As an Arizona business owner in your community, you understand that SEO is important – it is, after all, the way that users will find you in order to be able to buy from you. But how good is your local ranking? You see, many business owners are very keen on SEO but what they forget to do is local ranking. This is the kind of ranking that appears when people who are close to your location search for your products or services. If for instance, you own a confectionery shop, you would want everyone in your local community to buy cakes and cookies from you. The problem is that when they search for “cakes + the name of your local town” they don’t find you. Instead, they are driven straight on to your competitors all because you have not focused on doing a local ranking.

This is a much-discussed topic with different people giving different opinions of what business owners can do to get local ranking. The long and short of it is this: if Google has complete and very specific information about your business they will give you better local ranking. In other words, they want to know the name, the address, the directions, opening and closing hours, photos and so on. The more information they have about your business the better local ranking you will get.

The other thing that will affect local ranking is reviews from your customers. When Google is ranking it will look on the major review sites to see what your customers have been saying about you – in other words, they reward good businesses with better local ranking. Every time a customer comes into your shop you should give them stellar service and then ask them to go online and leave a review about you. You should also set up a testimonials page on your website so that they can comment there as well. It is a good idea to manage and respond to reviews – it shows that you value your clients.

Do not forget to do these things for your mobile website as well. Most users are new shopping through their mobile devices. It is up to you to make sure that you do mobile website design so that when users look you up on their phones they can find you. Once it is set up make sure that the site ranks well for local searches.