While a website obviously enables a business to target a specific group across the whole world – vegan travellers, for example – the target audience for your business might actually be located in or near where you live.

So how do you target that group?

Local SEO (search engine optimisation – the practice of trying to improve a webpage’s organic ranking (ie, not paid for) in search engine results pages and increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to that webpage).

There are certain things you can do to help improve your site’s rankings in the search engines when people in your local area search for information that your business can give them.

Here are a few:

1. Google My Business submit and verify basic details about your business to Google’s free service, and engage with existing and potential customers across Google’s properties (asking customers for reviews will help)
2. Make sure your business is listed correctly at that other search engine, Bing
3. Also make sure it’s listed correctly on local business directories (eg Yellow Pages), review sites, local newspaper sites, Yelp, TripAdvisor (if applicable) and blogs
4. Build a local following on social media 
   • Start and join conversations
   • Ask people’s opinions
   • Hold back on the sales pitch
   • Share and like other people’s tweets/posts
   • Use local hashtags, place names and check-ins
5. Choose your social media platforms carefully. Think about where your customers are and also where you’re most comfortable. If your customers are on Instagram but you’re not and you don’t like it, hire someone else to post on Instagram for you. Avoid setting up a Facebook page, Twitter account, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and Pinterest and then ignoring most of them. If you’re going to set them up, be present regularly and frequently
6. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly (ie responsive) and is quick to load (eg no huge photo files – read more here)
7. Add your business to Apple Maps
8. Consider listing your business on industry-specific platforms, particularly if they have sections based on location
9. Make sure your business’s name, address and phone number are formatted and spelled consistently everywhere they appear on your website, including the header and footer
10. Make sure your site includes all types of content – text, photos/graphics and videos. People like to consume information in different ways and will stay on your site for longer if you cater for them
11. Think about the keywords or phrases you want to rank for, especially local ones (you can use synonyms). In other words, what search terms do you want to try to make sure your site shows up for? ‘Ice cream’? Or ‘ice cream Stoke-on-Trent’? ‘Magician near me’, or ‘magician for corporate events Surrey’? Either hire someone to do some keyword research for you or have a look at one of the free tools yourself, starting with Google’s Keyword Planner (they’ll want you to spend money on ads but you can use the planner free of charge)
12. Focus each webpage around two to three keyphrases and place them in headlines, sub-headlines, throughout your text and in hyperlinks
13. If your business has a great story to tell that will help or entertain your local market in some way, send it to your local newspapers and magazines, or invite them to interview you
14. Start a blog that helps people so that you can build trust and people can get to know your company. If you’re in the catering trade, give them recipes, ideas where your products might fit into their lives (birthday parties? A wedding?) or maybe explain the process of making your product
15. Sponsor a local event or sports team so that your site gets a prominent link from the event’s or team’s website