If you are a 21st-century entrepreneur, you must know the significance of having a website for your business, right?
Now you have a website, but how sure are you that your prospective customers would know about your business?
Indeed, the Internet has taken over the world. Digital marketers these days are experimenting with modern techniques and promoting their products across different platforms. Social media, SEO, Google Business Listing, etc., are significant, but you can not boost sales and profitability unless you opt for Local SEO.
For instance, you are engaged with a local grocery business or running a restaurant business. You have a user-friendly website and app, you are regularly posting on social media platforms, but you can not expand your business reach without attracting local customers. Perhaps, this is why local SEO is Google’s favourite.
Today, local search engine optimization is not limited to local mom-and-pop stores anymore. According to the recent study conducted by Google, almost 46% of searches have “local Intent,” and these searches include different queries like “best restaurant near me,” “digital marketing agency near me,” “best plumber near me,” etc. It means people want results based on location. This is why it would be worth investing in local SEO.
What Is Local SEO
Put simply,
Local SEO is the process of making your brand visible to a specific local area.
Local SEO is crucial to your business since the usage of smartphones has been increasing. Local SEO’s main aim is to provide results that are relevant to searches based on the user’s live location. If you are owning a small or medium-scale business, local SEO can give you many benefits and one of the best ways to promote your products and service in front of the local audience.
Undoubtedly, the wide access to the Internet has made it possible to get information from any corner of the world, but when it comes to spreading positive wording about business, increasing profitability, or sales, local SEO can do so.
Let’s go through some tips to make your local business more visible online:
- Google place for business
- Create a profile in Google My Business
- Local directory submission in the relevant niche
- Encourage customers to post reviews
- Leverage schema markup
Irrespective of business size and type, a solid customer base is a key to business success. You care about your customers and all you want to keep them hooked with your products and services. Well, these days, delivering a good experience when they step into your store is not enough; you should also have strong visibility on the search engine.
It means positive reviews of customers encourage other customers to try your products or services. You might have heard after witnessing Uber’s major success; many local transport business owners are atomizing their business to digitize their operations using a ground transportation app ; here, their main goal is to attract local folks such as students, daily commuters, business people, etc.
No doubt, they can later expand their business reach across multiple cities, but initially, they have to win local users’ trust. Now let’s examine what sort of benefits local SEO offers to your business.
Who Needs Local SEO
If you are engaged with a small business, local SEO is imperative. Indeed, there are many online marketing strategies listed on the Internet but you have to choose the best that fulfils your business needs and increases your customer base. It is to be said that online marketing techniques help you expand your business reach across the globe but remember that process starts with local. Yes, you have to win the trust of local customers then focus on a broader level. Let’s examine in detail for whom Local SEO work as a pro,
- If you are a small business owner and new to the online world
- If you are selling specific products
- If you are a franchise owner
- If you want to attract local folks
- If you are engaged with the healthcare sector (such as medical, hospital, etc.)
In today’s digital era, going local can be an effective and powerful way that will result in positive reviews.
Advantages of Local SEO
Now we know the meaning and importance of conducting local SEO for your online business. The reasons are quite obvious because many users are looking for specific services or products within the area of five miles. It means if you want to boost sales and garner your business with positive reviews, you should work on a successful local SEO campaign.
According to Chat Meter’s report, searches such as “near me” grew more than 900% over three years.
Now without any fuss, let’s see how it can benefit your business.
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- Important information such as an address, contact details, website, and email ID help local people to visit your business. In fact, almost 71% of people admit that they confirm the location before they head to visit any business. Moreover, around 78% of people access this information on their smartphones. Now, do you need any other reason? This is a double-win situation for your business.
- Local SEO increases your website ranking and helps you increase the conversion ratio. As compared to traditional marketing methods, this would give you desired results because today, customers prioritize online results rather than offline.
- Easy to gain positive reviews from neighboring customers. As a result, it will drive traffic to your website and generate more leads.
- Unlike organic SEO, local SEO through you can take advantage of Google’s several services such as Google My Business, Google Images, and Google Map.
- Since more people are redirected to your website through local searches, there are chances that they leave helpful reviews on your Google My Business profile. Nevertheless, there are infinite online marketing techniques, but word of mouth is still the best marketing strategy to win customers’ trust. Getting impressive reviews from customers will encourage other users to try your products and services and, consequently, lead generation.
Ways to Leverage Local SEO
A successful local SEO campaign is inevitable for small, medium, and large scale businesses as it helps you drive sales leads and build brand advocacy in the local market. The term “SEO” is vast, so some marketers often confuse, especially novices, what to consider in local SEO. Here we have outlined three major aspects of Local SEO practices that help your local audience.
Claim Google My Business
Google My Business is the very first step to follow. It lets you list your own business on Google with all the required information. Choose the category, upload images, mention website, and app details, also fill out other information such as an address, email id, contact details, etc., to grab maximum eyeballs.
Listings in Local Directories
After listing your business on Google, use Yahoo, Bing Places, and Yelp to get higher rankings. If you are engaged with the restaurant business, list out in OpenTable and Trip Advisor to attract customers.
Ask for Reviews
As mentioned earlier, positive reviews are important and add fuel to your overall marketing strategy. Encourage customers to leave good reviews; it will increase the chances of success.
Parting Thoughts
If you are a small business or a startup, getting traffic from local customers and generating leads can make your business more profitable. If you have a single physical store location and are new to the internet world, local SEO is going to become helpful as it will be a reliable way to increase your SERP rankings.
