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How to Show Up When Someone Searches Sourdough Near Me | Episode 88

  • Jun 19, 2025
  • 6 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts or watch on YouTube


Somewhere within five miles of your kitchen, a person is typing sourdough near me into their phone right now. If nothing of yours comes up, they are going to the grocery store.


That is the whole reason to care about search engine optimization, which everyone shortens to SEO. You do not need a real website, an online shop, or any interest in reaching strangers three states away. You need the neighbors who are already looking for exactly what you bake to find you before they give up.


Most of us started this business from a place of passion, without a marketing background, and let the search side sit on the back burner for a long time. I did too. Here is the whole thing, step by step, in the order I would tackle it.


Step 1: Claim your Google Business Profile

If you do one thing from this list, make it this one. It is free, it is the single most important local SEO step, and you do not need a storefront to use it.


Go to google.com/business and set up your profile with:

  • Your business name and your city

  • Your phone number, and your hours if you keep set ones

  • A link, which can simply be your Simply Bread page, your Hotplate page, or your Instagram

  • A few photos of your bread, your pickup table, and your own face

On the photos, take them in naturally lit space. Turn off the overhead lights, hold the loaf by a window, or step out onto the porch. Keep the background uncluttered and do not overthink it. Let the bread do the work.


Then ask two or three happy customers to leave a review. Even that many makes a real difference, because a review is what tells a stranger you are a real, functioning business they can safely order from.


You do not have to publish your home address

This is the part that stops most home bakers, and I checked carefully so I could tell you plainly. You do not have to show your address.


When you set up the profile, choose to register as a service area business. When Google asks, say that you deliver goods or services directly to customers, and select hide my address. You still appear in local searches and on the map, and your home stays private.


Then pick how wide you want that service area to be. My town is Bulverde, the greater area is Bulverde and Spring Branch, and the bigger city is north San Antonio. I keep mine hyper local, usually Bulverde and Spring Branch, because those are the people who will actually drive to me.


Use the description field to say how buying from you works. Something like: pre-orders open on Sunday, pickup is Thursday, and you can also find me at the market on Saturdays. Anyone who lands there should know their next step without having to hunt for it.


Step 2: Use the words your customers actually type

Keywords sound technical. All the phrase means is the words a real person puts into Google when they want what you make.


Think about phrases like sourdough in Nashville, bread pickup in Charlotte, microbakery near me, or Saturday bread drop in Tulsa. Then put those phrases where they can be read:

  • Your Instagram or Facebook bio

  • Your Linktree or whatever link in bio page you use, which is a perfectly good stand in for a website

  • The header or About section of your website if you have one

  • Your About or FAQ section on Hotplate or the Simply Bread app

Here is the difference it makes. My site could say welcome to Bluebird Bread Co. Or it could say Bluebird Bread Co is a microbakery in Bulverde, Texas, offering handmade sourdough baked with organic flour, and you can find us at the market every second and fourth Saturday. Same sentence length, so much more for a neighbor and for Google to work with.


One note on the word organic. There is real nuance in using it to label a product, so I do not call my bread organic sourdough. I say made with organic flour, which is accurate and still searchable. Make your own call there, carefully.


Step 3: Rename your photos before you upload them

Google cannot see what is in your picture. It can read the file name.


So instead of uploading IMG4567.jpg, rename the file to something that describes it, like sourdough-loaf-bluebird-bread-bulverde.jpg. What it is, your business name, your location. This matters most on a website or blog, and it takes about four seconds per photo.


Step 4: Write a short Find Us paragraph

Even with no storefront, you can tell people where you serve. Add a few sentences to your homepage, your contact page, your ordering form, or your About section.


It can read something like: we offer weekly sourdough pickups in the Littleton and Morrison area of Colorado, just off C-470, and we serve families across the Front Range.


That kind of sentence reinforces where you are for Google, and it answers the question every new customer has before they will place an order.


Step 5: Tag your town on social media

People argue about how much hashtags do these days. They do not hurt, so use the hyper local ones rather than the big generic ones. Think along the lines of #BulverdeTexas, #SanAntonioBakery, #MorrisonColorado, #HillCountryBread.


Use the location tagging feature on Instagram too, so your town shows on the post itself. I tag my town and stop there, never my neighborhood or my street. Even if you are not ranking on Google yet, this gives local people a way to stumble onto you.


One more, and it is not really SEO

Make an introduction post and pin it to the top of your profile. Your face, your name, what you sell, where you sell it, and how to order.


I find gorgeous bakery accounts all the time and cannot tell whether they are in my county or across the country. Do not make someone work that hard to spend money with you.


If you already have orders coming in

You may have done half of this without meaning to. Sit down for twenty minutes and search your own town plus sourdough, plus bread pickup, plus microbakery, the way a customer would, and see what actually comes back.


Then look at what a first time visitor sees on whichever page you send people to. If they cannot tell your town, your pickup day, and how to order within a few seconds, fix that page before you touch anything else. And go ask five regulars for a Google review this month. Reviews are the piece that keeps working for you long after you set it up.


Final thoughts

Done beats perfect here, and I have to remind myself of that as much as I am reminding you. You do not need to become an SEO expert or do all six steps this week.


Claim the Google profile. Add your town to your bio. Ask two customers for a review. That is a real afternoon of work with a return, and you can layer the rest on whenever you have room.


The people who want real bread from a real person are five miles away and already looking. Let's make it easy for them to find you!


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If getting found locally is what you are working on right now, these will help too.


Links to things you might like!


 
 
 

1 Comment

mhcommet
Jun 29, 2025

Are you changing your image/photo names on a laptop? Because I can’t figure out how to change the names from my iPhone..

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