Many local businesses depend on being found in Google in order to drive website traffic. However, search engine optimization (SEO) is often a misunderstood and intimidating topic for business owners. And rightfully so—Google isn’t going to tell you exactly how you can make your business rank #1 in the search results.

But there are things that you can do (or hire an agency to do) which will improve the chances of your local business being found online.

Here are 5 steps you can take to improve your current ranking:

1. Make Sure You Are Categorized as a Local Business

When we say “local business” in terms of SEO, we mean that you have a physical office or storefront in a specific city and serve customers in your local area— examples of these kinds of businesses are dentist offices, doctor offices, a law firm, a retail shop, a restaurant, etc.

Google displays a special section in their search results for most local businesses. Sometimes these are referred to as Google Map Listings or Google+ Local listings.

This section typically displays map pins (with a corresponding map positioned to the right of the listings), addresses, phone numbers, and reviews.

You’ll have the best opportunity to rank for the city in which your business in physically located, even though you may serve a wider area. Take advantage of this simple tip and you may notice your rank increase.

2. Consistency is Key

Google pulls data from thousands of sources and then cross references these data to help determine what category your business falls under and where your business in located.

Everywhere your business is mentioned online (referred to as “citations”) should list your business name, address and phone number exactly the same way.

For example, if your business has changed addresses or phone numbers, then you probably have online listings out there with your old information. These  listings can cause “confusion” for Google because they don’t match your current details.

Here’s another example: if your business name is “Johnson Heating and Air” but other places online list it as Johnson HVAC, Google may be confused (and it’ll confuse your potential customers too).

Though it can be a tedious process, there are tools that can search the web for your business listings. From there you can manually update your details on each site, or use a paid service to handle some of this for you, to ensure that there is no confusion for Google nor your customers.

Bottom line is that the more places your NAP (name, address, phone) is consistent, the stronger your search results will be.

3. Claim and Complete Your Listings

Following tip #2, you should claim and complete each listing where your business appears.

Most listings were automatically created by pulling data from other sources. Almost everywhere your business is listed allows you to follow their process to claim and verify that you are the business owner.

From here, you can update the categories your business is listed under (these are often wrong) as well as fill out the listing with other important information it may be missing, such as photos, hours, website, etc.

Claiming and completely filling out listings helps boost your search results, and also works to maintain consistency.

4. Invest in Content

You’ve probably heard the saying “content is king” a lot if you deal in online marketing, and we can’t deny its truth. Creating content on your website by blogging and being active on social media gives search engines additional data they use in ranking your website.

Through creating content on a regular basis, you will attract more visitors to your website and help ensure that visitors stay on your site longer, often viewing multiple pages.

All of this correlates to being found favorable by Google and other search engines.

5. Solicit More Local Reviews

As I mentioned in #1, Google+ Local listings display your Google reviews. Though it’s not the only determining factor in your site’s ranking, it’s important to have several good reviews.

Most people only think to leave reviews when they’ve experienced poor quality or service, so it will take a proactive effort to encourage some of your best customers to take the time to leave a positive review.

You can facilitate this in several ways, one of which is sending them a link to the review page and asking them to leave a review. You could even offer an incentive such as a coupon or some other token of appreciation.

It’s important to remember the small details in order to help you rank better on search engines. If you’re a local business, take advantage of these tools and use them to your advantage for higher ranking where it counts.