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Small Business SEO: Local Search Engine Optimization

Two women identifying individuals chatting at a nail salon checkout

What Is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO), when done correctly, is one of the most important mechanisms a business can implement. By using specific keywords in webpage content, a business will rank higher in Google searches and is therefore able to reach a much wider audience.

Why Is SEO Important for Small Businesses?

For a smaller business catering to a specific area (a cleaning company or a restaurant), this might be a double-edged sword: on one hand, extra website traffic is a huge plus, but only if new viewers are interested in location-specific findings. This is where local search engine optimization comes in: by using this technique, your site will rank higher based on location-specific searches. So if someone were to look up “cleaning company Vancouver”, your brand new cleaning business would ideally be a top-ranking listing. This not only applies to Google searches, but to your listing on Google Maps as well. By having your listing on Google Maps rank higher, you’ll also be far more statistically likely to attract mobile users. Optimizing SEO for small businesses is often unique to the business, as you’ll see in our example.

The Importance of SEO for Small Businesses: A Case Study

We recently worked with a client called CaseMogul on their local search engine optimization. CaseMogul is a phone case company with multiple locations in Vancouver and Alberta. An initial survey revealed that CaseMogul had a search engine ranking of around 10 for both “Phone Repair Burnaby” and “Phone Repair Calgary”. After less than 8 months of careful landing page rephrasing, URL shifts to be more location-specific, and extra use of location-based keywords on each store’s subpage (i.e. adding ‘Calgary’ to each subpage for any store based in Calgary), CaseMogul’s search ranking rose to around 6. Presently, they rank between 1 and 4 for location-based searches. This is a prime example of how, by working on your local search engine optimization, you can give your listing on google maps a major boost and improve your search engine rankings.

Our Services

Here at Tiny Planet Digital, we offer a wide range of services that will improve your business’s local search engine optimization and help fortify its online presence. The three main components of a custom-designed strategy are assessment, planning, and management. As with CaseMogul, one of the initial services we provide is an audit for your website and social media, which lets us determine your starting point and provides us with enough information for a well-rounded assessment. An initial assessment on your small business’ SEO performance is extremely important, as it allows us to target your target customers even more. This assessment then directly influences how we formulate your custom marketing strategy, after which the next big step is implementation and tools for long-term management. And we don’t only focus on websites and social media: we also work on email marketing, Amazon and e-commerce sales, digital advertising, and much much more!


If you’re ready to be the next CaseMogul, then contact us to book your free consultation session so we can get started on upgrading your online presence.

This blog post was written by Frida Kitz.