Digital marketers acknowledge the importance of Search Engine Optimization or SEO in optimizing their online business. Businesses face cut-throat competition in the marketplace, and to create more opportunities for sales, revenue, and profits, they must concentrate on building and improving their online presence. It applies to both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores. Businesses with physical locations should invest efforts in Local SEO to get more exposure, increase user traffic, and access better-qualified clients.
So, what is Local SEO?
Local SEO allows businesses to effectively promote themselves on online channels to local customers within a particular geographic area. The main difference between organic SEO practices and Local SEO lies in the intent. Marketers adopt it for ‘local intent to improve search visibility for their businesses that serve the immediate communities face-to-face. It may include brick-and-mortar businesses that have a physical location or service-area businesses operating across a specific geographic area.
If you seek to adopt the best Local SEO practices, you can outsource it to a local business Search Engine Optimization service. They can leverage the best techniques and methods to improve your business’s ranking in the local search results. When a potential customer includes their locality or a particular geological marker in their search, a local search takes place. Examples may include instances such as “Web design agency in Canada” or “Hotels in New Jersey.” Local SEO is thus mostly appearing on the maps within the local pack (the map listings), regular Google Maps, and in localized standard organic results.
Does Local SEO benefit businesses?
If you do not invest efforts in Local SEO and neglect it, you will miss out on potential customers to your competitors. Interested customers who can result in conversion may opt for your company. If you incorporate local SEO. You need to improve your organization’s online profile to appear in local searches most relevant to your business. The first half of the search results page consists of two distinct sections: paid ads and the local pack (the map listings). A larger section of prospective customers utilizes these map listings to find a business’s location. Implementing a local SEO strategy will help you stay right at the top positions in the local pack for local searches that concern your organization.
As per Google,
- 78% of people who search for something in proximity to their location using their phones visit the business within a day.
- 30% of all mobile searches have a relation to location.
- 28% of searches that relates to something nearby result in a purchase.
Thus, if you are not using local SEO for your business, you are losing out on potential customers.
What are local SEO ranking factors?
Search engines like Google take several local SEO ranking factors to determine your website’s search rankings. These include:
- Quality of local search citations
- Domain Authority
- Click-through rate (CTR) from search results
- Google Business Profile or Google My Business (GMB) listing
- User Experience (UX)
- Link Signals
- Name, address, and phone number (NAP) consistency in local business
- Keywords
How Can You Improve Your Business’ Local SEO Strategy?
You need to stay aligned with various Local SEO strategies, some of which include:
- Reviews: Reviews are critical for Local SEO. You need to invest efforts to regularly solicit reviews and ask your team to adopt white hat review-building tactics.
- NAP Citations: Ensure the consistency of your business’ name, address, and phone number across all your online assets.
- Local directory listings: Ensure that you have claimed and verified your listings on local directories.
- Schema markup: You can ask your web developer to incorporate a local business schema for your website. It provides the search engines with a better and more coherent supply of local information related to your business.
- Localized onsight content: The relevancy of your on-site content to the searcher will enable your website to pop up more often in search results. You must create unique geo-targeted service pages, include maps with locations, and specify service areas.
How to choose the right Local SEO company?
When outsourcing Local SEO to a company that can perform it on your behalf, there are various factors you must consider. Selecting the right Local SEO company can be daunting, but you can ease the process with the right strategy. The company must have extensive experience in carrying out local SEO strategies for businesses and have brought about proven results. You can review the work portfolio to identify what businesses they have worked with and the quality of results. They must have the right tools, processes, and knowledge of best practices. Moreover, review the customer testimonials to validate their business results. They must input efforts to build a valuable relationship with your company that is based on the idea of communication and transparency. They should adopt data-driven decisions to turn your website and its ranking into your strongest marketing asset.
To Conclude:
These are a few things you should know about local SEO. It can be your mantra to make your business more visible to customers and bring more sales opportunities.
