Local SEO for MSPs: A Practical Guide to Ranking Locally

What is local SEO for MSPs?

Local SEO for MSPs is the work of getting your managed services business to show up when nearby companies search for IT help, both in the map results and in the regular listings. It comes down to four things: a complete Google Business Profile, pages that use the words local buyers search, steady reviews, and useful content.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is huge as an MSP, as many people search online before selecting a service provider. The idea of Local SEO takes that even a step further by optimizing for your local market.

Unfortunately there’s no get-traffic-quick tools or one easy fix for ranking higher. Ultimately, to rank higher, you need your website to provide actual value to your audience. In this Guide to Local SEO for your MSP, we’re going to look at the main factors that can boost your SEO. They ultimately boil down to a few ideas: Knowing your audience, becoming technically sound, and creating high-value content. Let’s dive in.

Set Up Your Google Business Profile

If you haven’t already, claim your business on Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business). It’s Google’s free listing that lets you claim, verify and add information about your local business.

This is super important if you’re looking for business in your own city. For instance, if someone searches “IT services near me” on Google, they’ll get the normal search results as well as a Google Maps result. Having a complete Business Profile helps you climb the rankings on both as it lets Google know that you’re a legitimate business, and where you’re located. To set up your profile, do the following:

1. Log into your Google account
2. Go to google.com/business and select “Manage Now”
3. Fill in your Business information, including name, address and phone

Once your profile is set up, you must verify your business with Google. This can be done by mail, phone, email, or sometimes instantly if you have other Google services enabled.

It’s very important that you fill out your profile with photos, reviews, service information, etc. to yield the best results.

Know Your Audience

Before you jump into content and on-page SEO for your website, it’s imperative that you understand your target audience, what they’re searching for, and what brings them value.

You can have tons of pages, blogs, and keywords, but if they don’t resonate with those who would buy from you, it’s likely that they’ll never even find it.

There are a few ways to create a better understanding of your audience:

Create Buyer Personas

Buyer Personas are basically profiles of your ideal customer. It’s a semi-fake person who represents all the real people who have and will purchase your services.

Some things to include in your persona:

• Demographics
• Pain points
• Goals
• Motivations
• Needs
• Company size

Are they a small business in need of complete outsourced support? Are they a larger company looking for a strategic partner? These are questions you should answer in your persona.

To build your persona, look at your current clients. Maybe even interview them. Find commonalities in your best clients, think about what you want in future clients, and build your persona from there.

Research Local Keywords

We’ll dive deeper into keyword research in the next section, but finding localized versions of your best keywords is key for a solid Local SEO strategy.

In addition to broad terms about IT, people will also include local terms in their search query such as:

“IT services near me”

“IT services in Charlotte, NC”

One way to do some research into this is to use Google’s Autocomplete feature. Type in common IT keyword searches and you’ll see longer versions of what folks are searching.

Another helpful spot, the “related searches” section, is at the bottom of the search results page.

Keyword Research

Hubspot defines Keyword Research as the process of finding and analyzing actual search terms that people enter into search engines. The insight you can get into these actual search terms can help inform content strategy, as well as your larger marketing strategy.

These days it’s not as important that you have exact matches for keywords being searched. The intent behind the keyword is what really matters. Keyword research helps to show you what your customers are searching for. It’s up to you to provide the answer behind the intent of your search.

Also, keep in mind that your customers won’t always know the common industry terms. “MSP” or “managed services” may not be a highly searched term, whereas “IT Support” or “Tech support” may be much more common. Keep that in mind while doing research.

Need a starter toolkit? Here are 5 free MSP marketing tools that cover keyword research, design and social posting.

Use Tools

Paid tools like Moz and Ahrefs or free ones like Ubersuggest are the best place to start your research.The key is to find out:

• Which keywords are searched the most
• Related keywords to your primary ones
• What your competitors are ranking for
• What’s most relevant to your services and content.

Once you have a good list of relevant keywords you can start to create content ideas around topics relevant to those keywords.

Keywords aren’t just magic words to sprinkle around your site. Your content should deliver on the value that the keyword offers. However, the keywords should exist throughout your entire website, including but not limited to:

• Title tags
• Headings and subheadings
• Page URLs
• Meta descriptions
• Page Content
• Image alt tags

To boost your Local SEO, make sure to include local keywords here as well. If you have multiple offices, creating pages for each is a great way to naturally include references to your town. Blogs about local events/news are another good idea.

MSP keywords to put on your website

Your buyers rarely search for “MSP.” They search for the problem and the place. Build pages around phrases like these, using your own city:

• IT support Charlotte
• managed IT services Charlotte NC
• IT company near me
• small business IT support
• cybersecurity services for small business
• Microsoft 365 support

Put each main phrase in the page's title tag, main heading, URL and meta description, and use the city name naturally in the copy. To check how your site is doing, open the Performance report in Google Search Console and see which queries already earn impressions. Give the best ones their own page or a clear heading.

Do an SEO Audit on your site

With SEO being both a creative and technical strategy, there’s a lot to keep up with, and things can fall through the cracks. Luckily, there are tons of tools that will audit your website and point out errors to fix both within the code and your content.Here are a few to check out:

• Ubersuggest – Free tool that gives you some basic tips
• Ahrefs – Our favorite. Tons of tools and combines with keyword explorer
• Screaming Frog – Great crawler for big websites
• Seomator – Another good tool, includes monitoring and alerts
• Google Search Console – Free tool from Google to see your search queries and fix crawl errors

Finding and fixing technical errors in your website makes it easier for search engines to “crawl” through your site and understand your content better.

Use an SEO plugin

Website plugins are great for giving you real-time advice for your standard and local SEO. Use an SEO plugin for things like blog posts, meta tags, page content, and more. Here are a few plugins worth looking into:

• Yoast SEO
• All-in-One SEO Pack
• SEMrush
• SEO Squirrly

Generate More Reviews

When it comes to Local SEO, reviews are very important. When your business shows in the local results, Google includes your 1-5 star rating next to your name, and when presented next to other companies, searchers are more likely to click on the company with the higher rating.

There are a few quick ways to get more reviews on Google. The easiest and quickest way is to just send an email to all your current clients and ask for a review, linking to your Google Business Profile. Afterwards, figure out a way to implement it into your onboarding process with NEW clients. You get more and better reviews in the earlier “honeymoon” stages of your relationship.

Another strategy is to put a button or link on your website, asking for a review. Even if someone isn’t a current client, they may have something nice to say about a past experience, or they could simply be a colleague that is willing to vouch for you.

While you should NEVER pay for a review, there are some paid tools that can help you get more reviews. Tools like Review Buzz and Grade.us are good for this.

One more thing. Don’t freak out if you get a less-than-preferred review. Respond to it kindly, not with excuses, but with a recognition of how you’ll prevent the issue in the future. Some studies have shown this actually increases trust.

Create Relevant Content

Once your site is optimized and you have a solid keyword strategy, it’s time to increase your digital footprint and write some blogs.

Blog articles are great for social media sharing and provide a low barrier of entry to your site. While the rest of your website is to explain your company and sell your services, the blog is a place to provide value, educate your audience, and even have a little fun.

I’ll reiterate, the blog is not a place to sell constantly. It may be okay to mention your services if it comes up naturally, but with each article, think about the following:

Ask yourself one question before you write: “Does this serve me, or my audience?” If the answer isn’t your audience, the post probably won’t get much traction.

For example, we at Hook Security provide security awareness training.

Is this blog about phishing?

It sure isn’t. Our blog serves our secondary purpose as a company which is to provide kickass marketing advice to our channel partners.

So when it comes to running a blog for an MSP, think about things you could help your audience with. Ranking IOT devices, educating about security, teaching how to evaluate their tech stack, you get it.

Security topics are a natural fit. Posts that help small businesses understand threats build the trust that sells managed security; our guide to selling cybersecurity to SMBs covers the conversation. Hook partners also get a library of graphics and marketing materials to publish, and you can see what’s included on our page for MSPs.

One other good place to look for blog ideas is in your support tickets. If you’re getting common questions from your clients, see if these could be written into a blog post as other clients/prospects are likely having the same issue.

Local SEO for MSPs FAQ

How do MSPs do local SEO?

Claim and complete a Google Business Profile, build a page for each service and each city you serve, ask every happy client for a review, and publish content that answers the questions your clients ask. Then track what works in Google Search Console.

What keywords should an MSP website use?

Use the words buyers type, not industry terms: IT support, managed IT services, IT company and cybersecurity services, each paired with your city. Save “MSP” for content aimed at other MSPs.

Should an MSP create a page for each city?

Only for cities you actually serve, and only with content specific to that place, such as an office address or the kinds of clients you support there. Thin copies of the same page with the city name swapped rarely rank.

How long does local SEO take for an MSP?

Expect months, not weeks. A complete Business Profile and fresh reviews tend to move map results first. Ranking pages for competitive city searches takes steady content and links over time.