Local SEO Optimization Tip for Small BusinessesAre you trying to figure out local SEO optimization for small businesses? It also starts with the words you use in your website’s title tag.

A title tag will be obvious on the SEO page of your website. It is typically what you call your website, but that is not really want you should make it. If you do not fill it it, Google will just random choose from any words on your home page, but you don’t want that either.

Let’s say you are looking for Italian Food in Stowe Vermont, here is a good example of a restaurant that did their title tag correctly:

The title tag is the portion in blue. They started with the name of the restaurant, then they stated what type of restaurant, then they followed with the city and state. This is perfect.

Now, you don’t typically have to put in the city and state as Google is smart enough to know where you are, but it does give you an advantage when people do a “near me” search. “Near me” searches are the most popular local searches, for example, “pizza near me”, “grocery store near me”, “vet near me”.

Then you have to think of all of the other ways that many people will search for a local business. Believe it or not, they search using words such as:

  • Top
  • Best
  • Good

Therefore, you will want to try to work these keywords into your site’s title tag as well.

I personally feel it is better to lead with what your business is, then the location, then the name because Google will only read the first 60 characters, so you do not want the actual search phrase to get cut off.

Once you have decided your title tag, then make sure your meta description incorporates the keywords for a one-two punch. The meta description in the example above is the wording below the title tag, and you can see how they repeat their business name, type of restaurant and location. This is why it came up on the first page of Google results when I search “Italian restaurants Stowe Vermont”.

When writing a title tag and meta description, you also want to think about the keywords people use for your type of business. In the example above, you can see how they incorporated the words “casual” and “family” into the meta description. This is because this is how people search for restaurants, i.e. family restaurant, casual restaurant, takeout restaurant. 

I hope this helps you understand how to improve local SEO optimization for small businesses.

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