079: How to Optimise Your Website for Local SEO

In this episode, Jules White shares practical local SEO tips tailored for ecommerce businesses who want more local customers to discover—and buy from—their online shops.

Whether you offer local delivery, pop-up stalls, or click-and-collect, this episode walks through how to improve your visibility in local search results, even without a physical shopfront. Jules explains how local SEO works, why it’s easier (and often more powerful) than broader national SEO, and how to take advantage of features like Google Business Profiles, website content, and location-specific backlinks.

Key Takeaways:

• How to use a Google Business Profile (even without a shop): Why it's one of the easiest and most effective ways to appear in local search and how to optimise it with product photos, updates, and reviews.
• Adding local signals to your website: Tips on using local keywords in product descriptions, reviews, blog posts, and even image alt text.
• The power of category pages for SEO: Why these often-overlooked pages can help you rank for valuable local and product-related searches.
• Getting local backlinks and collaborations: How links from directories, events, and nearby businesses can boost your authority in your area.
• Structuring your content for search engines: From schema markup to creating location-based pages, Jules explains how to help Google understand what you sell—and where.

If you want to increase traffic and sales through your existing website, this episode is full of actionable strategies to help you grow your local presence.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• 🎧 Episode 023: Quick Website Traffic Wins with Local SEO
• 🔍 Free Beginner's QuickStart Guide to SEO
• 📦 Join The Website Growth Club – Simple, bite-sized SEO and website tweaks to help you get more traffic and conversions

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & What This Episode is About
• 0:47 What is Local SEO (and Why You Should Care)
• 1:27 Why Local SEO Also Works for Online-Only Businesses
• 3:57 Google Business Profiles: A Must-Have for Local Visibility
• 8:28 How to Optimise Your Website for Local SEO
• 12:48 Boosting Local SEO with Backlinks, Content & Category Pages
• 16:25 Quick Recap & Where to Start
• 18:02 Final Thoughts & How to Get Ongoing Support

Transcript

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS

Welcome & What This Episode is About 

Good morning. Happy Friday. Today I'm going to talk about increasing your local visibility.

If you've ever wondered how to get more people in your area to discover and buy from your online shop, this episode is for you. So we're talking about local SEO.

Whether you deliver locally, offer pickup, or do pop-up events, these tips will help you get seen by local customers in your area.

What is Local SEO (and Why You Should Care) 

So local SEO is where you show up specifically in local search queries. These are queries where people type in things like "near me" or a specific town or place.

Sometimes Google knows that queries are location-based just by what you are typing. Google often knows our search intent and is very good at determining it when we look for things.

That's part of it; it's all those queries where local people are looking to buy something, whether a service or a product. Whatever they're looking for, that's local search, and it can be really powerful for businesses.

Why Local SEO Also Works for Online-Only Businesses 

It's one of those things that I think even if you are a business that only sells online and all your customers buy just online.

If you don't have a local presence, if you don't actually have a local physical location, then you can still really massively benefit from local SEO. This is because unless your local location is the Caribbean and you're selling ski equipment, then realistically, there are bound to be some local customers in your area.

So it's really such a powerful part of SEO, and it's one of my favourite parts. If you've been here a while, you know that I am a big geek about Google Business Profiles.

I love their power and how much easier local SEO is compared to when you're trying to compete against the whole world. I mean, you might have a local area with a lot of local competition, but you're still not competing against the whole world, or the whole country, or whatever.

If you are thinking about traditional SEO and SEO outside of local, trying to show up in your local area is so much easier. That's part of the reason I love it, and also just the fact that if you are trying to find people locally, they're more likely to know people.

Then you're more likely to have a local network, and they're more likely to recommend people. I think people love to buy local as well.

So if you can show up in those local searches when people are looking for services and products like yours, then that can make a massive difference to your business. Even if you are purely online and don't have a local presence, you can still use local SEO to help your business.

Especially if you are a product-based business, even if you're not purely product-based, like if you're a salon and you sell through your online shop, we can often ignore that part of it. So businesses that.

Have a physical location and an online shop as well can often neglect the online shop part a little, or neglect that local SEO within that online shop part. Often, people who are just product-based businesses can forget about the fact that you have a local market available to you as well.

And so I'm going to give you some tips today on how you can tap into that local market. You can optimise your website to actually help you show up in those local searches.

If you don't have a physical location, if you are just doing local delivery or pop-ups or markets or local collection, you don't actually have a shop. Then it's worth thinking about what parts of local SEO you can use.

Google Business Profiles: A Must-Have for Local Visibility 

Google Business Profiles. It's one of the things that I would say first and foremost is to make sure that you are claiming and optimising your Google Business Profile.

Not all businesses are eligible for a Google Business Profile, but if you have a way for customers to actually come to your location or you deliver and provide services locally. It's not really designed for purely product-based e-commerce businesses.

It's designed for people who have one-to-one interaction with their customers. Sometimes you have to do a little bit of bending the rules a little bit.

What I would say is if you can try and get a Google Business Profile and see if you can get one. If you can get one, then great. Make the most of it and use it as you can.

It's often worth a try unless you have no way of interacting with local customers. If you don't and you're not delivering to local people, then again, I would start thinking about that.

Start thinking about how you can build your local authority. How can you start building your local presence to then maybe being able to get a Google profile?

The alternative is if you do actually have a physical location and you've got a Google profile, then one of the things you can do to massively help your local SEO is optimising that as much as you can. This basically will help you get shown in those local maps.

So if somebody is searching for a product or a service with "near me" in the search intent, whether they type "near me" or the actual location of where you are. Google will then be most likely delivering map results.

So you'll see that local map in the search results and actually Google Business Profiles with the AI overviews. One thing I saw this week was that somebody had done some research on the kind of things showing in AI overviews.

Often, Google Business Profiles are showing there when websites actually aren't. So that's a really interesting development.

Everything's changing with AI reviews and with what we're seeing in the search results. It's really important to keep an eye on what's going on.

If one of the things showing is those local map results, those Google Business Profiles, and you can optimise your profile and really get your keywords in there so that you are showing up as that authority, as that place where people can come and buy those things. Then that can be really, really helpful for your business as well.

So if you're trying to optimise your Google profile, and getting more sales and visitors through your online shop. You can include photos of your products there.

You can encourage your customers to also upload photos to your Google profile. Encourage reviews.

So get customers actually talking about your products and reviewing them as well. That's one of the biggest things with SEO; it's all about building trust.

Even if all you're doing is encouraging some more reviews on your Google profile, that can make a massive difference actually. I've got lots of episodes about Google Business Profiles Episode 023 is all about quick website traffic wins with local SEOs, so that's a good one to listen to. I've also got a few audit episodes about Google Business Profiles, so I'll link to those in the show notes.

What you can also do in your Google profile is add your products. Make sure that you've got the products you sell.

If you have a big collection of products, you don't have to have everything in there all at once. Just think about what your most popular product is.

Or what product you make the most profit on. What's the thing you really want to focus on?

You could even think about what you have a lot of stock of that you need to clear. That's a good place to start.

I always say just have one thing to focus on first, really. So go into your Google Business Profile.

Make sure that product is there, listed as a product in your profile. Actually upload something like a post or an update.

If you can put your own spin on what you like about the product, the benefits that your clients are getting from that product, that helps to raise the authority on that. If you can do that on a page on your website, then even better.

When you post on your Google Business Profile about that, link to that page on your website. That can really increase the trust between Google understanding why you are an authority on this particular product.

And why it should then show your business up when somebody is searching for that product or for the problem that that product is the solution to as well. That's one of the quick wins that I would always say with SEO.

If you can have a Google profile and you haven't optimised it, do that first. Focus on that first.

Use the features that you can just go in and look at whether you've filled everything out that you need to. Make sure you've completed all the sections available to you and make the most of it, basically.

How to Optimise Your Website for Local SEO 

So then coming back to your own website, what you can do to help increase the local visibility of your own website is mentioning your location in things like product descriptions.

If you can find a way to get it in there to mention that locality. That could even be if a customer has left a review of that product for you and you add that into the bottom of your product description with their location.

It's always you can just drip into that local locality and that building up your presence. Especially if that then ties in with you mentioning that location in other areas of your website as well, then it all helps Google to understand that local visibility and local presence of your business really.

There are lots of creative ideas of how you could get those local keywords. Mentioning the location of your business within things like blog posts that mention local events going on and how your product actually ties into that.

If you've got a link to the product manufacturer's page, and I would always say if you are writing your product descriptions, don't just take the information that the product manufacturer gives you. Don't just take their description and use that on your website, because that's just duplicate content.

How are you going to stand out against all those other websites that then also have that same product description? If you can actually put your own thoughts on that product, your own feelings on that.

Even if you just use something like Chat GPT to rewrite and rework that product description and think about what you want that particular product to show up for. If that's a local search that you want to try and increase visibility in, you can add those words naturally throughout that content.

Whether it is a blog post about local people enjoying that product or local people who've got results from that product, anything where you can tie those words in with local search queries, then that helps with that local visibility as well. You can use local keywords.

Phrases like "handmade luxury candles in your town" or "next day delivery in your town". You don't have to use that everywhere.

But if you've got a few pages on your website that mention that, then you can build up that local authority there as well. So you can have one main page on your website that talks about your local service or your local delivery area, or the things that you do locally.

If you have regular pop-up shops that you appear at, or regular markets that you are always at, having dedicated pages of your website with that on there. Ideally, if you can use that location within the URL of that page as well, then that is sending really strong signals to Google and all other search engines that your website and your business is in this location or is very much tied to this location.

So if you do that, then that also can be really, really helpful for your business, for your local search as well. You can also have things like blog posts about local events that are going on.

Even if it's an event that doesn't necessarily immediately tie into what you do, but if it's a local event that you go along to as a business and you meet other local businesses who also offer related items or whose customers might also be your customers. Even sometimes just creating some content like that can help with that local visibility.

It might not be a priority in your business, and certainly if you haven't done your foundational SEO, if you haven't got those kinds of things in place, it probably wouldn't be the first place you would start. But this is all about how we can improve that local visibility.

So it might not be top priority for you right now, but it's something you can think about over time: how can I have more pages on my website? And I say more useful pages, because we are not just creating content for the sake of it.

We want those pages to actually be doing a dedicated job. Actually, if you then become an authority on local events and local things happening that are relevant to your customers, then that can help increase that local authority.

But then you also might find that you get links coming into that page as well. So other people will link to it from their website.

That's helping with local backlinks, which can be really helpful as well. If there are any local directories, if there are any local business networks and things like that that you are also part of, then you can use that as well for your location-based pages that can really help you as well.

Boosting Local SEO with Backlinks, Content & Category Pages 

One of the other things to do is to optimise your product pages for local search as well. You can do that.

So I mean, optimising them for search first and foremost anyway, so making sure that you've got clear product titles, clear descriptions, and you are using those terms that people would type into Google around that product. Also, image alt text is the other place you can do that as well.

If you've got pictures of local customers using your product, you could add that in and you could add that into that image alt text with that location in there as well. It's just a subtle way of how you can then get that coming through those pages as well.

And category pages. If you've got loads and loads of products, or even if you haven't, even if you've only got 10 products, if you can have category pages, things like "shop our best sellers" or "handmade products" or, if it was selling beauty products and you had category pages for all your moisturisers, those kinds of things, those pages are often an opportunity to get more information across.

So you don't just have to have it as a shop page where you literally have icons of each of the products. You can expand on that a lot, and that can be a really powerful thing for SEO is making sure that those category pages often will be the pages that show up in those searches.

Because they are those pages that have got more information on them or should have more information on them. So if you've got a page about moisturisers, then you can really expand on that in terms of the benefits of the moisturisers in general.

If it's local, you can add those local search terms in there as well. "Best moisturisers in Bedfordshire" or something like that.

It sounds a bit cheesy, but there are ways you could then tweak that through and add that into that content to be valuable for your search results as well. But what it sort of ultimately does is all about helping Google to understand what you sell and where you are, basically.

So all of this local SEO is all about that really. It's talking about building local links, collaborating with other businesses.

So if you are doing any collaborations, then add that onto your events page. If you have an events page on your website or just add a short page about that, a short blog post about the collaborations that you're doing with other local businesses.

It helps to increase your authority. Again, hopefully, they will do the same thing back to you if you are doing those kinds of collaborations and it's bigger events and you are linking out to their web pages, that can also be really helpful as well.

So probably a good example of this is if you've got your product manufacturer, and they've got some event going on that you go to, and then you mention that from your website. Then that almost lumps you in with them a little bit.

It is something that's it, there is definitely a nuance to this and how you actually get it to a point where it's the right sort of path for you, but it's something that can make a big difference because their website is likely to have more authority than yours. What it's doing is then just bringing you into that world.

So you are linking out to that; you are part of that world. Especially if what you're talking about relates to that as well, then that can be helpful.

It's not as helpful as actually getting backlinks coming in from those high authority websites, but it certainly can be another thing that can make a difference. It can help you as well.

Then a couple of bonus tips really. So encouraging reviews, definitely.

That would be something that I would say on both your Google Business Profile and or if you've got the ability to allow reviews on your product pages on your website. If you can do that, then that is also helpful.

Add in location structured data, so schema markup on your website as well. I'm not going into technical technicalities of that, but if you can actually add your business location into your structured data in the back end of your website, then that can also really help because what that does.

Allows the bots that are crawling through your web pages, whether that is Google bots or AI bots, it allows them to read and understand more about your website and your business. Understand more of that from that specific structured data.

Structured data or schema is something that is like a standardised web language that allows those bots that crawl through it to understand more about your website in a more structured way, basically.

Quick Recap & Where to Start 

So just to recap, local SEO helps your shop get seen by nearby customers, and small tweaks can make a big difference. So I would say to optimise your Google Business Profile.

If you're looking for what to do first, definitely start with that. So making sure that it's as optimised as it can be, adding your products in, adding your services in, and adding posts regularly to keep your profile up to date.

Mention your location on website pages, even if it doesn't seem obvious that you would actually put that in there. If you can mention that in there and you build your local network and your local authority, that can really help.

Then collaborate with other local businesses and events to increase those local links, both incoming and outgoing on your website. That would be really helpful.

So I would say if you only do one thing today, go and update your Google Business Profile. Just update one product.

So just go into one of your products and have a look and see if it's up to date. Is it where I want it to be? Or add in, if you've not been in and done that, you've not changed your product since you first added them in there, what can you go in and update? Are there any new ones that you need to add?

Has there been a big release recently from your product manufacturer and you haven't added that into your Google Business Profile as a post or as a product? Then go and add that in if you can. And that helps to keep you active in searches.

So it helps to give locals a reason to check your profile out. If people are searching around that product, then your Google Business Profile could be one of the things that are taking up space on that Google search results page.

That's what we're ultimately trying to do, be there on the search results page so that people will then click through to our website and actually make a purchase. That's the goal with all of this.

Final Thoughts & How to Get Ongoing Support 

So if this episode has been helpful for you, then please don't forget to follow and subscribe and to share this with another local business owner. If there's somebody else who would like to improve their website visibility and increase their conversions, then let them know about the podcast and share it with them.

We are almost at 5,000 downloads of the podcast, which I'm really pleased with. We're just about to hit the 10-month anniversary, and I'm over the moon for the fact that we're just about to hit 5,000 downloads, and that's without promoting it on social media or paid ads.

So, if you'd like more help with SEO and your website, come and join The Website Growth Club Membership. It's simple, bite-sized SEO and website tweaks that you can make to generate more traffic and sales through your existing website.

We'd love to have you there, and I hope you've found this episode helpful, and I hope you have a lovely weekend, and I'll see you soon. Bye.