If you’re a small business owner in a small town, you might think there’s little value in spending time and money on improving your search engine presence when you’re competing for the top ranks with big names like Amazon. Although this might be the case for the primary organic listings, it’s certainly not for local search. This is where local SEO services come in.
Given that 81% of consumers currently use Google to assess local businesses, local SEO services play a hugely important role in attracting customers from a specific geographical area. For a small brick-and-mortar business with a single storefront, your potential customers may be the foot traffic waiting just outside your door. However, for online stores, your target audience may be anyone taking to their favorite search engine with specific phrases or questions. Either way, your goal is the same – to reach out and attract the right audience and provide them with high-quality products and/or services before your competitors. The result is a better return on investment (ROI) and improved local brand recognition, visibility and awareness. This is where local SEO comes in.
Regardless of whether you have a physical brick-and-mortar presence or serve a particular geographic area, local SEO allows your business to communicate with people in your neighborhood, town or city with better success rates.
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So, what is local SEO? And why is it so important?
What is local SEO?
Local SEO is the process of modifying SEO strategies and approaches for the purpose of reaching an audience that is geo-targeted. In simple terms, local SEO services assist both brick-and-mortar and online businesses alike by increasing the accessibility and visibility of a website to both existing and potential customers in a specific geographical area.
In a nutshell, Local SEO is SEO on a smaller scale. It targets a small subset of geographical customers local to your business – hence the name.
Why is local SEO important?
After collecting and analyzing the data behind online user behavior through trillions of online searches, Google discovered their users were seeking certain types of businesses and organizations in their local area and needed results from their immediate geographical location. As a result, many search engines now use local search algorithms now utilise proximity, which is a fancy way of saying that their clever algorithms will take a location into account when someone searches for a specific keyword. That’s why even if you don’t include near me or the name of your city in your search, a search engine will still use your location to show you businesses close to you that may be able to find the most accurate answers to your search.
Local search has been available for some time, but its use was restricted because most people exclusively used desktop computers. Local SEO has become crucial due to the explosion in mobile internet in recent years, meaning the success of any company supplying local products and/or services to a specific geographical area.
For example, if you’re business was celebrating a birthday, one of your directors might decide to treat your team. They might type burger delivery into their favorite search engine, such as Google, Bing or Yahoo, for the purpose of finding a local takeaway. If you’re celebrating at work and want to get a burger delivered to your office, searching for burger delivery would show a list of locations near your office in the local SERPs. However, the same search at home just a few hours later would yield an entirely different set of results.
What factors impact local SEO?
Organic local search results play a major role in determining whether or not your business is accessible online and how much traffic you can expect. Although the fundamental principles of SEO still hold true, local SEO utilises more subtle variations than other SEO processes. This is because the elements you are ranked for are weighted differently in the eyes of search engines such as Google and Bing.
Industry studies have shown the local search rankings that influence your strategies are:
- On-page signals
- Signals from outbound and inbound links
- Behavioural signals
- Personalization
- Signals from Google’s My Business
- Citations
- Reviews
So, what are the benefits of local SEO services?
Better visibility
Local SEO services can increase your visibility online, meaning your business will be more easily discovered by both potential and existing customers. Greater local visibility can also bring more foot traffic into your brick-and-mortar location, which can result in more sales.
More online reviews
These days, online reviews are a crucial component of building a reputation. This is because customers often utilize online reviews to help with decision-making when choosing a business to purchase their product and/or service. More positive online reviews mean there will be a greater chance of your business turning over a profit and improving your return on investment (ROI).
Hyper-targeted web traffic
Local SEO not only means more traffic but more hyper-targeted, high-quality traffic. As a result, increasing traffic to your website through local search engine optimisation can result in an increase in leads, subscriptions, sign-ups and sales. Website optimization can also bolster your conversion rate, meaning you may see an increase in contact form submissions, phone calls, email subscriptions or online sales. You may see a similar result from optimizing your Google Business Profile, which can improve your presence on Google Maps.
Final thoughts
Regardless of whether you have a brick-and-mortar presence or only serve a certain geographic area, local SEO gives your business the opportunity to communicate effectively with local people in your neighborhood, town or city with better success rates.
Local search has been accessible for some time, but its use has been limited. This is because, up until a decade ago, most people still exclusively used desktop computers. However, due to the recent increase in mobile internet usage, this has now changed. As a result, local SEO has become essential for any business that provides local goods and/or services to a particular geographic area.
Given that 81% of consumers use Google to evaluate local businesses before they visit in-store or make a purchase online, local SEO is crucial for drawing clients from a specific geographical area. For both e-commerce websites and brick-and-mortar stores alike, the goal is the same – to reach out and attract the right audience and provide them with high-quality products and/or services before your competitors. When local SEO is done right, the result is just that, not to mention a better return on investment (ROI) and improved local brand recognition, visibility and awareness.
