A Pro's Guide To Local SEO And Why It's Important For Business

More than just a buzzword, local SEO is what Google uses to put your customers and clients in contact with your establishment. With our local SEO guide, you'll be able to attract more business, fast.

Local SEO is important. In fact, 46% of all searches on Google are local. That means if you’re a local business and you don’t have your local SEO in order, you’re missing an opportunity every time someone local searches for your products or services online. And there’s a lot of people searching. About 89% of people search for a local business on their smartphone at least once a week, with 58% searching daily.

What Is Local SEO?

Local SEO is all about increasing search visibility for businesses that serve their communities face-to-face. These can be brick-and-mortar businesses with physical locations, like a grocery store or dentist's office, or service-area businesses that operate throughout a certain geographic area, like an electrician or house cleaning company.

This includes everything from claiming a business listing to ensuring a franchise location appears in a local search on Google (a process known as location data or citation management). It also extends to managing online ratings and reviews, local-centric social media engagement, and beyond.

SEO Vs Local SEO

While traditional SEO focuses on improving your site's visibility on a national or global scale, local SEO allows you to capture local search territory to connect with searchers in your area.

SEO and local SEO use many of the same strategies. However, local SEO solutions employ specialized measures to help you connect with searchers in your area.

Now that you know the difference between SEO and local SEO, let’s look at some hallmarks of each strategy.

Do they affect one another? Well, it’s impossible to draw a solid box around traditional VS local SEO — and there’s some overlap between the two strategies. That said, your traditional SEO efforts will likely end up helping your local SEO and vice versa if done correctly.

If you already have an SEO plan in place, it may just require a few tweaks to start driving more qualified, local traffic.

For instance, adding location-specific keywords and content VS more general information allows you to appeal to a local audience. Adding these pages will also help your organic SEO strategy, as you’ll have more opportunities to rank in relevant search results.

Quick Tips For Your Local SEO Strategy

1. Create a Google My Business account. 
2. Get regular reviews from happy customers.
3. Optimise for voice search.
4. Create content based on local news stories or events.
5. Optimise your website for mobile.
6. Hone in on local keywords.
7. Use location pages or a location-specific “About Us” page. 
8. Take advantage of online business directories.

Getting Social With Your Localised SEO Strategy

You’ll also want to set up profiles on the social media channels relevant to your target demographic. Be sure to follow social media best practices. When setting up your profiles, it’s very important to make sure your information is identical on each platform. Remember, consistency is key. By setting up these profiles, you’ll become more visible to potential customers. You’ll also provide search engines with more information about your business, which will help to boost your ranking.