Why is Local SEO important?
Did you know that four out of five consumers now perform local searches? If your business doesn’t have a solid Local SEO strategy in place, you’ll be losing out on 80% of your potential customers. On top of this 46% of all Google searches are now done with local intent, so it’s crucial to adopt an effective Local SEO strategy if you want to maximise the chance of your business being discovered. As 72% of all local searchers will go on to visit a business within five miles of their location, you’ll miss out on a lot of custom if users can’t find you, or don’t know you exist.
Local SEO isn’t just about making sure your address information is correctly displayed, or you have a listing on Yelp or Google My Business, although that’s important. It incorporates a combination of equally important factors, from keywords, to building inbound backlinks and optimising your website for local search, right through to your online reviews and social media content and engagement.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is the art of optimising the online visibility and discoverability of your business, to customers in your physical location. It also helps online potential customers to find out where your business is located, in real life. Local SEO has a lot in common with normal SEO, but includes the promotion of your location information, which you will need to optimise your strategy around. When Google ranks websites for Local SEO, it examines normal SEO ranking factors AND a set of unique Local search factors. You need to score highly in BOTH, to do well in Local search.
Google’s Local search ranking factors:
• Where a person is searching from
• The amount of Name Address Phone Number citations your business has
• Whether you have a Google My Business listing
• Your Google My Business Profile Keywords
• How many positive or negative online reviews your business has
• What keywords are used in your online reviews
• How many “check-ins” your business has received (and how long people stay at your location)
• How many times your local business has been shared on social media
• Your brand’s Google Maps star rating
• Other behavioural factors like purchases
There are also some other key things you will need to do if you want to be successful with Local SEO, that you wouldn’t have to bother with if you had a purely online brand. For best results, you must optimise for the Google MAP Pack, get visible on relevant local review sites, and use research tools like Yelp and Google Suggest to select the best keywords to pair with your location word.
Ultimately, your goal should be to rank high in local search. You can achieve this by following the tips and strategies in this video, and on this course. Doing this will help you tweak your approach, so that every time someone searches for a business like yours in your area, you appear at the top.
