As a small business owner, optimizing your WordPress website for local SEO will heighten your online visibility on the local search results page. A report from Go Globe states that 46% of searches on Google are related to local businesses.

According to W3 Techs, 37% of websites on the internet are powered by WordPress. It is an SEO friendly CMS platform that provides amazing features and tools to get better local search rankings, generate quality traffic, and expand the reach of your small business among the local audience.

Effective SEO techniques have a positive impact on your small business WordPress website. It will assist you to target more local audience, increase word-of-mouth, build reliability, and make a mark on the local search results.

Best Local SEO Practices for Your Small Business WordPress Website

In this blog, we will walk you through the various elements of the smart local SEO approaches to develop your local engagement and make you stand out from the competitive curve.

1. What are the Local SERP Element Types?

Local search engine results pages are displayed by search engines in response to a query by a user. These local search results can be categorized into organic and inorganic results.

Organic search results display the best conveying answers to the users’ queries that are decided by the search engines using algorithms. On the other hand, inorganic search results display sponsored advertisements.

Additionally, search engines display all these local organic and inorganic search results with various powerful elements that include snippets, top stories, knowledge panels, sponsored advertisements, and many more.

SERP elements depend on the type of query on the search box. To provide a better understanding of local SERP elements, we have consolidated the best elements and their appropriate placements. By optimizing these elements, you can establish a powerful online presence in the competitive small business environment.

Featured Snippets

Featured snippets are displayed at the zero position of the results page that includes a brief summary of the answer to the search query along with the title, URL, and link to the page. A featured snippet looks like this.

Sponsored Advertisements

Sponsored shopping results appear on the top of the SERP like Google AdWords for a transactional query with website name, pricing, and product image. This is how the sponsored ads look like.

In-depth Articles

By appearing at the bottom of the Google results page, in-depth articles boost the credibility of your brand. They comprise separate blocks with three search snippets related to the users’ search query. It looks similar to this.

SiteLinks

Sitelinks are the elements of the results page that display separate links for your prices, login, about us, contact, jobs, and other brand-centric pages. These user-friendly links help users to easily identify and navigate through your website. Here is an example of a rich site link.

Social Media Boxes & Top Stories

By appearing at a little less than halfway down on a results page Twitter boxes and top stories enlarge your brand awareness. With an active presence on social media and press releases, you can get placed on these impressive packs. Here it is.

Videos

Knowledge Graph Panel

Knowledge Graph panel is an effective SERP element that displays your detailed brand information on the right side of the search results. Google retrieves information about your brand from three sources including Wikipedia, Wikidata, and CIA World Factbook. It appears like this on the results page.

Related Queries

Normally, the related queries box is displayed below the featured snippets that provide suggestions for the users’ search. Getting ranked on these boxes will enlarge your small business reliability among the audience. Here is an example of related queries. 

Local Teaser Packs

Local teaser packs are a powerful element on Google’s search results page that displays information regarding operating hours, reviews, pricing, images, etc. A local teaser pack may look like this. 

2. How to Improve your Small Business Local SEO?

In today’s online market, local SEO has a huge impact on the success of any local business. According to SEO Tribunal, 97% of people learn more about a local company online than anywhere else.

If you are running a hairdresser salon, beauty spa, fitness studio, or any other small business, you can attract more local audience to your brick-and-mortar store through powerful local SEO techniques. A report from Hubspot states that 72% of consumers who perform a local search visit a store within five miles from their current location.

Moreover, with smart local SEO strategies, you can showcase your business on featured snippets, social media panels, local teaser packs, and other components of the search engine results page. Here, we have curated the top 3 ways to boost your small business local SEO.

A) Boost Your Local SEO with WordPress Plugins

Choosing the best WordPress local SEO friendly plugin plays a significant role in meeting the efforts you take to get appreciable rankings in the search results. Here, we have discussed the best local SEO plugins that perfectly boost the online visibility of your WordPress small business website.

 Yoast SEO

Out of all the competitor WordPress local SEO plugins, Yoast SEO offers exceptional features to improve your rankings. It provides step-by-step guidance for researching the keywords, creating excellent content, choosing the right topics & headings, and more.

All In One SEO Pack

All in One SEO plugin is a beginner-friendly plugin with a user-friendly interface. It is compatible with various WordPress plugins like WooCommerce, WPML, etc. By integrating this effective local SEO plugin, you can add tags, generate XML sitemap, avoid duplicate content, much more.

SEO Image Optimizer

SEO Image Optimizer is one of the popular WordPress local SEO plugins that makes the best use of images in content for SEO ranking to avoid SEO issues related to the improper placing of images. This plugin is compatible with WordPress themes, WooCommerce, and many others.

WordPress plugins make anything easy from installation to customization and improve your small business exposure in the online world.

B) Develop Your Small Business Local SEO with Schema Markup

Whether it is an event page, industry page, blog page, or service page, search engines consider all the pages on a website as an ordinary page.

With the help of structured data like Schema Markup, it is easy to make search engines understand, crawl, organize and display your information like address, phone number, services, products, and others on the search results.

Schema is a legitimate tool launched by major search engine giants Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex that optimizes your small business website for local SEO purposes. After adding Schema to your webpage, you can test using Google Structured Data Testing Tool.

By implementing the Schema Markup, you can make search engines easily understand your content and boost up your exposure on the search results page.

C) Enhance your WordPress Website’s Local SEO with Google My Business

Google My Business(GMB) listing is becoming lifeblood for small business enhancement. This listing establishes your own unique identity across search engines and boosts your exposure in the local SEO market.

To rank your small business WordPress website on the results page, Google retrieves information from GMB listing. As you add your small business information on GMB listing, it will be displayed on Google Search, Knowledge Graph, Maps, etc.

With just a few simple clicks, you can easily get into GMB. Once the verification process gets over, you need to fill your small business name, location, phone number, operating time, photos, reviews, and other necessary details. More importantly, make sure that your business information is accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date.

3. Why Should you Choose Small Business Web as your Dedicated Local SEO Partner?

As a leading small business local SEO service company, we can provide out-of-the-box SEO solutions to drive more local traffic, generate high ROI, and get better rankings to your small business WordPress website.

We understand your business type, target audience demographics, services offered, competition in the market, and other related details. After obtaining complete knowledge about your small business, we implement the most effective local SEO techniques like keyword research, SEO friendly content, and more that increase your brand voice on the search results.

Additionally, we offer full-scale, highly professional, and result-oriented white-label services at affordable prices that make you look great in front of your local customers. Stay visible to your local customers through our small business local SEO services.

To Sum Up

Optimizing your small business WordPress website is not a piece of cake. It involves various activities that include monitoring your website, tracking the performance, updating the content, and many more.

For implementing successful local SEO for small business WordPress website, it is crucial to stay updated on the search engine algorithms, guidelines, and many others. Professional SEO service providers like Small Business Web will be up-to-date on the local SEO practices and make your small business WordPress website well-optimized for local SEO.

If you want any assistance regarding local SEO for your small business WordPress website, feel free to get in touch with us! Drop us a message or give us a call +1 (919) 234-5140 at any time. We are happy to work with you!

Which local SEO technique are you implementing for your small business WordPress website? Share your thoughts in the comments below.