It’s not uncommon for local business owners to want to target a national audience, but neglecting local SEO just doesn’t make sense in most cases. If you own and operate a custom graphic t-shirt store in Minneapolis, for example, it makes sense to target a national audience in hopes of picking up a some online sales, but it only makes sense to do so once you have firmly established a strong local SEO marketing campaign. Why? Well, if your core customer base in Minneapolis, that’s where the most people who are going to be searching for your services are going to be able to find you.

At the national level, you compete against everyone. However, when it comes to local SEO, the competition is limited to other businesses in your area. If you are run a local business in Minneapolis, then local SEO in Minneapolis should be your first and foremost concern. In this article, I take a look at some of the most common mistakes people make when it comes to putting together a local SEO campaign.

1. You’re not even on the map!

Sure, you’ve got a website, and you’re ranked on the first or second page of Google … but you’re not at the top of the search results. By setting up a Google My Business page, your company’s website, address and phone number will appear just below the first couple of search result listings. This makes it incredibly simple for people in your area who are searching for your business’s products or services to find you.

[one_half]In the example to the right, you’ll notice that the first two listings are both for a company located in Virginia that sells custom t-shirts. Just under those search results, however, are listings for local businesses that also sell custom t-shirts as well. This is by far the biggest competitive advantage local SEO has over national search results.It’s not often that Google gives priority listings to any website (especially after the end of authorship), so when they do, take advantage of it and don’t ask questions. If you were to search for something like “pizza”, you’d see that even national chains optimize their websites for local SEO.[/one_half][one_half_last][/one_half_last]

2. You don’t list your location and phone number on your site.

When search engines crawl webpages, they take geo-specific terms into account when determining where it ranks for certain keywords. Having your location prominently placed in your <title> tag and footer will also help drive local traffic to your website. This will tell search engines where your company is located, which will help elevate your rankings when people in your area search for your products or services.

[one_half]In this next example, all I did was search for “zoo” on Google. In my search results, you’ll see that zoos in Minnesota dominate the top search results even though my search query didn’t include the word Minnesota.

Despite only searching for the word “zoo”, Google was kind enough to take my location into consideration when deciding what to put in my search results. If you were to do the same, you’d most likely end up with very different search results (as long as you’re not located in Minneapolis 😉 ).[/one_half][one_half_last][/one_half_last]

3. You’re inconsistent name, address and phone number (NAP) across platforms.

The way you list your NAP on your website, social media platforms and other third-party websites should always match the way you have it on Google My Business. If your NAP is inconsistently listed across the web, then search engines won’t be able to recognize them as belonging to the same company. This can lead to your website’s address being incorrectly attributed to other websites, which would diminish your site’s authority within your field.