Survey says that 97% of people prefer the internet to learn more about a local business. People usually start with a simple online search to find businesses, products, and services in their local area. Local Search Engine Optimization is all about increasing the search visibility of businesses providing their services to the community face-to-face.
A website targets the entire online world, but local SEO tries to rank your business higher in the local areas. It is worth investing in local optimization, to get people try to reach you more often online than offline. Local SEO optimizes the website of your business for a specific local area.
Optimizing the website for local means your website is accessible to local audiences. According to a recent survey, the first five search results positions get more than 68% of all clicks. That’s why; it is extremely important to maintain the top ranking of your websites, even in local.
If you have a local business such as a shop, restaurant, shop salon, or agency, you want to increase the visibility of your web pages in local areas. You want to optimize your online presence for a specific region. We would recommend you invest in local SEO strategies.
You need to implement local SEO techniques to rise above the competition in the digital landscape. Specific keywords (such as organic coffee, dog walker, and shoe sale), along side location-based terms like city name, state, and neighborhood to specify locality help target local audiences. If you want to know more about local SEO, then you are at the perfect place. Our article will discuss its benefits and frequently ask questions about local SEO.
How is Local SEO different from SEO?
Local SEO is quite different from traditional SEO. Both aim to improve your businesses’ ranking in online search results so that more people can find your business.
Traditional SEO
Traditional SEO is also named national/general or organic SEO. General SEO is valuable for any business as it focuses on boosting the website’s ranking by using several ON- and-OFF-page strategies. It uses numerous rank boosting strategies to rank your websites on a national or even global scale.
Anatomy of a Traditional SEO Result
Let’s explore the anatomy of SEO to understand its strategies better:
Traditional search results first show a series of paid advertisements. These paid ads are PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads and appear at the top of search results.
After the PPC ads are the general search results of SERP (Search Engine Result Page) features. SERP features provide helpful information to searchers without clicking on a result. These special results include reviews, site links, featured snippets, videos, “People also ask” boxes, accelerated mobile pages (AMP), and many more.
And after these steps, searchers will see a list of unpaid search results or organic search results.
Strategies of General SEO
Traditional SEO uses different strategies to optimize the higher ranking of business websites as seen below.
- Do keyword research and target relevant keywords on your website.
- Create descriptive and quality content about your business.
- Boost the load time of your website. Use this tool by Google to measure your site load times.
- Assure your website has no errors within the code.
- Focuses on improving your domain authority by earning backlinks from reputable websites.
In short, general SEO techniques show your business at the top of the search results when people try to search for your products, services, or business.
Local SEO
Local SEO is a sub-category of traditional/general SEO. It aims to optimize your efforts on reaching more local searchers. It is also termed “Map SEO.” Further, Local SEO optimization help you to target the local searchers in your area. For example, if you run a hair salon and use optimized local SEO strategies, whenever people in your area search for “hair salon near me”, your salon has increased chances to appear at the top of the local search result.
Anatomy of Local Search Results
Local search results contain unique features, including paid local map pack ads (PPC) and organic SERP. Local SEO results display a local SEO 3-pack when you search for certain local businesses such as restaurants or clothing shops. These results show local services ads for some local searches. These ads work just like PPC (pay-per-click) ads are not part of organic search results.
Local SEO Strategies
As compared to traditional SEO, local SEO provides some additional features to help you reach local searchers. Local SEO strategies include:
- Assuring you claim (or create) your local profile on Google My Business.
- Optimize your profile on other local listing sites such as Yelp.
- Requesting and managing reviews on local review sites.
- Build local citations and links towards your website connected to local profiles.
- Creating a location-specific web strategy.
Traditional SEO Vs Local SEO
| Traditional SEO | Local SEO |
| Focuses to boost the ranking of websites nationally and globally. | Aims to increase the ranking of websites in local areas and regions. |
| It is beneficial for all sizes of businesses from small to large. | Local service industries such as medical and health, home and repair, heavy equipment use these strategies. |
| Its cost is high as the SEO team has to manage numerous factors internationally. | It is cost-effective, as the local search specialists have to manage a few local factors. |
| Requires creating the content in-depth. | Low content is needed |
Why Does My Business Need Local SEO Services?
Local SEO is indispensable for all business owners. Your business requires an official website to stay competitive in the digital landscape. Thus your business website needs local SEO strategies to get more leads, and more revenue.
Local SEO optimization help show your business, products, or services on maps, navigation apps, and/or the Google’s local pack. Google says that more than 46% of the searchers intend to search in local areas. This means that potential local customers prefer to search for services within their local areas. If you do Local SEO, it will boost the visibility of your business to searchers. Subsequently, they will find your products and come to buy them.
In summation, your business needs local SEO services because:
- Local SEO boosts your website’s ranking in Google’s local pack and search results.
- It offers the highest conversion levels from reputable local advertising channels.
- It will increase the online visibility of your business to your nearby customers.
- It guarantees organic traffic to your website and helps you get more customers.
- Local SEO makes it easy for mobile users to find your services through the search engine, directories, or any social media platform.
Why is Local SEO Important for Small and Medium Businesses?
Nearly half of all Google searches start with “Near me today/tonight.” It shows how local SEO is important for small and medium local businesses. Google provides relevant results to its searchers for geographically-related searches based on:
- Prominence
- Relevance
- Proximity
If your business is close to where a searcher is searching for your local products, then your business has more of a chance to be found in the search results. Small and medium businesses need to invest in local SEO to increase their online visibility and the number of customers. Local SEO services are important for small and medium businesses for the following reasons:
- It’s a Cost-Effective Marketing Solution – Local SEO is a cost-effective marketing option. You can use free tools such as Facebook and Google My Business to set up your business listing across the web.
- Increases your Visibility – 72% of customers prefer to visit their nearby business after completing the research. If your business is found in the list of local search results, or Google Maps, it is more likely that customers will come to buy your services. It increases the number of customers of small and medium businesses, which leads to more profit.
- Qualified Search Traffic – Local SEO provides more qualified search traffic to small and medium businesses. Qualified traffic refers to people interested in becoming a future or recurring customer.
Benefits of Local SEO Services
Local SEO plans work as a pulse of any online business. If you own a local business, you must invest in local SEO services as it has an array of benefits.
Enhanced Traffic
Traffic is the shine of every business. More traffic means a higher number of customers and sales. It does not matter if you are running a big company or small business, you will stay in the competition only if you have a competitive digital edge over your competitors. Local SEO plans aim to enhance the traffic on your business. These strategies target the relevant people by using location-based keywords. It focuses on redirecting local traffic to your business site, resulting in more sales.
Better Conversion Rates
One of the amazing benefits of local SEO is that it improves the conversion rate by driving more local customers to your site. Survey says that 28% of the local searches eventually result in sales. So it is obvious that local SEO services result in better conversion rates by increasing the flow of organic local targeted traffic. Most customers prefer to buy from nearby businesses rather than looking for companies miles away or making a purchase online.
Less Advertising Costs
Optimized local SEO techniques lessen all the advertisement costs. Most smartphone users prefer to choose the “near me” option while searching for any product or service. Local SEO services save the local businesses to invest in different advertising channels like pamphlets, banners, billboards, local TV ads, etc.
Long-Lasting Ranking
One of the main benefits of local SEO is it provides a long-lasting ranking to your site. Unlike the old marketing strategies where business owners have to waste a handful of money every week to increase sales, local SEO is a long term investments which gives dividends for years.
Bypass Competition
Using local SEO services allows you to excel with your competitors who rely on traditional marketing. For instance, two companies are selling the same product, but the one who is ranking higher on SERP results would get more customers and sales. Local search engine experts can help increase the visibility of your business on Search Engine Result Pages.
Trust and Authority
These days, each business claims that it is the best in the market. But it’s hard to trust a business that you see for the first time. Local SEO fixes that inconvenience of customers. It increases brand awareness and makes your brand/products/services familiar to the consumers. It increases brand trust and loyalty by showing it on the top of the search results, with trusted reviews.
Benefits of SEO for Local Businesses
Search Engine Optimization techniques are beneficial for any kind of digital business. SEO provides the following advantages to local businesses.
Credibility
If you use optimized SEO strategies for your local business, your business site will rank higher in the search results. A business whose official website ranks higher on SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) is considered high-quality and trustworthy, and it boosts the credibility of a local business.
Content Marketing
SEO techniques support content marketing. You can add videos, images, in-depth details to your site’s content and local listings to get a higher ranking.
Mobile Optimization
People find it convenient to do searches via mobile phones. So local businesses need to make their websites mobile and tablet friendly. Mobile optimization makes the navigation process of the site quite simpler. Technical SEO helps businesses to optimize their websites for Smartphones.
Benefits of Local SEO for Small Businesses
- Local SEO helps small businesses to grow continuously.
- It allows them to build a strong community of potential customers.
Local SEO helps small businesses to appear in Google’s 3-pack. This deal means chances to appear in the first three results of local searches of a keyword.
Bright Local says that 87% of customers love to read online reviews before purchasing a local business. SEO helps small businesses to get more local reviews if they provide good services.
Benefits of Local SEO for Ecommerce
E-commerce businesses gains stability by attracting new customers. Traffic from organic search is essential for increasing revenue. Local SEO has several advantages for e-commerce businesses, including:
- It drives brand awareness by ranking the E-commerce sites higher in Google’s Answer Box.
- It improves the user experience, which leads to drive more conversions.
- Local SEO services provide optimized landing pages that ensure better quality scores, higher performance, and lower click costs.
Benefits of Local SEO for Law Firms
Local SEO matters a lot for law firms, and lawyers can start generating more traffic for their websites. SEO is one of the best lead generation strategies for law firms. It gives the following benefits to them.
- Local SEO helps law firms to stay competitive with other local firms as they have to serve clients within their city or state.
- It outranks the local competition of law firms and improves click-through to their websites.
- It solidifies the law firm as a reputable and trustworthy authority.
- It improves the online reputation of law firms by collecting positive customer reviews.
- Local SEO drives more phone calls for lawyers through My Business and other local listings.
- It leads on autopilot and attracts more traffic for law firm websites.
Sum Up
That’s all from our side! We mentioned all the benefits of local SEO for different local businesses. It is a great marketing choice for Ecommerce, law firms, restaurants, shoe shops, and many more local businesses. If you own a local business, we suggest you use local SEO strategies and spend time improving your site’s content, increasing site speed, and researching keywords so that your site will rank even higher in the list of search results. To see if your business qualifies to work with us, apply here.