What Is Local SEO, Why It’s Important & 7 Ways to Improve It

Search Engine Optimization plays a significant role in online businesses and is always changing its importance and reach.

The search engines are continually updating their search algorithms to provide users queries with the most relevant results.

In the same way, local SEO has also made a big impact on the modern world. Digital marketers recommend doing local SEO to attain maximum exposure, especially if you’re running a small or medium sized business.

Many business owners overlook the significance of local SEO and wonder why they are not among the top search results.

This article will look at:

• What is local SEO
• Why local SEO is essential for small and medium businesses
• and 7 ways to improve it

What Is Local SEO?

Like organic SEO, local SEO refers to strategies designed to enhance your business’s visibility on search engines whenever people near your location do online searches.

Search engine optimization might sound a bit complex at its core, but it’s just another name for methods that boost sales by improving online visibility.

One of the most important aspects of small businesses is that their company websites should appear in the local searches to the relevant audience.

And the targeting search results are typically based on geographical locations.

You can enhance your online visibility by appropriately developing content utilizing relevant keywords.

For local SEO, that might include:

• City name or town
• Zipcode
• Accruing reviews
• Building links

Generally, local SEO emphasizes successful local online marketing. It focuses on attracting consumers in small places such as those in a specific city or town.

Local SEO is usually applied by local businesses to reach this target population to develop businesses within a particular service area.

It is also practiced by businesses that would like to reach these consumers to drive traffic to their physical locations.

Any local business or organization can use local SEO.

The business can be anything:

• Lawyers
• Tailors
• Plumbers
• Doctors
• Bankers
• Or local businesses that provide services or sell products

If you have done great local SEO and individual searches for your services or products online, they’ll find your company website among the top search results.

Good local SEO will not only help in promoting your site, but it’ll also help in branding and growing your business.

Why Local SEO Is Important

Search engines are currently paying more attention to local searches because local results are typically considered more pertinent for local searches.

For instance, if you are looking for something on Google, the search engine will deliver relevant results to your locality based on your IP address.

If you’re mentioning a specific area or city, the search engine will narrow your search and look for the specific locations.

Local SEO can help your business by providing you with a boost in the search engine rankings.

Regardless of the number of storefronts you have, a good local SEO plan is vital to driving more customers to your store. Below are some other reasons why your business needs local SEO.

Local consumers tend to look online to discover better options on the market.

We are living in the internet era, where individuals can search for any information they want.

If they need to purchase anything locally, they prefer to perform a pre-search to find the better options available in their cities or areas instead of going directly to the market.

It assists the local searchers in finding local businesses.

If your company is ranking among the top results, local SEO can also help you attain more local customers.

Local SEO enables customers to find you.

You will want your potential customers to locate you when they’re shopping rather than spending a lot of resources chasing them down.

Therefore, you need to develop a solid SEO strategy to remain in the center and front in your customers’ minds at all times.

Local SEO impacts the bottom line of a business, and every business, regardless of the size, can benefit from it at some level.

Statistics indicate that 97% of people utilize the internet when searching for local services and products.

Furthermore, a research study by comScore shows that 50% of the consumers who look for a local company on their smartphones visit a store or business on the same day.

Local SEO offers a higher conversion rate.

According to research studies, 28% of local searches result in an immediate purchase. Because local SEO assists in driving traffic to a targeted audience, it offers high conversion rates.

On average, users looking for more localized content keywords are more likely to become paying customers.

When the individual is in the locality of the business they’re searching for, there’s a higher probability that they will contact your local business.

Since these leads originate from individuals who are specifically looking for services or products that your company offers, it’s safe to say that these are incredibly qualified leads that’ll have a better conversion rate too.

Local SEO helps build an online presence.

The online presence of your business makes a long-lasting first impression when it comes to leads. If your business does not have a solid online presence, you’ll create a negative impression of the enterprise.

Statistics indicate that 97% of people check the online presence of a company before visiting their storefronts. Therefore, you need to build your business’s online presence to direct those leads to your business.

If your website has a poor design or you’ve got no company website set up, you will deter consumers from visiting your company. A local SEO plan will assist you in building your company’s online presence to give a good first impression of your small business.

Local SEO helps in business extension.

By utilizing local SEO, you will be making it easy for your prospects to interact with your online business. Reviews play a significant role in assisting your business to get leads.

Your local SEO plan can help you get more beneficial reviews for your enterprise and drive more individuals to check out your services and products.

91% of consumers that range between 18 and 34 trust businesses with lots of positive reviews.

People prefer looking for other clients’ reviews before making a purchase. They usually turn to experiences and reviews to see if your company is worth visiting.

Here’s what you can do to get more and better reviews:

• Ask your existing customers to give reviews on your products or services.
• Create a local SEO plan to help you manage customer’s reviews to drive more traffic for your business.
• You can also include a suggestion or feedback segment where people can give ideas or suggestions that can assist in extending or improving your business.

7 Ways To Improve Local SEO

The world of search engine optimization can be challenging for business owners without a track record of business success. Although you might get some positive rankings, drastic changes in the algorithms can halt your progress pretty fast.

Many small businesses and individuals use trial and error methods, making it hard to determine what is generating results.

There are many tips that you can implement to produce quick results with little effort.

While there are numerous theories about local SEO, you can use the tricks below to enhance your local SEO strategy.

1. Creating local content

While writing content about general topics usually attracts a big audience, it is sometimes more important to sharpen your focus. You can develop content about your industry or local news to attract your local audience.

Think of high-quality content that goes above what your small business sells.

You can become your sector’s local authority by marketing the following on your website or blog:

• Local industry news
• People
• Events
• Other educational content

2. Adding location pages to your business website

Generally, search engines crawl websites to locate the most comparable and relevant matches to return results on the page.

Having a particular landing page for every business location can help search engines locate your listing and provide the right location to the searchers.

You need to include suite numbers and decide whether you want the road, avenue, and street abbreviated or written in full.

The way you present the information on these pages typically determines how you’ll be updating your content everywhere else.

3. Claiming your business listings

Your business listing is created with time, and duplicate lists might accumulate in the long run.

Locating all these business listings might seem challenging, but there are some incredible tools online that make the process simple for anyone.

Here’s what you should do:

• Enter your business’s name in your preferred tool and choose your company from the results to get all the listings attached to your business.
• Claim all the listings under your company name
• Eliminate all duplicates
• Make sure the listings’ information is up-to-date and accurate.

4. Optimizing images

Images offer an opportunity to assist search engines in understanding your content better. Ensure you rename your files to a more suitable keyword.

You can also add a description and caption that sum up your image’s content.

Furthermore, it’s also essential to compress and resize your images to make sure the size does not affect the loading times.

5. Performing local link building

Link building is incredibly important for your business. You can optimize your business links by building relationships with other local websites in your industry.

Earning some links from high domain authority websites in your locality can benefit your business a lot when it comes to building traffic.

Focus on partnering with influencers and looking for other ways to enhance your company’s online reputation.

Here’s how:

• Look for high-performing blog posts in your industry and check for any broken links.
• You can then contact the webmaster and inform them about all the broken links while providing your webpage as a substitute.

6. Ensuring NAP (name, address, and phone number) consistency

It’s important to ensure that your name, address, and phone number (NAP) are consistent on every website it’s listed on. You can utilize a preferred rank tracking app to manage your citations.

If you notice any inconsistencies, contact the website owner of the domain right away and ask them to remove the inconsistencies.

Because NAP is an essential part of the on-page signals, it’s one of the most significant aspects of local organic rankings and local listing rankings.

7. Obtaining reviews

Reviews are essential because they determine your ranking and also enable your listings to stand out.

Enticing your satisfied clients to leave a review for the positive experience can go further than other local SEO strategies.

The review will not only help your business rank better, but it’ll also help your result occupy more space on the search engine results.

This strategy is ideal when employing for pages outside your local pack by incorporating sub-pages and schema markups.

So, by attaining reviews, you will be talking three conversion components:

• Conversion rate optimization
• Ranking
• Clickthrough rate

Conclusion

Now you know what local SEO is and why it is important to have SEO strategies in place based on the local SEO statistics highlighted above.

Incorporating local SEO to your marketing strategy will not only enhance your SEO efforts but also boost your site’s organic rankings in different search engines over your competitors.

By developing an exceptional local SEO plan, you will help your online business drive more customers to your company.

You can easily build your customer base and better manage the online presence of your small or medium sized business as well.

If you would like an expert to help you grow your business through SEO, contact us today to schedule a chat. We can help you create a customized local SEO strategy that will boost your business ranking.