Word of mouth and local ads can be a great way to attract customers from your area. But searching online can have just as much impact, if not more. In fact, Social Media Today reports that 97% of search engine users have searched online to find a local business. And 46% of all Google searches were looking for local information.

So if a business doesn’t rank in local search results, they could be missing out on valuable traffic and customers. In other words, local SEO could be the key to staying relevant and growing your business.

If you’re fairly new to local SEO, you may have a lot of questions and probably don’t know where to start optimizing. This guide shows you some essential local SEO solutions and helps you better understand the landscape. So let’s go right in.