We are currently living in a society where customers are looking for the best products and services around them, and they want answers to their queries, fast.
It is extremely important in our new digital era to know if your business is showing up when customers look for it online. Will they pick your business or will they pick other businesses that have a much better online presence?
This practice, updating your business so it offers as much information as it can online for potential customers in the area is known as Local SEO.
Local SEO is the practice of optimizing a website in order to increase traffic, leads and brand awareness from local search. Common tasks associated with local SEO include finding local keywords, optimizing a business’s Google My Business profile, and building “NAP” (Name, Address, and Phone Number) citations.
Local SEO is so important because 46% of all searches in Google have “local intent”. This means that almost half of the searches that happen through Google are based on queries for local businesses like, for example, your nearest hairdresser with the best rating and reviews from other users that have attended that business.
After the tremendous hit the pandemic had on our economy, especially in local businesses economies, who were not able to open and run their businesses properly due to quarantines and many other restrictions. This led to many more people turning into big, global brands which had the logistics and potential to operate during the quarantines and shutdowns, for example, Amazon. It is no secret that many local businesses have been negatively impacted by the rise of delivery service companies such as Amazon. We saw many campaigns during 2020 and 2021, and in many ways today, that promoted local consumption. To say so, for example, instead of buying a book on Amazon, going to your local bookstore –with the necessary health protection: masks, social distance, etc.– thus, spending your money on your own region, in other words, locally.
Sadly, many businesses have not been able to adapt to this new reality where there is an imperative need for users to have all details from a particular local business on a single page. This is where Google, for example, has stepped up and created many courses and campaigns in order to help local business owners adapt their companies to the digital era, this is where the importance of local SEO comes into place.
Improving your SEO influences both relevancy, prominence and link popularity factors for your website. If the right elements of your site’s digital footprint are optimized, your site shows up higher in more search results.
Google has figured out that people seeking certain types of businesses need results from their immediate area, as mentioned before. That’s why Google’s local search algorithm includes a proximity factor that takes your location into account when you search for a local keyword.
For example, If you’re at work and want to get sushi delivered for lunch, Googling “sushi delivery” shows a list of locations near your office in its local SERPS (search engine result pages).
If you try that same search at home, you’ll get an entirely different set of results: restaurants that offer sushi delivery near your home, and not your office
Local search has been around for years, but it was limited due to people only using their desktop computers. With the outstanding growth in mobile internet access, however, mobile search has exploded, so local SEO has become hugely important for the success of any business offering local products or services and local marketers.
One of the most important efforts in marketing is precisely, this one: Location-based factors. It is of utmost importance to have your business listed in Google My Business, having local citations from data aggregators, and reviews from your local customers. All of these factors just stated, are also taken into consideration in your local oriented seo rankings and as consequence you must take them into consideration in your local SEO efforts too.
Website content is a significant factor, just as it is in Google’s traditional search algorithm, but location-based factors like Google My Business, citations, and review signals are also included.
How to start taking full advantage of your SEO?
There are many factors that influence your visibility in these searches, but keep in mind that local search continues to grow and change. It is important to stay updated so you’ll be able to serve more people in your geographic region—and grow faster.
Some of the most important Local SEO Tips are the following:
- Optimize for Google My Business.
- Google My Business is their tool to help your business meet Google’s needs. To ensure you’re optimized for Google My Business, you’ll want to:
- Create and verify a Google My Business page
- Use Google Posts within your account
- Encourage your customers to share reviews online
- Respond authentically to reviews, specifying location.
- If Google can verify your business as authentic, the search engine could potentially reward your business with a coveted sidebar space in Google local search.
- By having reviews and keeping your contact information and operating hours up-to-date, you’re improving the experience for potential customers to find you.
- Google My Business is their tool to help your business meet Google’s needs. To ensure you’re optimized for Google My Business, you’ll want to:
- Engage on social media and add posts to Google My Business.
- Google considers content shared on social media more important now than ever before.Now that you’ve designed and worked on your Google My Business page, share the page on social media, further aligning social and search.
- Ensure your name, address, and phone number are consistent online.
- Discrepancies like misspellings, abbreviations, lack of suite number or wrong phone number can be problematic. If Google can’t determine which information about your business is correct, it may not show your business at all in search results.
- Optimize online directories and citations.
- Perform a local SEO audit.
- Improve your internal linking structure.
- Optimize URL, title tags, headers, meta description, and content.
- Add location pages to your website.
- Create local content.
- Ensure your website is mobile-friendly.
- Get inbound links with relevance and authority.
- Start with your own personal network, which may include the Chamber of Commerce, business improvement districts, licensing bureaus, trade associations, resellers, vendors, and/or manufacturers and other affiliates. Consider sponsoring a webinar or meet-up, hosting a community event, promoting something local, and building relationships with prominent people and influencers. Additionally, learn to feel comfortable reaching out to partners to see if they can feature you in their partner directory.
- Participate in your local community.
Final Words
There are numerous benefits to implementing a local SEO strategy. They include being able to reach more people, drive more conversions, and build your reputation. When you successfully begin to achieve these outcomes, then it’s natural to expect that your business will grow.
Better visibility in the local search results will lead to more people discovering your brand. Secondly, your efforts will drive more conversions.Taking action to increase search visibility will naturally lead to more people visiting your business website—and more web traffic can result in more conversions.Depending on your specific business type, a conversion may be one or more of the following:product sales; service sales; account signups; newsletter signups; phone calls; free trials; or form submissions. In addition to all of these benefits, you will also enhance your reputation. Regardless of what type of business you’re in, your reputation is imperative to your long-term success. Certain local SEO actions will contribute to building your reputation and establishing you as a leader within your industry.
To sum up, if you want your business to thrive in today’s digital and physical world, having a well constructed local SEO will make your business successful without a doubt.
