What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is all about increasing search visibility for businesses that serve their communities face-to-face. These can be brick-and-mortar businesses with physical locations, like a grocery store or dentist’s office, or service-area businesses that operate throughout a certain geographic area, like an electrician or house cleaning company. This includes everything from claiming a business listing to ensuring a franchise location appears in a local search on Google (a process known as location data or citation management). It also extends to managing online ratings and reviews, local-centric social media engagement, and beyond.
How Does Local SEO Work?
At a high-level Local SEO works like “normal” Google search. When someone does a search, Google scans through its index to provide the best results for that person’s query. What makes Local SEO unique is that Google uses a different set of ranking factors to rank the local search results.
Do I need Local SEO?
If your business has a local customer or client base, Local SEO can definitely benefit you. Some businesses may not realise that they could be drawing in more people from outside their local area using Local SEO. This is particularly relevant for anyone in the catering or hospitality business, where non-local visitors may search from elsewhere before coming to your venue.
Businesses that typically benefit from Local SEO include:
* Hospitality — hotels, restaurants, cafe, bars etc
* Medical practices — doctors, dentists, clinics
* Law firms — solicitors, barristers
* Local Services — florists, plumbers, electricians, hair salons, accountants, fitness centres etc
And you’ll know that you don’t need it if you are:
* Ecommerce companies
* Online-only services
* Private sellers
Why is Local SEO Important?
Local SEO helps your business stand out — even if you don’t have a website — and helps drive more traffic to your premises through online leads.
Since these leads are from people who are specifically searching for products or services that your business offers, they are also likely to give you a high conversion rate.
Searches with local intent are on the rise — with 4 in 5 consumers now using search engines to find local information, and search result information sending a massive 70% of consumers to a physical store. Local SEO also helps drive people’s decisions in favour of your business. The more information they have about your business before they visit, the more trustworthy you are in their eyes.
5 benefits of local SEO:
1. You gain more visibility online:
With local SEO, your business gains more visibility in that it gets found by the right people who are interested in your product and at the right time. When your business is more visible, this means more profits, sales, and even relevance.
2. Improvement of traffic for the most relevant searches:
If you are not utilizing local SEO, this could mean that you are competing for space in the search results with competitors and other businesses. Chances of your business getting unnoticed or passed over are high, but with local SEO, you’ll have potential customers clicking on your website to see your products.
3. Build links with nearby businesses:
With local SEO, you get to stay competitive with other local businesses since you consistently show up on sites. For instance, a local business may be looking to cross-promote their products with another business within the same locality. If you are listed locally, this company will easily find you. When a business knows about yours, you are more likely to get mentioned in their posts. You even get referrals from their customers. This brings you more clients and improves your business relationships.
4. Gain possible repeat customers:
Local SEO helps you to capture different shoppers, even those who are visiting the area from far away. When you provide extemporary services to a customer, they are most likely to come back and build a long term business relationship. This stretches your sales from a single client to hundreds of them.
5. Reduce advertising cost :
Most customers prefer the “near me” option when performing a search on where to buy their products. If you are high in rankings thanks to local SEO, it means that more customers can see your website and products, saving you money that you would have otherwise channeled in other modes of advertising, such as putting ads on newspapers. If you want to know more local seo packages
