Local search tools can be extremely powerful for modern online businesses. It can be all too easy for customers to buy things from very far away without realizing it, but most will want to shop with companies that they know are close to home.
Google, Bing, and the other major search engines on the market all have their own systems in place for showing users local businesses, and you can take advantage of this with your own company. But how can you build and leverage your local search presence as a small business?
Why Use Local SEO?
Digital marketing professionals will often use the term “low-hanging fruit” to describe methods that can yield good results with very little effort. Local SEO is possibly the ultimate example of low-hanging fruit, giving website owners the chance to get more hits on their website without having to compete with every business in the world.
This makes local SEO extremely valuable to small and large businesses alike. Whether your business is entirely online or you have a store, you can benefit from having people from your local area directed to your website.
How Do Local Searches Work?
While some users don’t give permission for location sharing when they are searching on tools like Google, most of the queries that go through search engines have a location attached to them. This helps search engines to ensure that they provide relevant sites in the right languages, while also giving them the power to serve local results.
This means that when someone searches for something like “Smartphone stores near me”, they will see results that are as close as possible to their current location. Some search engines take this as far as using maps to show users the local companies they have on offer.
Building A Strong Local Search Presence
Building a strong local search presence is much easier than tackling regular SEO. There are loads of tools to help with this, and many of the methods you can find will make it very easy for you to get the results you want. You can find some examples of the type of work you need to do and the help you can get with it below.
- Signing Up With Map Services
Google My Business is just one example of the map services available to businesses that want to kickstart their local SEO efforts. Adding your business to this sort of system with the right credentials can help to show search engines exactly where you are and what you offer.
Reviews can be very important with systems like this, making it worth pushing your customers to leave feedback when they spend money with you. Alongside this, though, you should also consider the idea of looking at other successful local business listings to see what they have written. In most cases, it will pay to use different content for each service you use.
- Website Meta Information
There is a lot of information that websites hold which can be viewed by visitors. Google can see the metadata that comes with your website and using the correct schema code, you can add your location details to your website in such a way that map services aren’t entirely necessary anymore. It’s worth using both methods, but meta-information can be extremely powerful.
- Backlinking & Directory Citations
Adding your website to directory websites is one of the most popular ways to boost local SEO. Not only will this help customers to find you through the directories themselves, but it will also help to secure backlinks for your website. This will help you to rise in the rankings, with your address and location taken into account.
Working to make sure that your business is on as many directories as possible will take some work and a lot of time. Using a local citation building service can be an excellent way to make sure that your business is getting the directory entries it needs. Your local SEO will always depend on the websites that link back to you.
- Changing & Adding Content
Like all forms of SEO, local SEO will be greatly influenced by the content on your website. Having the names of the locations you serve available for people to see will help services like Google to determine your location.
The way that you handle this should depend on your website. While you don’t always need to add new pages for this, many companies choose to add a lot of new content to their website to cover all of the towns and cities close to them. This will take some time, but the effort can be well worth it.
The Benefits of Local SEO
Local SEO comes with a lot of different benefits. It makes sense to explore this before you decide to push with your own local SEO, but you can find some examples below to make this easier for you.
- Easy & Fast: Compared to working on regular SEO, taking a local approach can be much easier and far less time-consuming, especially for new websites.
- Effective: People see local SEO results with almost every search they make, and this gives you the chance to overtake the competition that is further away from your customers.
- Affordable: Most of the local SEO work you need to do can be done by yourself, and the other elements of this work are very affordable. This strikes a strong contrast to the money that has to be spent with traditional SEO.
- Guaranteed Results: Of course, no SEO effort is truly guaranteed, but local SEO gives you a much higher chance of finding success, even if your business is a niche option.
As you can see, local SEO is important to businesses of all sizes. Your local area can be a great place to build your initial customer base, though it can also prove to be very valuable in the future. Of course, though, you need to make sure that you take the right steps to make the most of this type of marketing for your business.