How Your Small Business Can Get Found Online, Despite Big Brand Dominance in Google Searches

By Miriam Ellis

What customers really want when it comes to shopping is a diversity of local and small business options. As many as 67% of consumers say they are even more committed to shopping with small businesses than they were before the Covid-19 pandemic began, and 91% prefer to shop locally because they trust small businesses to treat them fairly.

All too often, though, consolidation and monopoly result in SERPs (search engine results pages) that show only the same big brands, over and over. Why is this? Consider that Amazon controlled 51.2% of total e-commerce sales in the United States in 2020. The Walmart effect can be felt even closer to home on weekly shopping orders; this brand along with just three others is now controlling 65% of the U.S. grocery retail market. Meanwhile, Google, with its control of 92.47% of search market share, reflects decreasing consumer choice as varied brands consolidate or disappear.

The SERPs can take on the appearance of foes for struggling small business owners, but strangely enough, Google’s monopoly can actually be used to your advantage. If nearly all searches are happening within Google’s interface, our environment is frequently predictable. Useful but narrow paths can be cut here between the majority of customers who want to shop small and the assets controlled by local and small business owners. We just have to document what our options are for blazing these trails in a rather flat landscape almost universally governed by Google.

How your local small business can get found online

Think of your customers standing at a fork in the road when searching online: One direction will bring them to your business directly within Google’s interfaces, and the other direction will bring them through a link in the SERPs to your own website, or to a third-party interface where you have established a base. We can categorize your opportunities like this:

Directly within Google

Customers who want to shop small or are seeking specific attributes of a business in order to patronize it can connect with you via:

• Google Business Profile (GBP) listing—If your business model qualifies for a listing, so be sure your contact information is complete and accurate.
• GBP Products—Learn how to make product uploads so that your listing acts as a virtual window shopping feature.
• GBP Q&A—Questions and answers that you can create or the public can post as queries you can answer that are right within your listing.
• GBP Messaging—Allows you to chat live with customers via your listing.
• GBP attributes—Lets customers know they’ve found the right business if they’re looking to shop with a company that is Black-owned, women-led, wheelchair-accessible, LGBTQ+-friendly, requires masks, or has other benefits.
• Google Shopping listings—These can be filtered by “smaller stores” and “available nearby,” which can help small businesses be chosen over big-box stores like Amazon.

Indirectly via Google

Beyond the Google-based interfaces that can connect customers to your business, search engine results contain many other discovery options including links to:

• Your website—Links will go to the most important pages of your own website if you’re doing your SEO right.
• Third-party sites—Learn about the many local business listings and review platforms that list or mention businesses; also learn about linked unstructured citations, when a company receives an online mention on a third-party site along with a link.
• Third-party shopping platforms—These include shopping sites like Etsy, which can be filtered by city or region.
• Neighborhood hubs—Platforms like Nextdoor, which filter the competition down to a hyperlocal level and feature very simple business listings.
• Your social media profiles—If well managed, social media platforms offer an ideal place for people to experience the responsiveness of your customer service.

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• 7 Effective Ways to Increase Engagement With Facebook Ads
• Using Instagram to Promote Your Business? Avoid These 8 Common Mistakes
• 6 SEO Tips for B2B Brands
• How Much Is Your Digital Marketing Budget This Year?
• Advanced Local SEO Strategies for Increased Search Engine Visibility

Giving customers what they want is taking on new meaning

Ultimately, you’re hoping to build a brand so recognizable that the majority of shoppers come directly to you, no middleman required—but this will likely be the work of many years. Until then, you need a strategy to help your local small business get found online.

We’re rooting for legislation that levels the economic playing field in the years ahead. While small businesses keep one eye on the outcomes of increasing antitrust investigation into tech, search, and commerce giants, the bulk of their vision needs to remain on the customer.

Given that studies show how much the majority of shoppers want local businesses to be there for them, the benefits to small brands of being discoverable amid a monopolized landscape are clear. In my own community, for example, the fires and floods of climate change have repeatedly damaged nearby business districts, increasing the value we place on local choice as well as our growing awareness of economists citing monopolies as the major blockers to climate action we now know we need.

Across the country, following each disaster there is commonly an outpouring of local support for small businesses that have been damaged after managing to survive the big-box phenomenon, fight off the Amazon effect, and even continue serving the public throughout the pandemic.

Neighbors everywhere sincerely want to shop locally, and your skills with SEO, local SEO, and marketing are some of your small business’s strongest assets to helping your small business get found online, and clearing a welcome path to your front door for discovery, discussion, and transactions.

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