versus trying to implement all five together.
