120: How Local SEO Can Help You Sell Online Services and Products

In this episode, Jules White explores how local SEO can play a powerful role in selling online offers, not just supporting brick-and-mortar businesses.

Jules explains why local visibility matters even if you sell digital products, online courses, e-commerce items, or services that can be delivered anywhere. She shares how Google uses location signals to build trust, why people are more likely to buy from businesses that feel local, and how tapping into regional search intent can help you stand out in a crowded online space.

Drawing on her own experience working with salons, e-commerce brands, and online businesses, Jules breaks down practical ways to use Google Business Profiles, website optimisation, reviews, and local backlinks to increase visibility for online offers. She also explains how mobile search, AI search, and personalised local results make this approach even more important.

If you have been overlooking local SEO because you do not run a physical premises, this episode will help you rethink how location-based strategy can support growth, authority, and trust for your online business.

Key takeaways

• Why local SEO is not just for brick-and-mortar businesses
• How Google Business Profiles can support visibility for online services and products
• Ways to use location signals on your website to help Google understand where you are based
• How reviews, local backlinks, and partnerships strengthen trust and authority
• Why local intent matters for mobile search and AI-driven search results

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Episode 116: How to Get Found on Google by Local Clients
• Book a Website Potential Discovery Call to find our how you can work with Jules to grow your website traffic & sales.

Transcript

Introduction

Jules White: Hi, it's Jules here. Welcome back to the Website Success Show, where I teach local businesses in beauty, health and wellness simple strategies to help you get your business showing up in search.

So the number one problem I solve for my clients is visibility. Getting your business to show up when people are actually out there searching for what you offer, whether that's on Google in maps or even in AI tools, this is all about making sure that when people are out there searching for what you do, that your business shows up.

Now I'm really passionate about local businesses and the power of local SEO, and so today I want to talk about how you can apply that to your online offerings.

The Power of Local for Online Businesses

Jules White: So if you aren't actually a local business, if you are an online service provider or an e-commerce business, or if you are a local business, but you want to sell more of your products, you want to sell more of your online courses, if you have anything like that, then I'm hoping today's episode will help you to understand how you can tap into the power of local.

Even for those bits which can be sold to anyone anywhere in the world.

Jules White: This is one of the things that I see very often. I've worked with a lot of online businesses over the last few years of my business, and a lot of the time I think people can forget about the fact that there will be people in your local neighbourhood.

And whether that means, you know, your village, your town, your county, or your state, if you're in the US.

There will be people locally that would like to buy from you. It's so much easier to stand out in local search than it is to stand out nationally or internationally.

People are much more likely to buy from a local business, and Google itself wants to know it, wants to understand where your business is. So that it knows that you are trustworthy and knows how you can help people.

And if you optimise your website and use some local visibility strategies, if you've got a Google Business profile, optimise that as well, then that can make a massive difference to finding customers in specific locations.

So you can actually look within your Google Analytics, you can look and see what regions and even what cities people have actually come through to your website from. And a lot of e-commerce businesses find that they do get quite a few sales from one particular area.

I find this with the podcast actually, that I find certain cities show up more often than others for people actually listening and downloading the podcast.

And people will always talk to local people, they'll always talk to people in person and get recommendations from friends. And that applies for products and services and podcasts.

And so I think there's that, that you will often see that in your data you'll see specific areas where you are actually showing up for your online offers as well.

So the main focus of local SEO is Google Business Profiles, and this was how I actually got into SEO itself from optimising Google Business profiles for clients.

I, about four months after I left my salon job, realised I was still on the Google Business profile. I was still a user on there and I was.

At that point I was building websites, trying to work out how to actually get people to find them. And I looked at the Google profile as I was taking myself off of it and realised that they'd had something like 3000 views on an image in one month.

And that was a real light bulb moment for me. And that's how I kind of explored this area of local SEO.

And there are so many things that I wish now I'd known when I was back in the salon and when I was in charge of the website back in the salon. I feel like if I'd have had the knowledge that I have right now, it would've made such a big difference.

We were always needing a steady stream of clients. We were always needing new product sales.

That definitely would've helped the business. We were always needing new staff.

All of those kind of things that I think actually if we'd optimised and if we'd known, if I had the knowledge as I say that I have now, then it would've made everything so much easier, even for things like the product sales.

So we actually didn't use to do e-commerce where we would send products out to people. But they could buy products through a Clarins microsite.

So Clarins Double Serum is a big product. Lots and lots of searches each month.

When I look in my SEO tool, there's 810 searches a month for double serum, 18,000 searches a month for Clarins Double Serum, and my SEO tool gives me a little difficulty score as well.

And Double Serum has a low difficulty. It's got commercial intent.

People, if they're looking for double serum, generally they are looking to buy some.

So if we had had some information on our website, a page that talked about double serum and the location that the salon was in, it would've made a massive difference to just being able to sell more of that and to show up locally for that particular product.

And that applies for all of your products. And the same applies if you've got online courses and those kind of things, if you can tie in some local intent with that, then that can make a massive difference.

So I do this on my own website, where in my footer, which it would appear on pretty much every page of my website, then that says something like based in Marston Moretaine helping women in business worldwide.

And I definitely could improve that. That's one of the things that I want to do this year is do some work on my own website and improve those kind of things.

But that just gives an indication to Google where I am actually based. And I can see in my Google Search Console the local search terms that I'm actually showing up for.

Local Search Results and Product Visibility

Jules White: Now, if somebody was typing double serum into Google, and the salon hadn't actually optimised for that local search term, it's unlikely out of all of the 395 million results on Google for the term double serum you might think, oh, there's no way you could stand out for that.

But actually the top result that I'm seeing in that is a local search result. So it's from Clarins’ website and it mentions my local visibility.

So I'm guessing if I click on that, it's gonna take me through to a local store, and I can see below that, I can see one for Boots, Milton Keynes, and it says it's closed.

So if you were a local salon and especially if your business is then open, Google is going to be showing that up.

So if you do a late night or something and you are there when some of these bigger stores have closed, then Google will show that up because they assume that people want to buy it there and then.

Now that's specifically for businesses that do have a local presence. But even if you are just selling online.

So even if it is a pure e-commerce business and you can ship that product anywhere, if you've targeted that local SEO within your website, then Google is much more likely to show you up there and actually understand how you can help people in specific areas.

Targeting Multiple Locations

Jules White: And this doesn't just have to be for the area around where you and your business is actually based, if you notice that lots of people in Newcastle buy a particular product or online service or online course or something.

You can spend some extra time optimising a page of your website and creating a specific page on your website that targets local keywords for Newcastle.

So you can mention local areas. You can particularly mention problems that people in that area may face.

So if it's something like a skincare brand, you could talk about the climate in that area and how that affects people, like if it's very rainy or if it's very dry.

So if it's somewhere that doesn't get a lot of rain and the air tends to be very dry, if it's somewhere that's really windy all the time, you could definitely mention that. Because that just strips the oils from your skin and definitely people would be looking for products to help with that.

So those kind of things can just give you a little bit of a different way of looking at how you can actually optimise and really just stand out. I think that's the big thing with this.

With anything in SEO, we are trying to work out how we can stand out against all of the vast amount of content that's out there and tapping into these local areas even if you are an online business, can make a massive difference, it really can.

Mobile and AI Search Benefits

Jules White: One of the other big benefits of showing up in local search is that you can then capture a lot more searches that are done on mobile, especially if people are out and about and Google knows that.

Google is very clever, it knows exactly where we are and it's very good at understanding the intent of what we are looking for. And the same with AI search as well.

Then you are much more likely then to show up in those local mobile searches and those local near me searches as well, if you've optimised your website for that.

Search engines are more and more geared towards actually delivering those really personalised local results for people.

So there's definitely, you're definitely missing out if you're ignoring local SEO for your e-commerce business or the e-commerce part of your business, regardless of whether that's digital products or physical products that you're actually selling or even if you are an online service provider.

Google Business Profile Setup

Jules White: Now, if you have a Google Business profile, if you are purely online and you never see customers face to face, technically you're not supposed to have a Google Business profile.

There are ways around that and even if you end up going out and seeing your customers, or theoretically you have an office and somebody could come and as a customer come and talk to you there, then it's definitely worth trying to have a Google Business profile.

I think it's something that can really help us and just give us a massive competitive edge. If you've got a Google Business profile and if you've got one, definitely make the most of it.

So even if you haven't got a pin in the map, then you can set yourself up as a service area business.

And I would suggest setting that up for your local area. So even if you can sell to anybody anywhere in the UK, it's still best to set that to a local area normally with about two hours driving distance.

I tend to do it for like, pick a town north, south, east, and west and you know, put those in as part of your service area and then that way Google knows a bit more that you are in that local area.

Whereas like for me, I'm probably not going to be showing up for SEO services in Scotland when I'm based an hour north of London realistically.

So you often see it as well where people have set UK as their service area and then it looks really strange on the map because there's a military base in Cyprus.

So you'll see it looks like the whole of the UK and then it goes down to Cyprus and you are gonna be much, much better and actually have much more of a chance to show up in that local area and really focus on that for your Google Business profile.

Categories and Services

Jules White: So then if you've got a Google Business profile, making sure that you select the right categories, the primary category is the most important one.

And if you don't have a pin in the map, then we want to try and avoid going through reverification if we can.

Now, some of the things that can cause your Google Business profile to be reverified are changing your primary category, changing your business name, or changing the address in the backend.

Those kind of things can, even changing your website, that can then trigger a reverification, and we want to try and avoid that.

So even if you go in and look at the other categories available, and I talked about this back in episode 116 where I talked about how to actually spy on your local competitors.

So, even if you decide that your primary category isn't the right one, if you don't have a pin in the map, then think seriously before you change it; just add in additional categories that can help you.

So choose any categories that are actually relevant.

Obviously don't put any in that are not related to what you do and what you sell and what your website talks about. You want this all to tie in with your website.

The more accurately you can fill in your profile and the more details you can put in there, the better.

You can also add in services as well. So when you look at GMB Everywhere, it gives you suggestions for additional categories for your business.

But it also then, when you select those categories, gives you suggestions for services that you could add into your profile as well.

And then if you are talking about those same things on your website, then that can make a big difference.

Adding Products to Your Profile

Jules White: You can also add products in as well to your Google Business profile. And this is a really strong way to actually increase that local visibility of your products.

I would suggest if you're doing this, don't use stock photos or photos from your wholesaler.

If we're talking about e-commerce and selling products, what you want to do is have your own photos in there; Google's much more likely then to show it up.

If you're showing yourself holding your products, then just another stock photo is not then gonna stand out online.

Making sure that you, as you go through your profile, that you're keeping all your information consistent. Because this helps Google to understand that you are the same business and that you are trustworthy.

So your business name, your phone number, your website URL, your social media profiles, if you've got those linked to your Google Business profile, making sure that all of that information appears on your website.

Anything where there's inconsistent information out there about you makes it harder for the robots and for the people as well to understand that you are this trustworthy business and reduces your chance of appearing in search results.

Reviews and Customer Feedback

Jules White: One of the big things you can do to help your Google profile show up as well, and just to help your business in general, is to encourage reviews from your customers.

So making sure that you are actually asking for reviews. Following up if people haven't left reviews, let people know if you do actually have in-person contact or face-to-face contact with your customers.

Let them know how much of a difference it makes to your business if they can leave you a little review.

You can actually take some of the things that people say about you in your reviews and that can help you with things like keyword research.

Help you understand what makes you different, helps you understand how you can stand out for more of that.

And you can take snippets of those reviews and actually use those on your website as well.

What I would suggest you do is if you use the whole review and you are using a screenshot of it or something like that, then I would suggest that you actually link from that back to your Google Business profile.

It's probably a good idea to do that anyway, if you're using any of the text from that review, link back to it so that people on your website, they can click through to your Google profile and they can read the whole review.

And it also helps to build those links between your website and your Google Business profile.

And it's good to do that both ways, not just linking from your profile to your website. You want to link back to your profile as well.

That's all helpful just for building up those links online and building up your authority.

Building Local Backlinks

Jules White: One of the things you can also do is making sure that you're building up local backlinks where you get links coming in from other websites to your website.

And this is helping with your domain authority, helping to actually bring people in through those links so people are literally clicking on the link.

But it's also helping to tell the robots and to tell Google that you are actually a trustworthy website and if you can build up high authority backlinks.

So backlinks from websites that are very relevant and have got quite a lot of traffic going through to them. So they have got a good authority themselves.

It's a credible source that you're looking for.

So ideally for every page of your website that you want to be showing up on Google, you want at least one really good backlink coming into that page.

And that's something a lot of businesses don't think about. They won't necessarily think about getting backlinks to different pages of your website.

Years ago, it was really a real focus on the number of backlinks that you've got coming into your website. That is still important, but it's something that not to focus on first.

So focus on, as I say, for every page, getting at least one good quality backlink coming into that page.

The way that you can do this for local search is to focus on getting local backlinks.

That might be that you join your Chamber of Commerce and you get them to link to one particular page of your website.

Maybe your supplier of the products that you're selling also links to your website and you can link them to a products page on your website.

So the supplier wouldn't necessarily be a local backlink, but even things like if you are sponsoring local charity events or if you're a member of a local networking group.

All of those kind of things can help you to build up that local presence and really help in terms of you actually showing up for those online services and products as well.

You could also partner with local influencers or local bloggers or local groups.

So thinking about who locally would be really good if they were talking about my particular product and if you can get that link coming in from them, then fantastic.

Even things like local publications, so if there's a local online paper or online magazine or a good local directory that can help to boost your online sales as well.

Strategic Partnerships

Jules White: You could also think about some strategic partnerships in your area.

So if there's somebody in your area who really works in a complementary product or service, how can you then bring that together so then you both benefit from that?

There's so much potential with this and it's just spending a little bit of time thinking about, okay, how can I build up that local authority?

Who else do I know locally? Who else can I work with to improve both of our businesses?

Final Tips and Next Steps

Jules White: So if you haven't given any thought to how you can tap into local SEO for your online offers, then I hope this episode has just given you a chance to start thinking about this.

If you have a Google Business profile and you haven't optimised it, then that's your first job. Definitely.

There's so much quick win potential with Google Business profiles.

Google Merchant Center is another thing to explore as well.

If you're selling either physical products or digital products, then Google Merchant Center can be something that can make a big difference.

And just making sure that you're thinking about those location based searches on your website as well.

So what on your website actually lets people know whether you are UK based, US based, or proudly produced in the UK?

Or if you have more of a regional focus, then you could definitely add that in there.

But I think we often overlook this, the fact that people do love to buy from local businesses and people love to support small businesses as well where they can.

So definitely adding that in is not gonna harm you. It's not gonna take away from you being able to sell to anyone anywhere, but just helps to make things a little bit easier.

It helps you to focus on an audience that you can actually have a chance of standing out in.

So if you haven't done this, then I would strongly recommend that you spend some time thinking about this.

Local SEO isn't just for in-person businesses, isn't just for brick and mortar businesses who've actually got a physical location, so make the most of it.

Let me know if you have any questions about this, and if you'd like some help actually working out how to get your online offerings showing up on Google, then book a discovery call. Come on over.

We can have a chat about where you're stuck, where you'd like to be, and if any of my offers can help you get there a bit faster, we can chat about that as well.

So I hope this has been helpful, and I'll see you soon. Bye.