Local SEO is mostly about Local Business Pages, Citations, and Reviews
You are not the first to ask: What is Local SEO?
Many confuse it with organic SEO. In fact, they overlap each other in practice. Local involves listing your business completely and accurately in local directories and updating them regularly. It includes actively managing photos and reviews on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. You’ll also want to pay attention to your profiles on local social networking sites like Facebook and other local listings like Google My Business, Bing for business, and Apple Maps. Refer back to your social pages at your physical locations by encouraging people to check on social media websites in when they’re visiting your business. It’ll help to push your business out into people’s news feeds and get you heard out there thanks to worth-of-mouth marketing.
While you’re doing this, you’ll also want to make sure that your website and your listings are using high-quality photography and that you’ve checked the copy for errors. Local SEO is your chance to make a first impression – don’t blow it with blurry photographs and spelling mistakes.
Finally, don’t just create stuff and forget about it. If you create a listing and join a local social networking site, stay active. Continue to add new content and photos to your business listing. If you blog about events in the local area, keep blogging. Don’t just launch some half-baked initiative and then abandon it after a couple of weeks. It takes time to get results, but once you do start to rank for local search terms, it’s a gift that keeps on giving.
Local SEO also involves creating local content for your website.
Have you ever asked the question: What is Local SEO? At a basic level, when we talk about local SEO, we talk about optimizing your website for your location. The goal is to have your contact information appear at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) when customers look for your products or services in your area. For example, if you’re a physiotherapist in New York City, you’ll want people to find you when they search ‘Manhattan physio’ or ‘Brooklyn physical therapy.’ It is also essential to rank when they search for physiotherapist near me.
One of the best ways to do this is to create content that’s specific to those areas. For example, the physiotherapist may want to build pages for each of the boroughs of the city with unique content targeting relevant keywords. This strategy is called organic SEO, and it can be an effective to improve your website’s position local search as well.
You will also want to make your name address and phone number visible on your website. Possibly on the bottom or top of every page. This practice sends local signals to search engines telling them where to find you.
Why Local SEO is Important
The question of why local SEO is essential is similar to the question of why SEO, in general, is critical. You will want customers to find you when they are shopping instead of spending a lot of money to chase them down. Therefore create a solid SEO and social media marketing strategy so that you stay front and center in customers’ minds at all times.
Every business can benefit at some level from local SEO. After all, 97% of consumers use the internet when researching local products and services (BIA/Kelsey). Furthermore, 50% of consumers who search for a local business on their smartphone visit a store on the same day. (comScore) Local SEO is something that impacts the bottom line of your business.
Who benefits from Local SEO?
Local SEO is ideal for smaller businesses or for those who cover a given area. It can also be used to promote events, tourist destinations and services like wedding venues, golf courses and even pop-up shops and art installations.
But don’t make the mistake of thinking that local SEO is only relevant for smaller businesses. It also has implications for big multinationals and companies with multiple locations in different countries. Large companies need to consider SEO on an international scale, a national level and at a local level. All three approaches require a different set of tactics and localization. It takes time to do it right, but it’s worth it. The results speak for themselves.
In fact, even drop shipping businesses and internet-based service companies with no address can still use local SEO. An example of this would be an online retailer that optimizes pages and subsections for the different delivery areas. Another example is creating blog posts that cover local topics and events that are relevant to local areas. They can upsell their products from there.
Local SEO can also help big businesses with outlets across the country. Then it is ideal for small mom and pop stores and specialist hobby shops that cater to specific audiences. Local SEO has the interesting side effect of leveling the playing field. For small businesses, this is huge. They can now take on massive multinational companies with substantial marketing budgets – and win!
Conclusion: What is Local SEO?
Many overlook Local SEO, but it’s one of the most critical aspects of a search engine marketing strategy. As a general rule, it’s usually a good idea to take advantage of as many different marketing channels as possible.
Boosting your local SEO presence will help your SEO efforts as a whole, as well as your social media presence. Every new like, share and follow has regional meaning. Every new inbound link and piece of content that you create will have a positive effect on Local SEO.
Do you need a quote for your local business? Ask 123 Internet for the help you need.
