You’ve heard of SEO before, but have you heard of Local SEO?
It works exactly the same in that it can take online content and optimise it so search engines like Google will show it towards the top of the page, except it does this whilst targeting valuable, local customers.
As many businesses know, attracting local customers can be the key to digital marketing success; they’re easier and cheaper to reach, they’re more loyal – which results in repeat business – and they are much more likely to recommend you to other local customers.
It’s time to optimise your search engine optimisation and get involved with the advanced local SEO.
You might be interested in: What is SEO?
I know you may have your reservations; you’ve just got your head around using basic SEO to boost your business’s engagement and digital marketing prowess, and now you’ve got to do it all again! But put quite simply, the process is universal, and you may need it more than you think.
Local SEO marketing is needed by any business with a physical location that customers can visit, which can include bars or retail shops. It will help increase your online visibility, so you get noticed by new customers and these higher rankings in Google searches means more foot traffic to your physical location.
Other businesses that can benefit are ones that serve a defined geographic area, for example all our favourite restaurants that deliver to our doorstep! And to top it off, anyone that actually travels to their customers can favour from this, such as our nation’s handy(wo)men who are known as ‘service area businesses.’
Need to optimise your brand’s website and climb to the top of Google? Leave it to the experts. Get in touch with Framework Marketing here.
This defined version of SEO brings its fair share of benefits. The search engine marketing plays a crucial role in getting more customers for your business and therefore, the driving force of it all, more money! Possibly the largest benefit is that, in this daunting digital marketing realm, it favours smaller businesses over the larger players.
To get people to stay within your realm of business, and not travel afar you can apply a specific set of local SEO ranking factors for searches. These include containing a specific location such as a town or a postcode, including the phrase “near me”, and tying in GPS information from smartphones.
Essentially, local SEO marketing is the process of convincing (showing off) to these search engines that your business should appear in the results for these location-based searches.
Enough of what it is, lets talk about how you can start.
To start in the most effective way were going to turn to our trusted friend, Google. There are other search engines that will be useful later down the line, but for now it’s probably best to target the search engine with 92% of the world’s market share.
Google can present its local search results with two different tools: Maps and its Local pack. I’m not trying to get too technical here but to fully understand how Google and local SEO are linked, I’ll give you a quick overview of both.
The reason that they have two systems is quite simple and comes down to user intent. Google Local Finder gives users results within a small geographic area, making it much easier to find your nearby businesses. It’s activated by a user clicking on a local pack result – which we’ll come to later.
You may also be interested in: How SEO has evolved over time
However, Google Maps takes a much broader approach to results and isn’t focused on a specific geographic area. This is because it’s used as a mapping engine, to help you plan your journey and find services on that route.
Anyways, back to the Google search results. Google presents information in a way known as the 3-Pack (the local pack results we were talking about earlier.) This area includes additional information on businesses such as opening times, contact information and also photos and reviews.
From a business point of view, you’ll have to supply Google with this information for you to be noticed in the Local Pack, which you can do through a Google My Business (GMB) account.
Don’t worry, it’s not another burden. It’s fairly simple.
Getting a GMB account involves finding and claiming your business online, adding contact details and categories and also verifying your listing.
Google using this specific set of local ranking factors allows it to determine whether or not your business is geographically relevant to a user performing a ‘near me’ search. Take this as good news, you won’t have to worry about competing against larger corporations to get your local business in front of your relevant customers.
You may also be interested in: SEM vs. SEO: What is the difference and which is better?
The world that we live in means most businesses have two storefronts to deal with: the physical and digital storefront that they can use with their own digital marketing. Local SEO reinforces your digital storefront’s visibility and gain you more customers along with other benefits such as increasing the number of calls and leads for the business and driving footfall to brick-and-mortar stores or locations.
To get the best outcome from local SEO you can show Google why your business deserves to appear through various ways:
- Doing keyword research relating to your industry
- Growing a strong reviews profile
- Optimising your website
- Creating new content
Even if you don’t have a website, local SEO helps your business stand out and drives more traffic to your premises through online leads. In the digitally dominated environment we live in its important, more now than ever, to ensure your business has the exposure it needs.
