Local SEO: How Fishing Businesses Get Found Online

Whether you’re a fishing guide, tackle shop, boat rental, or any other business that relies on clients in your local area, local SEO can help you gain more local customers.

What is Local SEO?

Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website for local customers, using special tactics to help search engines understand that your local business should appear in local search results. It differs from traditional SEO, which focuses on reaching a wider, general audience.

Local SEO involves far more than just using locally-focused content and keywords. You need to make sure your website is technically sound and optimized for local searches, which includes things like having a Google My Business profile, making sure your company’s contact information is consistent across the web, optimizing titles and meta descriptions, submitting to online directories, claiming local listings and reviews on review sites, and much more.

All types of fishing businesses that interact with and service customers in a certain region can benefit from local SEO. Whether you service a particular town, region, or body of water, local SEO can help you reach your desired audience.

Examples of How Fishing Businesses Can Use Local SEO

Let’s say you’re a fishing guide that specializes in flats fishing around Cedar Key. You can use local SEO to help potential customers find you when they search for things like ‘Flats fishing guide Cedar Key.’ Or, if they’re simply searching for ‘fishing guide’ and Google detects that they’re near Cedar Key, you can appear in the local search results.

If you provide boat rentals in Hilton Head, you can use local SEO to get your business seen by those looking for boat rentals in the area. Imagine someone’s searching for ‘boat rental near Hilton Head’ to take their friends out on the water. Well, if you’ve got great local SEO in place, you can be the first business they see (over the competition) in the local search results.

If you own a tackle shop in Tampa, local SEO can help customers that might be looking for fishing gear nearby find your shop. Say, for example, that someone’s headed to Tampa for an inshore fishing weekend. Well, when they need to pick up some bait or lures, they can search for ‘tackle shop in Tampa’ or even just ‘tackle shop’ on their phone and find your business listed at the top of their search results.

If you run fishing charters out of Key West, local SEO can help those who are looking to book a charter in the area find you easily. Say someone’s looking to go fishing in the Keys and they search ‘fishing charters’, your business can appear at the top. With Google’s machine learning, their algorithm is typically smart enough to understand that if they search for ‘fishing guide’ or ‘boat captain’ or other related keywords, they’re likely looking for your services. And when it’s not that smart, we can always use special tactics to help it understand exactly what you’re trying to rank for.

How do you get started?

Well, that’s the tricky part, of course. Learning to optimize your business for local SEO takes a significant investment of time. (Check out this article for some quick local SEO tips for the fishing industry.)

But by implementing a solid, comprehensive local SEO strategy for your fishing business, you can draw the attention of anglers, locals, and tourists in the area—and turn them into customers.

Some of the most basic local SEO strategies include things like making sure your NAP* is established (and consistent) throughout the web, optimizing your website for locally-focused keywords, adding local content to your site, and more.

*NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. When talking about local SEO, it refers to making sure that your business name, address, and phone number are all consistent across the web. For example, on your website, GMB listing, Yelp! page, Facebook page, and other directories.

It also involves location-specific keywords, such as the names of towns and regions you serve, building citations from other websites in your local area, and creating content related to those geographical regions.

And by optimizing your business for local SEO, you can help ensure that more fishing enthusiasts in your area find you, bringing more customers to you and boosting your bottom line.

So if you want your fishing business to be found by those searching for fishing services in the areas that you serve, investing in local SEO is the way to go.

Local SEO for the Fishing Industry

Page One Fishing specializes in full-stack digital marketing for the fishing and marine industries. So if you’re looking to reach more of your target customers, get more bookings, sell more products, or just generally increase your fishing brand’s visibility, we can help you. We have the tools and expertise to help your business find success online.

And with our industry-specific experience, we understand the unique needs of fishing businesses (and their target customers), so we can craft a custom local SEO strategy to fit your unique needs.

Ready to take the next step? Get in touch with the team at Page One Fishing and we’ll get you started on the path to success.

Til’ next week—tight lines and bent rods!