One of our favorite things about the many bookstores we’ve visited is how each owner puts their own personality into their store. There’s truly a niche bookstore for any type of reader, so we get bummed when a customer can’t find their perfect match because the store is basically invisible online, not showing up for “bookstores near me” searches. 

If you’re trying to increase your visibility, you’re hopefully investing time and energy into social media, but outside of that, what are your options? You can spend money on ads, but if your ad budget is tight, local SEO for bookstores can be an option for making an immediate impact to drive more customers in your area through your door. 

If you’re not familiar with local SEO, it’s steps you can take on your website to optimize it specifically for “bookstore near me” searches: ie. people in your neighborhood finding your location so they can visit you. 

There’s a three-tiered approach to basic local SEO according to Google: relevance, proximity, and prominence. Meaning how closely is your business relevant to the searcher’s request, how close is it physically to the searcher, and do other people or places talk about and like your business? The three tools you’re gonna employ to tackle these areas include your Google Business Profile, local keywords and content, and directory listings, so let’s break those down further so you can get to optimizing and get more customers into your bookstore.

Step 1: Set Up And Optimize Your Bookstore’s Google Business Profile

If you don’t yet have a Google Business Profile (GBP) for your bookstore, stop reading this and go make one right now, please. You won’t show up on Google Maps without a Google Business Profile, and it’s also your strongest “signal” to Google for local “near me” searches because it can influence all three relevance, proximity, and prominence.

For example, you must assign your business categories and sub-categories in your GBP, and those, along with your business name, the words mentioned in your products and services, even words mentioned in your reviews give relevance signals. Then, most evidently, your address gives proximity signals, and finally all of the glowing reviews you get give prominence signals. More on that specific point in a minute.

Aside from these signals, another reason why you need a GBP is that you’d be shocked at how much activity happens on these profiles that never even makes it to your website. If filled out in its entirety and frequently updated with information, searchers can find from your GBP your address, website, phone, business hours, photos, and FAQs without ever having the click to your website. That’s the basic information, but then you can take optimization a step further by using the updates function on your GBP to add what are essentially social media posts to the profile and therefore to search results. In these updates you can plug events you’re having, feature new products, push out promotions, and anything you can imagine really. Saving searchers that extra click could be the difference between a visitor and someone who gives up their search.

Boost Your Bookstore Business Profile With Reviews

We said “more in a minute” about the power of GBP reviews, so here’s that “more.” Reviews are way more than just a high-five for you as the business owner. They provide real digital marketing value in terms of SEO benefits and social proof to searchers. In terms of that relevance factor for local SEO: have you ever noticed when you do a Google search and a business profile shows up in the results that some words in the reviews may be bolded? Google is actually matching keywords in reviews to the person’s search, demonstrating that the business is relevant. In addition, dozens and dozens of reviews demonstrate that prominence factor. Not only is this bookstore open, but people go there and they like it. So, Google searcher, maybe you would like it too!

In addition, here’s all we’ll say about social proof because it’s been said a thousand ways in a thousand headlines over the last five years: The modern-day consumer trusts real user experience over advertising 100 percent of the time. When someone is trying a new place for the first time, they are looking up reviews to make sure that new place is worth their time, so be sure to collect your own reviews so you don’t give searchers bad vibes.

For your bookstore, you could try printing out cute and creative bookmarks that request reviews with a QR code on them for easy linking. Add one of these bookmarks into their book at the checkout counter and they’ll see it every time they use it for that book or the next. You can ask for reviews on your social media and in your email newsletters (you are doing an email newsletter, right?). Finally, have your staff ask for reviews as they’re checking out a customer, because we know the best time to ask for them is immediately.

Step 2: Add Your Store’s Contact Information To Other Directories

In the wild world of SEO, an acronym reigns supreme and that’s NAP. NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone and it’s important that your NAP is accurate online and matches across multiple online directory listings. Being on multiple listing sites and having that consistency is a strong proximity signal to Google as well as a strong prominence signal. Some examples of what we mean by online directories include places like Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Google Business Profile, Yellowpages, and Facebook to name a few. Then a second tier could be your area Chamber of Commerce, the Better Business Bureau, Nextdoor, or TripAdvisor. Then finally, you could get listed on niche sites for bookstores like Bookshop.org, IndieBound, The American Booksellers Association, and any regional associations that are relevant to you. Many, if not most of these directories are free, but others might have a yearly fee that could be worth it to bake into your marketing budget to ensure you have great local SEO for your bookstore since they also likely provide valuable backlinks to your website.

Step 3: Put Local Keywords On Your Website

Adding keywords to your website can feel a little robotic, but there’s certainly ways to do so without sounding awkward. For starters, “Your area name + bookstore” can organically be inserted on pages like your Homepage, your About Page, or your Contact Page. The key to good optimization is choosing unique variations of your target keyword per page. Examples include “bookstore in Columbus, Ohio,” “Columbus bookstore” and “independent bookstore Columbus.” Now, assign one of those variations to each your Homepage, About Page, and Contact Page. Then, include the phrase in the page text, the page title, meta description and H1 tagged headline for that page. Now you’re flashing a sign to Google that your bookstore is in a local area, in a way that doesn’t sound spammy.

Power Up Your Local Keywords By Creating Local Content

Once you have your local keywords inserted, you can supercharge this concept by creating additional content centered around your locality. This content could be a blog post on your website about your favorite places to read a book around your city. Or, you could blog about every event you have, featuring your event partner and your address + their address. If you’re not a huge writer, fear not, even external sites like Eventbrite and social media sites can help with this cause. The next time you’re collecting tickets for an event in your store, use Eventbrite and include your address and other local information in the event description. That’s indexed by search engines. Finally, when you’re creating social media posts, make sure to tag your location in them. Especially now that as of July 10, business Instagram posts are now eligible to appear in Google search results! Your location tag, plus any fun area hashtags you include will all provide local SEO juice for your content.

So, before you run any ads for your bookstore to increase visibility, try these free, low-effort tactics instead. Keep in mind how you’ll be helping Google understand your relevance, proximity and prominence, to searches, with the end goal of elevating your bookstore’s appearance in “bookstore near me” searches.

Besides creating new content around your local area, we think you could easily accomplish this setup within a week, but if your time is tight or you want help prioritizing, we’d be happy to take a look at your situation and offer advice on what we’d do next. Just hit us up on Instagram or here on our website.