Organic Vs. Paid Search And Social Media: A Guide For Local Business Owners via @sejournal, @JRiddall

Local business owners consistently face a familiar digital marketing conundrum.

With a myriad of options available and seemingly growing daily, including the recent introductions of AI into the mix, how do you determine the best and most effective approach for your business?

To begin, most local businesses have two (or technically four) primary paths to consider: Organic and paid strategies for both search and social media.

In this guide, we’ll explore the nuances of each option, weigh the pros and cons, and offer actionable insights to help make informed decisions on where to invest your valuable time, resources, and funds.

Understanding Organic And Paid Strategies

Let’s start by defining the fundamental difference between organic and paid strategies:

• Organic: Focuses on building long-term brand awareness, trust, and authority via the creation and distribution of consistent, high-quality, optimized content and community engagement. This strategy requires the careful cultivation of a loyal customer base, which naturally takes time and effort.
• Paid: Involves investing in often online advertising campaigns to achieve immediate visibility and reach a broader audience quickly. A paid strategy offers a shortcut but requires balancing cost vs. lead volume and quality.

And so, with both search and social media, local business owners are faced with organic and paid options, each of which has unique time, resource, and cost considerations in terms of initial implementation and results.

Below, we’ll review the best practices required for success, along with the pros and cons of each strategy.

While not listed as a best practice, assume all strategies require ongoing monitoring and optimization based on desired outcomes and results – a must for all digital marketing efforts.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

The term search engine marketing is sometimes equated with paid strategies only, but it should really be considered the umbrella for both organic search (local SEO) and paid search (PPC).

Organic Local SEO

The goal of local SEO is for your business to appear prominently in the Local Map Pack and/or organic search results when your customers are looking for services or products you offer.

Screenshot from search for [barrie plumbers], Google, May 2024

Local SEO is much like traditional SEO but requires a few additional steps to be taken.

Best Practices

• Keyword research: Identify keywords tied to your business’s services/products, location and competition, which potential customers will be searching for.
• Website/on-page optimization: Build a mobile-friendly, responsive, locally-focused website. Optimize your website’s title tags, headings, internal/external links, meta descriptions, and content with relevant keywords.
• Local listings: Create a comprehensive and active Google Business Profile (GBP) and ensure your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) is consistent across online directories.
• Reviews: Positive, authentic customer reviews, particularly those on GBP, which have been responded to quickly, will go a long way towards establishing local dominance.
• Backlinks: Identify relevant local and industry-specific sources to obtain inbound links from to boost authority.
• Content marketing: Consistently produce and share high-quality, locally relevant content that answers your audience’s questions and provides consistent value.

Pros

• Cost-effective: While SEO requires time and effort to conduct research, identify opportunities or gaps, implement best practice solutions, and monitor results, the overall cost (depending on several factors) tends to be lower than paid search.
• Credibility: Organic search results are generally perceived as more trustworthy by users.
• Long-term benefits: A well-optimized web presence (e.g., an optimized website, Google Business Profile, high-quality shared content, and relevant backlinks) can consistently attract organic traffic over time.

Cons

• Delayed results: As noted, establishing authority and trust is a long-term game. It can take several months to see significant results from SEO activities.
• Algorithmic and AI dependency: Search engine algorithms and now LLMs feeding AI-generated results (see Google AI overviews) are constantly evolving, which necessitates ongoing optimization.
• Competitive: Establishing authority and visibility for popular keywords can be quite challenging, especially for local businesses in highly populated areas.

Some, including yours truly, will argue that establishing local authority and visibility is very much tied to running a solid business, delivering exceptional services, and engaging with your community.

Well-run local businesses are effectively engaged in local SEO and have an opportunity to be found by their customers via organic search.

Local Paid Search (PPC)

Paid search involves creating and distributing engaging text, image, or video (YouTube) ads on Google or Bing’s search or display networks linked to conversion-focused standalone or website landing pages.

At a local level, service businesses have the option of purchasing Google Local Services Ads, which require qualified businesses to go through a verification process.

Screenshot from search for [barrie plumbers], Google Maps, May 2024

Best Practices

• Keyword bidding: Choose relevant keywords with relatively high search volumes and low competition.
• Ad copy optimization: Write compelling ad copy highlighting your unique value proposition.
• Landing page optimization: Create landing pages aligned with your ad copy and encourage conversions.
• Remarketing: Target users who previously visited your website with ads tailored to products or services they may have interacted with.

Pros

• Immediate visibility: Ads tied to keyword searches appear near the top of search results immediately.
• Targeted reach: Ads can be precisely targeted to specific demographics and locations.
• Easily measured results: Track impressions, clicks, and conversions to analyze campaign performance and adjust ad spend accordingly.

Cons

• Costly: PPC advertising can be expensive, especially for competitive keywords, such as “plumbers in New York.” A Wordstream study found the average CTR across all industries in Google Ads is 1.91% on the search network and 0.35% on the display network. This means you need to pay for a lot of impressions in order to get clicks.
• Quantity over quality: Lots of PPC traffic does not typically translate into lots of conversions.
• Click fraud: Many clicks may come from bots or your competitions, thereby wasting a portion of your allotted budget.
• Temporary results: Once you stop paying, your ads and traffic will disappear.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

I don’t need to tell you about social media’s pervasiveness in our modern world. However, many local businesses still aren’t quite sure how or if it fits into their marketing mix.

The answers to these questions often lie in the nature of your business and the behaviors and preferences of your audience. In other words, do you have or can you create content that lends itself to social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok?

Do you expect your audience will go to these channels or other social channels in search of this content?

Most local businesses certainly can benefit from a social media strategy as it’s effectively an extension of their community online.

Organic Social Media

Organic social refers to posting text, images, audio, video, and/or links to any social media channel.

In order for this content to be seen and engaged with, it’s necessary to build and nurture a social following (which is sometimes a missed step in the social media marketing process.)

Screenshot of Superior Plumbing & Heating of Barrie Facebook page/post, May 2024

Best Practices

• Visually engaging content: Use high-quality images and videos to capture your consumer’s attention.
• Content calendar: Plan and schedule your social media posts in advance.
• Hashtags: Use relevant, keyword-rich hashtags to reach a wider audience who use them as a social search mechanism.
• Calls to action: Encourage viewers to click, visit or buy!
• Audience building: Follow, like, and share content from other relevant local businesses and content creators.
• Community engagement: Respond to all comments, messages, and mentions promptly.

Pros

• Cost-effective: Most social media platforms are generally free to use.
• Brand building: Foster customer relationships, build community, and showcase your brand’s personality.
• Customer engagement: Interact directly with customers, answer questions, and address their concerns.

Cons

• Limited reach: Even if you establish a following, which takes time, organic reach on social media is declining, making it harder to reach a significant audience.
• Social network dependency: Social media algorithms control the prioritization and display of content in user feeds, also limiting potential reach.
• Time-consuming: Creating engaging content and managing multiple social media accounts takes time.

Paid Social Media

Paid social, much like paid search, offers the options of text, image, or video ads distributed via the social network where you expect your audience to be engaged.

Screenshot of mobile Meta/Facebook Ad, May 2024

Best Practices

• Audience targeting: Create and target custom hyper-local audiences based on demographics, interests, and behaviors tracked and stored by the social networks.
• Ad format: Choose the right ad format for your campaign objectives (e.g. image ads, video ads, carousel ads).
• Ad copy: Write compelling ad copy highlighting your unique value proposition.
• Landing page optimization: Create landing pages aligned with your ad copy and encourage conversions.

Pros

• Targeted reach: The ability to reach very specific demographics, interests, and behaviors
• Increased visibility: The opportunity to boost your popular organic posts to reach a larger audience.
• Measurable results: Track clicks, impressions, and conversions to analyze and optimize campaign performance.

Cons

• Costly: As with PPC, paid social media advertising can be expensive, especially when competing in competitive industries or highly populated locations.
• Ad fatigue: Consumers may become annoyed or simply blind to excessive/intrusive advertising.
• Algorithm dependency: Social media algorithms also prioritize paid content, making it difficult for posts to gain traction.

Local Challenges

Regardless of the tactic chosen, there are some challenges local business owners need to acknowledge and address.

• Limited budgets: Local businesses often have smaller marketing budgets, making it difficult to compete with larger companies on paid search and social media platforms. Be strategic in your spending and focus on targeting the right audience with the right message.
• Local competition: Local businesses face stiff competition from other businesses in their area, both online and off. Standing out from the crowd can be challenging, especially in saturated markets. Look for opportunities to differentiate your business through unique value propositions, exceptional customer service, and targeted campaigns.
• Limited resources: Many local businesses have limited staff and digital marketing expertise. You may simply not have the time or knowledge to manage complex paid search and social media campaigns effectively. Consider outsourcing to a digital marketing agency or consultant, but do your homework and ask to see what results they have produced for other local businesses.
• Keeping up with trends: It can be overwhelming for local businesses to keep up with the latest trends and best practices. Partnering with a digital marketing expert can help them stay ahead of the curve.

Choosing The Right Strategy For Your Local Business

The most effective approach for your local business will depend on your specific goals, budget, and target audience. In assessing your options, consider the following factors:

• Goals: What are you trying to achieve? Increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, generate leads, or increase sales?
• Budget: How much are you willing to spend on marketing? Monthly, quarterly, or seasonally?
• Target audience: Who are the people you are trying to reach? What keywords do you think they are using when searching for your services or products? What social media platforms do they use?
• Timeframe: How quickly do you need to see results for a particular service or product offering?

A well-rounded digital marketing strategy often involves a combination of organic and paid tactics – not organic vs. paid, but organic and paid.

A common and effective approach is to identify organic keywords or topics on which your business has some level of authority and/or visibility, from which you are already receiving traffic and upon which you can build.

Perhaps this represents a unique product or service you offer or one that your customers particularly favor. This is where you focus your local SEO attention.

Concurrently, you may also identify high-value, low-competition keywords you are willing to pay for either via PPC or paid social ads, provided they deliver quick, meaningful results.

Another strategy involves using paid search or social as a test to understand which keywords or topics resonate with your audience and on which channels before you devote time and effort to building and rolling out a full organic content strategy.

If you do have the budget for a comprehensive approach, consider integrating both paid search and paid social into your digital marketing strategy.

Use paid search to capture high-intent users actively searching for your products or services and paid social to build brand awareness, nurture leads, and reach a wider audience.

A Few Words On Analytics

One reason digital marketing has gained so much prominence, besides increasing consumer demand for immediate gratification, is the power of data underlying all online interactions.

While sometimes overwhelming, all digital marketing can be tracked, analyzed, and optimized based on what’s working and what isn’t.

Website interactions and inbound channel traffic can be tracked via Google Analytics, PPC ads offer detailed impressions, click and conversion tracking via Google Adwords and Bing Ads, and virtually all paid social platforms include detailed tracking options.

For small businesses, this may be as simple as understanding how many leads or paying customers are being generated from online sources.

However, the more detailed information you can get about the channels responsible for delivering actual customers to your online or physical door, the better.

The Holy Grail is to be able to understand the return you are getting on your investment in each channel, but at least getting close will help validate your strategic decisions.

The Decisions Are Yours

Ultimately, which strategies fit your specific needs will be up to you and will certainly require some fine-tuning over time.

By understanding the true costs, pros, and cons of each approach, you can develop a balanced approach which will deliver tangible results.

More resources: 

Featured Image: chainarong06/Shutterstock

Why And How Local Businesses Should Use Video In Their Digital Marketing via @sejournal, @JRiddall

The popularity of digital video content is undeniable.

Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, all of which are heavily video-based, are at the top of the social media ladder.

For many younger audiences, these platforms, along with a plethora of streaming services, have usurped all others as their primary source of entertainment and/or information.

Some are even being touted as the next search engines. This is still hotly debated.

Likewise, video marketing is on the rise, and many marketers have come to see this as a preferred method of engaging with their target audiences.

However, at a local business level and for local business owners, it feels like there is still something of a reluctance to fully embrace this important medium.

Perhaps this is due to a lack of time or resources – a common challenge for small business owners who are busy just trying to run their business.

Or maybe, for some, there is a fear of not producing a “polished” product.

However, one of the important aspects of video marketing is its authenticity; it doesn’t need to be perfect. We’ll talk more about this shortly.

So Why Video?

Before we get into what type of video content local business owners might consider creating, let’s review why video has become such an important marketing tool for so many.

• Video is easy to consume and highly visual by nature, making it an engaging and entertaining content format.
• Because video is so engaging, it lends itself to being shared via social media and other channels, thereby extending the reach of your marketing message.
• These days, video content is fairly easy to create. While you might need a script for some specific types of videos – which we’ll also discuss shortly – creating an effective message can be as simple as turning on the camera on your phone and starting to talk.
• Video can easily be shared across multiple platforms and embedded into other content like web pages and blogs to enhance their appeal.
• Digital video content can be a differentiator. Because, as discussed, many small business owners are slow or reluctant to adopt video marketing, this presents an opportunity for those who do to stand out.
• Video, and particularly YouTube, content increasingly appears in Google’s organic search results, which isn’t surprising, given that Google owns YouTube. Further, YouTube itself is a search engine within which millions of users are conducting searches on a daily basis. Videos can and should be optimized to appear in search.
• As mentioned, video content is authentic and enables business owners to demonstrate their expertise, both of which are important factors in Google’s E-E-A-T, a significant determinant of organic search visibility.
• Video adds incredible value on many levels for those willing to explore and experiment.

Now, For The How

Having clearly established the importance of video in the marketing mix, the question some will have is, “What type of videos should I create?”

The answer to this question is that it depends on a few factors, as do all marketing decisions, including the type of business and services/products you offer, the target audience, budget, and your imagination.

What should not be a cause for concern is relative video quality. Gone are the days of videos needing to be overly directed, produced, or polished.

For many, and particularly younger audiences, low-budget, off-the-cuff video messages are seen to be more authentic and real – as they quite often are.

Do not be afraid to simply start recording and introducing your audience to your business and the products or services you offer. It’s a great first step.

Below are a few types of videos that may fit your local business and customer base.

Service Or Product Overviews

Any service or product-based business can leverage video to easily highlight and describe its unique offerings.

For example, a landscaper may create walk-through videos of lawns, gardens, or patios they’ve worked on, while a med spa owner may demonstrate how the latest and greatest skin-tightening treatment works.

Having willing customers appear in these types of videos to provide their authentic testimonials can go a long way to establishing trust with your audience and encouraging the sharing of your content across social or other channels.

Since the pandemic, there has been no shortage of consumers willing to support their local service providers.

Promotional Videos

Brand advertising lends itself naturally to video content.

Many local business owners are familiar with running TV or radio ads, but digital video platforms have opened the door to unlimited possibilities.

Have fun and create your own commercials, again incorporating customers, staff, or relevant business partners.

Use your imagination to create entertaining promos for your services, products, or special events.

Customer Testimonials

One of the most powerful types of video content you can create or obtain is a customer testimonial.

A form of user-generated content (UGC) – which is extremely popular on social media – a positive client review is a glowing stamp of approval on you and your business.

The effect of online reviews for local businesses is already well known, but acquiring, publishing, and sharing authentic video testimonials takes your trustworthiness to another level.

People like to buy from businesses they trust and many rely on reviews and testimonials as their proof.

How To Videos

Some businesses offer services that lend themselves well to creating value-packed how-to videos.

For example, a plumbing company may create and share a video on their website or social channels on how to prevent clogged or frozen pipes as free advice.

Then, when those pipes do get clogged or frozen, they will be top of mind for their viewers and just a click or call away.

How-to videos have the added benefit of demonstrating the expertise that Google is so fond of.

Ask Me Anything Or FAQs

Like how-tos, video can be a great vehicle for answering your customers’ common or most pressing questions and, where necessary, incorporating short demos or other relevant visuals for clarity.

And by recording a video, you can avoid having to answer the same or similar question repeatedly.

Here, too, you can consider getting your audience involved by having them pose the questions, with you or your appropriate staff members providing the answers.

Short video FAQs can be added to enhance the written FAQs on your website. FAQs, by definition, are solid SEO-oriented content providing a natural boost to your authority.

Behind The Scenes Footage

The popularity of television shows like “How It’s Made” proves people like to be able to pull back the curtain, go behind the scenes, and get a glimpse of how certain processes work – particularly those that result in a product or service they consume.

These videos are similar to a product or service overview but perhaps go a little deeper into details for those customers who need to know more.

Describe and demonstrate a technique, product, or process you specialize in or which is unique to your business. This can set you apart from your competition both online and off.

Webinars Or Live Event Recordings

Local professional services businesses can build important brand recognition and a sense of community by hosting or sponsoring live webinars or in-person events.

Anyone who attends these types of events will be interested in a recording for future reference.

These recordings can naturally be shared on a website events page and via appropriate social media channels.

When broadcasting and subsequently sharing these video events via social media, be sure to include unique hashtags, e.g., “#[Location]TaxAdvice2024,” as they serve multiple purposes: brand/event awareness, important search key,  and an opportunity to incorporate product or service related keywords for SEO purposes.

Video Optimization

Digital videos, just like any other content, can be optimized for optimal organic search visibility. When creating, publishing, and sharing these videos, consider the following:

• Incorporate relevant keywords into the video filename and then the title, description and hashtags depending on the platform the video is being hosted on or shared to.
• Add a call to action and link to a related product or service page near the top of your video description on YouTube, where it can be readily seen and clicked on.
• Include calls to action and embed links to relevant website products, services, and event pages or to other related videos within videos posted on YouTube, Instagram Stories, or other platforms.

One quick tip on video length: less is more.

Video, like images, are worth at least a thousand words, and we all know today’s consumers, especially those in the younger demographics, have limited attention spans.

Where possible, the length of most videos should be kept in the one to three-minute range, and the shorter, the better to ensure optimal engagement.

However, on platforms like TikTok, it is not uncommon for videos to be under 30 seconds, and YouTube now offers “Shorts,” which are limited to 60 seconds.

Further, one of the ranking factors on YouTube is engagement time, i.e., whether or not videos are viewed in their entirety, so you want to ensure your viewers are fully engaged from start to finish.

And — Action!

Knowing all of the potential, are you ready to start creating and sharing some videos?

As noted, the accessibility and preferred authenticity of video created on a mobile device enables virtually all local business owners to leverage this powerful medium relatively quickly.

Incorporating video into a local business’s digital marketing strategy is not just a trend; it’s a necessity.

Video content enables businesses to communicate their message more effectively, connect with the local audience on a personal level, and stand out in a crowded digital landscape.

Your first step, as in any marketing campaign, should be to get a feel for your audience along with the types of video and platforms they prefer.

Then go ahead and start recording, optimizing for search, sharing, and watching to see what resonates.

By being creative and authentic, you will set you and your business apart.

So, grab your camera or smartphone, start brainstorming creative ideas, and let the power of video propel your local business forward.

You may even find yourself going viral! #videorocksin2024

More resources: 

Featured Image: Juan Pablo Olaya Celis/Shutterstock

Local SEO For Non-Physical Businesses: Overcoming The Challenges via @sejournal, @AdamHeitzman

It’s hard to overstate the value of maximizing your organic visibility for location-based searches.

A well-executed local SEO strategy lets you reach far more local customers, which can deliver a massive boost to your in-store and online traffic and sales.

But if you don’t run a brick-and-mortar business, can you still take advantage of local SEO?

Fortunately, the answer is yes!

Today, we’ll explain how to overcome the challenges of building a solid local search presence without a physical storefront.

Difficulties Of Local SEO For Non-Physical Businesses

Search engines take into account the physical location of businesses when determining the most relevant listings to rank for local searches.

If a company has an address in Nashville, Google may rank it higher for user searches in and around the city.

But this poses an obvious concern for businesses without a physical address.

If search engines use the physical proximity of a business to a search user when ranking location-based results, how can a business with no physical location compete, even though it serves the local area?

The good news is that although having a physical address may make maximizing your local SEO presence easier, you can still succeed without a physical address.

For example, provided you run a service-area business (that is, you still have face-to-face contact with customers — just not at your own business address), Google allows you to create a Business Profile to manage your local visibility across Search and Maps.

For clarity, here’s Google’s official word on the matter:

“You can have a profile if your business doesn’t have a physical address as long as you make in-person contact with customers… You may also have a profile if you’re a service-area business that visits or delivers to customers directly, but doesn’t serve customers at its business address, like a plumber or cleaning service.”

And besides creating a Google Business Profile, there are a few other techniques non-physical businesses can use to boost their local SEO presence.

Let’s look at each solution in turn.

5 Ways To Master Local SEO Without A Business Address

1. Correctly Configure Your Google Business Profile

The first approach is to properly set up a Google Business Profile (GBP) for your service-area business.

A Google Business Profile is a tool that lets you create and update a free listing for your business across Google. Essentially, your GBP gives Google users a quick snapshot of your business, providing helpful information about things like opening hours, contact details, and customer reviews.

Here’s the GBP for a mobile car wash near me in Memphis, TN:

Screenshot for search term [mobile car wash], Google, January 2023

Google’s guidance for configuring a GBP for a service-area business differs slightly from its guidance for brick-and-mortar establishments.

The main difference is you have to specify your service area by city, zip code, or other type of area – not by your address. You can select up to 20 service areas, but the boundaries of all the combined areas should be within 2 hours’ driving distance from where your business is based.

Also, ensure that within Business Profile Manager, you leave the business location field blank under the Info tab. Setting your service area is enough to let Google (and search users) know where you operate.

2. Create Localized Content Targeting Location-Based Keywords

Generating location-specific content is another effective way to boost your site’s relevance for local searches, even without a physical location.

This involves creating content, service pages, blog posts, success stories, and other forms of content about topics relevant to the different communities you serve.

Incorporating geo-specific keywords into your content (like the name of the city or neighborhood you’re addressing) will help amplify your search visibility for relevant local searches.

For example, if you run a pool maintenance service in Phoenix, you might create articles titled “Top Challenges of Pool Maintenance in Phoenix’s Summer Heat.”

These articles integrate local keywords, address specific issues Phoenix pool owners are likely to encounter, and showcase your company’s understanding of local pool maintenance needs.

3. Develop Location-Specific Landing Pages

Creating dedicated landing pages for each of your target locations is another way to enhance your ranking potential for local searches.

These pages could include information about the specific services you offer in that area, local management, testimonials from local customers, and region-specific offers or promotions. Once again, be sure to incorporate local keywords to signal to search engines the relevance of your pages to local searches.

However, if you choose to implement this tactic, don’t just replicate the same basic page across different locations, changing nothing except the name of your target area.

Each localized landing page should be unique, providing genuinely useful and relevant information specific to that area. Duplicate content with only minor changes can negatively impact your SEO efforts.

4. Encourage Reviews And Testimonials From Local Customers

Accumulating reviews and testimonials from local customers is yet another way to boost your local SEO as a non-physical business.

Such reviews provide social proof to potential customers and demonstrate to search engines that your business is relevant and reputable within a specific area.

For this reason, you should encourage your local customers to leave reviews for your business on platforms like Google Business Profile, Yelp, and Facebook.

Keep in mind that asking for positive reviews in exchange for discounts, free services, or other financial incentives violates these platforms’ policies.

Instead, you should solicit honest customer reviews via thank you pages on your websites, follow-up emails, social media posts, and so on.

Responding to reviews is just as important as asking for them. Engaging with customer feedback reinforces your reputation for high standards and willingness to improve your services.

Plus, Google actively encourages businesses to engage with reviews to help improve local rankings.

Likewise, showcasing reviews and in-depth testimonials on your site, particularly location-specific landing pages, will instill confidence in potential customers about the credibility of your company.

5. Manage Your Local Citations

Finally, creating and updating online mentions of your business’s name, service area, and phone number can help your local SEO efforts.

Citations from reputable sites like Yelp, Foursquare, and local business directories signal to Google the relevance of your company in a specific area.

The key thing to remember when managing your local citations is that your business details should be accurate and consistent wherever they appear. This uniformity gives search engines more confidence to surface your business in local search results.

Also, keep in mind that the quality of your local citations is more important than the quantity. It’s best to prioritize getting listed on directories relevant to your industry and area of operations.

What About Online-Only Businesses?

So far, we’ve focused our attention on non-physical businesses that still make in-person contact with customers within a specific area.

But what about fully virtual businesses? Can they still enjoy the rewards of local SEO?

Again, the answer is yes – but it’s more difficult to achieve.

The main disadvantage virtual businesses face with local SEO is the inability to create listings on Google Business Profile and online directories that require, at the very least, a clearly defined service area.

That said, online-only businesses can still amplify their local search relevance by implementing the other tactics listed above: Creating localized content, targeting location-specific keywords, developing local landing pages, and gathering reviews and testimonials from local customers.

No Address? No Problem

Running a business without a physical address doesn’t mean you can’t reap the benefits of local SEO.

There are several other ways to let search engines know that you operate within a specific geographic area, from creating a GBP to publishing location-specific content.

Just remember that managing your local SEO efforts is an ongoing process whether or not you have a business address.

More resources: