Local SEO – The Mantra to Make Your Small Business Big
Go local! Apply local SEO strategies to make your small business big in your area. You will have the chance to enhance the search visibility of your area-specific business and get that desired success.
Imagine you are the owner of a plumbing business or run a café in your residential area. You are looking to advertise your business online and believe that Google is not the ‘only’ right fit. Undeniably, big businesses with bigger budgets get the edge on search engines, like Google. So, how could you make your small business visible, particularly to your potential local customers? Where would you advertise your services when your target customer group is local and area-specific? For businesses like yours that cater to a specific local region, local seo optimization is the answer to all business outreach goals.
The impact of AI on digital marketing brought major changes in traditional search optimisation and marketing. You need to follow SEO trends to stay ahead in this competitive market, and local SEO for small businesses is one of such prominent trends. What exactly is local search engine optimisation? How could these strategies help you?
What is Local SEO?
- Local search engine optimisation is the process of optimising a local business’s visibility through unpaid, location-based search results on platforms such as Google, Google Maps, and other search engines.
- It is a branch of SEO that specifically focuses on optimising websites to rank higher in local search results and comprises link building, content, keyword research, and on-page optimisation.
- Local SEO is well-suited for district- or city-specific businesses like salons, grocery stores, repair shops, and community cafes, as well as services such as doctors, dentists, tutors, and plumbers.
How Does Local SEO Work?
This SEO technique relies on Google’s algorithm to determine the results that will appear for a particular search. It can contribute to higher rankings by helping the algorithm understand your business’s location and services or offerings better. This enhances the algorithm’s perception of your business, making it trustworthy and popular.
Traditionally, Google considers the relevance of a business, the quality of the content, and the usability of the webpage in terms of speed and platform-friendliness to rank a business in regular Google searches. However, for local searches, the Google algorithm considers the following factors when ranking businesses in the local pack and on Google Maps-
- Relevance
- The most important factor is to determine how well your business matches what the user is searching for
- Distance
- The distance of your business from the user’s likely location is a vital criterion
- Prominence
- The popularity or how well-known your business is, along with the reviews it receives, is critical
Why is Local SEO Important?
Localised SEO is highly beneficial for local businesses, brick-and-mortar shops that cater to specific regions, towns, or cities. It allows people to access information about your business easily and instantly, thereby increasing your business’s visibility, reach, and sales. Let’s deep dive into the advantages of local SEO for your business.
- Increased Visibility in Organic Searches
The majority of customers today access contact information, location, directions, and reviews via Google searches or on Google Business Profile listings before visiting or before making a transaction. These localised and organic searches increase the visibility and subsequently the ranking of your local business.
- Increased Enquiries, Footfall, and Sales
Local SEO enables a business to be listed on Google’s Business Profiles. This helps your local business or brand connect with the local public, which subsequently makes it easier for interested audiences to find your business location and contact details. They can access information regarding the business across various platforms, social media content, multimedia, etc. This further translates to increased enquiries, footfall, and sales for your business.
- Reviews Act as Salesforce and Business Intelligence
Positive reviews of your business on Google’s business profile page act as a free and invisible sales force for your business. The ratings provided along with the reviews help potential customers make a quick decision regarding the business and the services provided, thereby boosting sales and growth.
Additionally, these reviews also give business owners an insight into their quality of service, product efficiency or lack of it, drawbacks, discrepancies, or shortcomings, if any. This business intelligence can help you, as a business owner, to improve your business effectively.
These advantages strongly indicate that an investment in local SEO can enable your business to become more visible, stay ahead of the competition, and gain more traction. These all factors ultimately result in improved visibility, footfall, and sales.
Local SEO Factors to Consider
Local SEO studies Google’s search results to identify local ranking factors. And, keeping that in mind, Google constantly tweaks the algorithm and consequently the results. The factors that contribute to the local pack ranking and help boost businesses are-
- Proximity
The distance of the person carrying out a Google search from your business is the vital factor influencing ranking. Your business stands a chance of being visible to searchers closest to your business location.
- Address
Along with the proximity of your business to the location of those searching for similar businesses, the address also influences your business ranking. If the address is in the marketplace where the business normally receives a lot of foot traffic, compared to a business on the outskirts of the city, the first one will receive a higher ranking.
- Business Profile Categories
When listing the business online and creating a Google Business Profile, you can choose a primary business category and nine additional categories. Choosing the right categories helps boost your business ranking. You can conduct research before selecting the appropriate categories and also study the categories chosen by your competitors.
- Reviews
A greater number of reviews and an average or above-average star rating are beneficial for your business’s ranking. Additionally, earning fresh reviews regularly or at a velocity greater than the competitors’ improves the local pack ranking factor as well.
Other than these factors, local SEO ranking is also influenced by your business’s:
- Hours of operation
- Social media presence
- Photos and videos available online
- Services and products listed
- Attributes and organic ranking
Optimising Local SEO
So far, we have discussed what local SEO is, its importance for your business, and factors that affect it. Now, let’s understand how you can optimise your business for localised SEO.
The following checklist can help optimise your business for local SEO
- Conducting local market research to study keywords.
- Picking a great name for the business (which can act as a keyword), researching the market, and studying local customers’ demands.
- Developing a content strategy and plan that fulfils all the criteria identified during the market research. This includes content such as text, graphics, videos, audio, and photographs that can be published on a website, blogs, social media platforms, podcasts, review response forms, video channels, and several other platforms.
- Publishing a website that outlines what the business does, where the business is located, and its contact information. When creating website content, the researched keywords need to be incorporated.
- Creating a Google Business Profile is the next step on the checklist. Update your business’s name, services and products, exact location, website link, reviews, and other relevant information regarding your business.
Along with the above-stated optimising factors, you can look out for spammers and fake profiles that malign your business. You can also build structured and unstructured citations for your business on formal and informal local business indices.
The local SEO checklist ensures that your business makes all the right moves to grab the searchers’ attention. It also enlists them high in the local pack rankings.
The effectiveness of local SEO for your business can be measured via insights provided by Google Business Profile and through the Map and Pack rankings.
Difference Between SEO and Local SEO
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the practice of optimising and improving a website’s structure and content using a set of keywords. These keywords will help your site achieve a higher ranking on the search engine results page or SERP. SEO is ideal for a national or global audience.
Local SEO is a specialised branch of SEO that improves search ranking for local businesses or local search queries that are specific to a particular district, region, or geographic area. Localised SEO differs from general search engine optimisation in its targeted and specific approach and can help a Google Business Profile rank higher in the local pack.
Businesses can benefit most from localised SEO if they meet two vital criteria:
- Firstly, they must have a local presence or serve customers in person rather than virtually.
- Secondly, they must have a physical presence, such as a street address or phone number, to be considered in Google’s local search system. Virtual offices or P.O box numbers do not count as physical addresses.
We are aware that Google delivers several billion local search results in a month. This opens up opportunities for your business to appear prominently for relevant searches or queries and to be more visible to a larger target audience. Strong local SEO boosts your business’s rankings for selected keywords and specific searches, increasing the likelihood that more customers discover and engage with your business. Irrespective of your business type, local SEO will boost your business’s visibility and improve your marketing plan, which subsequently translates to increased sales.
So, there is no better time than NOW to opt for local SEO for your local business! Hiring a reputable local seo company will help you get the benefits of this search strategy and take your business to the next level.