Top 10 Mistakes Small Businesses make with Local SEO Efforts

Local search engine optimization efforts are key to building small businesses in a specific region. Companies serving a city or a province are recommended in their SEO marketing to target geography, otherwise risk wasting digital marketing budget on users they don’t need.

Even so, local companies continue to make big mistakes on local SEO efforts. For that matter, when discussing local SEO, some companies don’t even know whether their strategies are up to date. For example, almost 40 percent of all businesses cannot definitively say whether their website’s optimized for local SEO. That could be money wasted and a huge chunk of the marketplace you’re missing out on.

Any business with a physical presence in the local marketplace should have a website. When users come to search out your business, they’ll find your site associated to a local area and this will help to establish legitimacy. If you think you may be missing out on revenues because you don’t have a strict local SEO strategy in place, you’re not the only one. Here are the top 10 mistakes other small businesses have made in approaching locally-based search engine optimization.

 39 percent of businesses do not have a website that is optimized for local SEO. When a website isn’t optimized for local search traffic, it could mean many lost opportunities.
 37 percent of businesses do not have a verified Google My Business listening. A verified Google My Business listing gets your name out on Google Maps with a direct connection to your website. Post your contact information and get listed where consumers can find you!
 32 percent of websites are still not fully optimized for mobile devices. Considering more searches are done today on mobile than on non-mobile devices, mobile optimization is key to reaching customers.
 29 percent of business websites have not optimized their site’s content for local search queries. Although you have may a boisterous content marketing plan in place, when your keywords are not matched geographically and when you don’t make an effort to communicate you have a local presence, you could be missing out on clicks and sales.
 27 percent of businesses have not made the effort to get listed in local business listings. Business directory sites can play a huge role in further legitimizing your website and simultaneously act as advertisements to attract more attention to your pages.
 21 percent of businesses have never checked to see if their NAP – name, address, and phone number – are displayed on their website in the same way it’s published on directory sites and Google My Business.
 18 percent of businesses do not have any customer reviews to their name. When your website or company does not have any local reviews, it causes your website to appear amateurish or unverified. It puts doubt in the head of a user and may encourage them to use a competitor’s products or services instead of yours.
 16 percent of businesses do not have any localized blog content. If you don’t make your location known, it can make it difficult for users to see you’re a local company.
 15 percent of business websites have duplicate content on their location pages. Content that’s boilerplate or duplicated is not content that’s ever going to rank favorably on Google.
 10 percent of companies do not include a full list of contact information on their website. When you make it more difficult for customers to speak with you, it only leaves users frustrated.

Local SEO is so important to succeeding in a local marketplace. For businesses serving only a specific region, it’s integral. Launch your next local SEO campaign with Unlimited Exposure to guide you. Join us today for more details!