Guides
Local SEO for Costa Blanca businesses
A practical, no-jargon guide for small businesses in Jávea, Dénia, Moraira and around Alicante who want to be found on Google — by both locals and the year-round expat community.
1. Claim and finish your Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the single biggest local-SEO lever on the Costa Blanca. It's what shows up in the map pack when someone searches "restaurant Jávea" or "abogado Dénia". Fill in every field: hours, address, phone, website, service area, photos, and — most importantly — the correct primary category. Add both an English and a Spanish description.
2. Publish bilingual content (properly)
Machine-translated pages hurt more than they help. Write each page in one language and have a native speaker translate — or write two versions. Serve them on clean URLs (/es/… and /…, for example) with hreflang tags. The Costa Blanca market splits roughly half English, half Spanish — ignore either and you halve your traffic.
3. Get reviews — and reply to them
Reviews are the strongest ranking signal you can influence directly. Ask every happy customer, in person, at the moment they're happiest. Reply to every review, in the language it was written. Ten thoughtful, bilingual reviews beat fifty generic ones.
4. Build local citations
Get your business listed — with identical name, address, phone (NAP) — on the directories locals actually use: Páginas Amarillas, Guía Local, TripAdvisor (for hospitality), Idealista (for property), and expat directories like javeamigos.com and costablanca-news.com. Consistency matters more than quantity.
5. On-page basics that still work
- One clear H1 per page, with the location in it ("Web design in Jávea").
- A unique title tag (under 60 characters) and meta description (under 160) per page.
- LocalBusiness schema in your homepage source — address, coordinates, opening hours.
- Fast load times on mobile. Costa Blanca mobile 4G isn't Madrid — every kilobyte matters.
6. Location landing pages (the honest way)
If you serve several towns — say Jávea, Moraira and Dénia — build one real page per town with genuinely different content: which neighbourhoods, which local clients, local photos. Don't clone a template and swap the place name. Google spots that instantly and it hurts every page.
7. Backlinks from local sites
A single link from a well-known Costa Blanca site (news, expat community, chamber of commerce, a partner business) is worth more than dozens of generic directory links. Sponsor a local event, guest-write for a community site, get quoted in the local press.
8. Measure what matters
Install Google Search Console and Google Business Profile insights. Track calls, direction requests, and website clicks — not just impressions. Review monthly, adjust your Google Business categories and photos, and keep publishing.
Want us to do it for you?
Local SEO is included in every website we build at Javea Web Studio — Google Business setup, bilingual optimisation and the technical basics done properly. If you'd rather hand it to a local team, get in touch.