• When another website links to yours, it signals to search engines like Google that the linking website trusts your website enough to send visitors your way. Search engines consider that to be a vote of confidence for you, and that you are an authoritative source. The more of these votes of confidence, or links, the higher your website will ultimately rank it. This practice of gaining new links is known as off-page SEO.
• Note that there are certain types of links that don’t have benefits for SEO. Social media links, links in the comment sections of a page, and links in sponsored articles don’t count toward your website’s link signals, according to search engines. 
• Small businesses can get their links on other sites by pitching stories to local media and collaborating with other businesses on partner pages or shared content. You can also ask your network for like-minded companies that are willing to collaborate on relevant links. This is particularly effective for relevant sites from complementary businesses. For example, it can be very effective for a physical therapy clinic and doctor’s office to write an article together on back pain and link to each other’s websites.

Unlike general SEO, which focuses on websites, local SEO focuses on listings, or collections of information about local businesses. The most common listing is Google My Business, which contains the information displayed in a card format that shows up in Google Maps searches and local Google search results (i.e., “physical therapy clinic Boston,” and not “physical therapy clinic”). These card-based listings, which include a website, phone number, address, and more, can show up alongside regular, non-local search results, and now dominate local search results.

There are three key elements to improving your listing’s local SEO success:

1. Consistent naming. Ensure the name, address, and phone number on your listing is the same as those on your small business’ website and profiles on social media platforms. If they’re different, search engines will see it as a risk that they’d send searchers to the wrong place. This will harm your listing’s rankings.
2. Complete the profile. Ensure your Google business profile is 100% complete and has information including a phone number, photos, and a list of products or services that you provide.
3. Reviews. This is the top factor for local business SEO. Businesses with a high volume of positive reviews are much more likely to rank highly in local search results. While it’s OK to ask your customers for reviews, search engines have complex systems to detect activity indicating that a business is faking their reviews or paying people to write them.

Results for SEO take longer to see than those for other marketing like paid ads. Search engines can take weeks or months to register changes to your website or listing. They only release algorithm updates (the times most likely for large rankings changes to occur) once every quarter. So small businesses should expect to measure the outcomes of their SEO work, in the form of improved rankings and organic traffic , over three- to six-month timeframes.

There are several leading indicators a business can review monthly for signs they’re making progress on their SEO:

• Google impressions. This is the number of times in which your website or listing shows up in Google, whether or not it was clicked. Growth in impressions usually happens faster than growth in website traffic. While the majority of clicks go to the top-three search results, often the entire first page of results receives an impression. So this can indicate future traffic growth if the rankings continue to improve.
• New links generated. This should focus on “white hat” links—those that are generated through press coverage, collaboration, or partnerships, not through spam tactics. 
• 4- or 5-star reviews on Google My Business. A good rule of thumb is 5%: If you can get 5% of your customers to leave you a positive review, you are on track to improve your rankings. Note that not every review needs to be a perfect 5—it’s more trustworthy to search engines if your reviews represent an accurate account of your business’s quality.