If you run a brick-and-mortar vape shop, it’s easy to believe that what happens online isn’t particularly important for your business. If you don’t sell products online, after all, your success is measured at the register.

The truth, though, is that the Internet is perhaps the most important discovery point for all types of business – even ones that don’t sell online. According to Semrush, eight out of 10 people in the US go online to look for businesses at least once a week.

Considering that almost everyone goes online to discover local businesses, it’s fairly shocking that 58 percent of brick-and-mortar businesses don’t optimize for local search at all. Some of those businesses might be your competitors, giving you a potential opportunity to get ahead.

In short, if you want your brick-and-mortar vape shop to grow, local SEO is the key – and in this guide, we’re going to explain exactly how to do it.

From basic on-site optimization to showing up in the coveted map pack – from tracking lead flows to monitoring customer reviews and sentiment – this is the complete local SEO guide for vape shops.

Before you focus on any other aspect of your vape shop’s local SEO strategy, you need to have a website. Don’t know how to build one? Get in touch. We offer affordable site development services for local vape shops.

Having a website is crucial for your vape shop’s success for many reasons. Here are a few of the biggest ones.

• Win Every Branded Search: When people search Google for the name of your vape shop, your official website should be the first result every time. If people end up on a third-party website like Facebook or Yelp, your competitors are going to be on the same page. In that case, you’re not the one controlling the message.
• Reputation Management: One day, it’s possible that your vape shop will appear in a news story or customer review that’s less than flattering. If that happens, controlling as many of Google’s first-page results as possible gives you a chance to push unflattering results down to the second page where few people will ever see them.
• Off-Site Signals: When you begin optimizing off-site signals, you want those signals to point to a single canonical destination. That destination should always be your official website.

A website for a local vape shop doesn’t need to be enormous. It’s enough to start with just a few pages as long as they’re done correctly.

Learn More: Online Marketing Guide for Vape Shops

Just having a website for your vape shop isn’t enough. You also need to make sure that Google understands your site and that it’s ready to turn visitors into customers. Your website should have:

• A strong domain name. The domain should match the name of your vape shop, and it should be as short and memorable as possible.
• A professional appearance. Put special attention into your home page because it’s the most likely page to appear as a search result when people search for your brand name and other important terms like “vape shop near me.” You want to make a great first impression.
• A mobile-first design. Remember that people are highly likely to look for local vape shops when they’re out and about. Your vape shop’s website needs to look great on phones.
• Strong supporting text. Your home page should introduce your vape shop and explain why people should visit. It should also be optimized around your most important target keywords. You might also want to use your home page to mention some of the main products and brands that you carry.
• Appealing images. A few attractive pictures of your vape shop can go a long way toward encouraging people to visit.
• Appealing meta descriptions. Google may show your site’s meta descriptions on search results pages. Use them as opportunities to pre-sell your vape shop and encourage people to click through.
• Clear business information. Make sure that details like your address, phone number and hours are very easy to find. It’s also worthwhile to consider adding other elements like driving directions, parking information and the ability for people to contact you by text message and/or live chat.
• Social media presence. Link out to your most active social media profiles.
• Local business schema. Schema is internal information in a page’s source code that helps Google and other search engines understand the information on the page. You can use schema to describe your vape shop’s official name, address, hours, phone number and more. Once you’ve added schema to a page’s source code, use the Schema.org markup validator to confirm that it’s correct. Correct schema helps Google understand your business’s details and may help with search rankings.
• Excellent speed. Remember that many people will view your website on phones and that their connections may not always be great. The Google PageSpeed Insights tool is excellent for testing a page’s speed and provides suggestions for troubleshooting poor results.

Once you’ve verified your Google Business Profile, you should think of it almost like a miniature website hosted by Google and fill it with relevant content.

• Fill the profile out completely by adding your vape shop’s name, address, phone number and hours – including holiday hours if applicable.
• Add plenty of high-quality pictures of your vape shop. Don’t just upload a single picture of the main sales floor. Add pictures with titles and descriptions that match various customer intents. For example, you might want your profile to include pictures of your vape shop’s entrance and the parking area. You might also want to include pictures of products such as e-liquids, disposable vapes and vape kits. You can include pictures of your staff as well. These pictures pre-sell your vape shop to potential customers, and they also help to seed your profile with relevant keywords.
• Write a keyword-rich description for your vape shop. Google gives you 750 characters for a description, and this is a good opportunity to use important keywords like “vape shop in (city name).”
• Seed your FAQ with keyword-rich questions and answers. You can do this by searching for the name of your vape shop on Google and clicking “Ask a Question.” Some of the questions that might be worth adding include:
  • Do you carry Geek Bars?
  • Do you have vape kits from Vaporesso?
  • Do you carry both nicotine salts and freebase e-liquids?
  • Are you open late?
  • Are you open on holidays?
  • Do you have parking?

Once you’ve written the questions and answers, monitor them to ensure that other people don’t add incorrect answers.

When people search for local businesses online, Google is the main provider of that information – but it’s far from the only one. Every day, millions of people go to other major directories like Bing, Facebook and Yelp as well. Online phone books like YellowPages.com and map providers like Apple Maps are also crucial, both because people search those services directly and because they are data sources for other searches. Siri uses data from Apple Maps, for example, and Copilot uses data from Bing.

You also want to make sure that your vape shop is ready for AI-powered search. Services like ChatGPT and Perplexity draw on external data sources when people search for local businesses, so you need to make sure that you’re listed in as many major directories as possible.

Learn More: Business Directory Guide for Vape Shops

Websites like Google, Bing, Facebook and Yelp are some of the largest business directories, but claiming or creating profiles on smaller directories should also be part of the local SEO strategy for your vape shop. That’s for two reasons.

• Every time you create a new business directory listing, you get a local citation. A citation is a text mention of your vape shop’s name, address and phone number. Citations are some of the most important off-site signals because they confirm the information that Google knows about your vape shop and because they can potentially improve your rankings for local searches.
• Even smaller business directories still often have human traffic, and you want your vape shop to be listed wherever your potential customers are.

Although any business directory listing can potentially be useful for you, spend extra time looking for business directories that specialize in vape shops or exist specifically for businesses in your city, state or region. These types of business directories are particularly relevant for your vape shop and can potentially help to improve your search rankings.

Many business directories earn revenue by encouraging business owners to pay for more prominent placement. It’s generally not worthwhile to pay for a promoted listing on a directory, though, unless you’re sure that potential customers might find you there.

Google specifically states in their documentation that more reviews and positive ratings from customers can help your vape shop’s rankings in local searches. You want to be as proactive as you can be – within the rules, of course – about encouraging customers to leave reviews.

Having positive reviews is also important because negative reviews can always happen, even when you’re doing your best. Their impact will be minimal if positive reviews drown them out.

Here are some tips that can help to keep the positive reviews flowing your way.

• Offer bonus loyalty points to customers who check in through the Yelp app when visiting your vape shop. Although Yelp prohibits incentivized reviews, there’s no rule against encouraging customers to check in. If someone is already using the Yelp app, it increases the chance that they’ll leave a positive review.
• Print a QR code on your receipts that allows customers to go directly to Google and review your vape shop. Caption the code with text like “Did we earn it? Scan the code to review us on Google!”
• If your point-of-sale system sends email or SMS receipts, those provide additional opportunities for you to link to Google, Yelp and other key platforms.
• Leave a personalized reply to each review. Customers are more likely to leave reviews if they know that business owners will definitely read them.

The two main types of off-site mentions are citations and backlinks. A citation is a text mention of your vape shop’s name along with its address and phone number, and a backlink is a hyperlink that people can click to visit your website. Both are valuable for ensuring that your vape shop ranks well on Google in a competitive market, but backlinks can really help to tip the scales in your favor if you and your competitors have similar relevancy signals. Backlinks show prominence, and Google’s algorithm tries to show prominent businesses in its search results.

Business directory listings often include links, but those links are typically only valuable in that people might click them and visit your website. Directory links usually have the nofollow attribute, which means that they won’t affect your search rankings directly. What you really want to get are editorial links in the main bodies of articles. These tips can help you do that.

• Offer to contribute guest articles to vape-related websites and publications.
• You can also offer to contribute articles to business-related websites. A vape shop is a unique type of business, which gives you an interesting perspective.
• Reach out to local publications and offer yourself as an interview source.
• Sponsor a concert or other local event. Make sure that the website for the event links to you. Try to get some extra links by doing a bit of PR with the local media. These types of links can really differentiate your vape shop in a competitive market.

“Find Us on Google” for a Higher Click-Through Rate

One of the ways that Google determines relevancy for a given search is by paying attention to what people click. If you can get people to click your site more often, it may help to improve your rankings. Try placing a local radio ad. Instead of giving your website’s URL, say “Find us on Google. Search for (shop name) (city).” If it works, you’ll get plenty of extra clicks.

Extend Your Hours to Win “Open Now” Searches

When people search for local businesses on Google, they often use the modifier “open now” to exclude stores that are closed. You can win “open now” searches if your vape shop is the only one that’s open, so consider opening earlier and closing later than your competitors.

Publish a FAQ Targeting High-Intent Modifiers

People don’t just search for “vape shop” when they want to find a local vape shop. They also use a variety of modifiers like “open now,” “near me,” “closest,” “free parking,” “near (landmark)” and “cheap.” Add a FAQ to your location page that works those modifiers into the text naturally. Use FAQ schema to give the questions and answers a chance to appear in search results.