Why Local SEO Is the Key to Growing Your Business
In a world where almost every buyer relies on online search to find solutions to their problems, search engine optimization has become one of the most important channels for reaching customers in any industry. The majority of businesses now recognize the importance of SEO, so search results pages have become highly competitive. Therefore, growing your business in today's mature digital age requires learning to utilize SEO more effectively than your competitors.
One of the best ways to gain an edge is to leverage local SEO to attract more relevant buyers in your specific niche. After all, search engines are increasingly tailoring their results to match the geographical location of users. You can leverage the recent growth in local SEO to earn a significant competitive advantage for your business.
Why Focus on Local SEO?
When modern customers shop locally, they generally start by pulling out their smartphones and typing something like "groceries near me." They then quickly scan the list of businesses that come up to find a provider that appears relevant and reputable. The company with the most optimized listing will generally get the sale every time.
When you gain visibility in local search, you get the attention of only the people in your local market who could become viable customers. Many local businesses that invested resources into SEO managed to get significant traffic from relevant buyers in the past. Still, they would attract visitors from other parts of the country or even on the other side of the world.
Although you can find ways to monetize national traffic, attempting to run a local business while marketing to a national audience is a strategy doomed to fail. With local SEO, your business can rank prominently for searches in your local market to attract buyers at the moment when they need your services. Once customers have found your place, many will continue to come back as long as their buying experience is positive. Consequently, the bottom line is that your business can earn more sustainable revenue and a higher return on investment from local search.
How Does Local SEO Get Results?
As with all marketing approaches, results come in the preliminary research and planning stages, focusing on developing a unique strategy. You will want to start by taking inventory of your products' benefits, your business's target market, and any competitive advantages. From there, you can conduct research to choose keywords that will offer the most substantial revenue potential for your unique business.
Once you have determined your objectives, you will then want to take a broad range of actions to inform search engines about the areas where your business is most relevant. The first step is to optimize your digital presence to include relevant keywords and to ensure that you comply with on-page SEO best practices.
After building up your initial base of digital assets, local SEO efforts should transition to focus on sending signals to search engines that indicate your website is highly relevant to targeted keywords. Some of the significant signals search engines rely on for local search include:
- Links pointing to your website
- Social media activity
- Local business reviews
- Mentions in local media
Choosing the Right Keywords
Before you can start actively engaging in SEO activities, you must first choose the right keywords to target. Although actual implementation is crucial for any SEO campaign's success, the reality is that the most successful SEO strategies start with a good keyword plan that is continuously improved as time goes on. Therefore, you will need to understand how to conduct useful keyword research before starting to take action.
The most data-rich tool available for keyword research comes straight from Google, the search engine your customers undoubtedly use the most. You can make a free Google Ads account that enables you to access a tool that Google calls the Keyword Planner. With the Keyword Planner, you can view exact search volumes for specific keywords and the approximate level of competition for each term.
The best part about the Keyword Planner is that you can even view traffic statistics based on Google's users' geographical location. Therefore, it is easy to understand how much potential traffic you could receive from each search engine results page relevant to your local market.
Tailoring Your Digital Presence to Local Search
One of the most significant mistakes that businesses make when engaging in local SEO focuses exclusively on one digital asset. For instance, many companies mistakenly direct all of their attention toward optimizing their website without considering the importance of social media, optimized local listings, review websites, and other channels.
Modern search engine algorithms center on most local buyers rely heavily on reviews and social media content when making purchasing decisions. Consequently, you will get much better results from local SEO when you create assets that will bring customers to engage with your business in the right places online.
You should also make sure that your customers can easily find your social media accounts and listings on review websites. Many third-party platforms have search features too, such as Facebook and Yelp. Some of your most vocal customers will use these tools to find your business. Some of the crucial digital assets that customers use to find you include your:
- Google My Business listings
- Facebook Business Page
- Bing Places listing
- Yelp listing
- Better Business Bureau listing
You will want to build many other assets, but starting with the list above can help any business achieve more visibility with minimal effort. As time goes on, you can take active steps to increase your search rankings by
- Get more 5-star reviews
- Stimulate the right social media activity,
- Publish digital content through blogs and social post
Achieving Success With Local SEO
Getting to the point where your business is thriving at SEO is an extensive process. Getting through the process will earn your business a substantial return on investment. The key is to conduct market research before you get started to identify your strongest competitors and identify what they are doing well. Additionally, you can take advantage of any missing opportunities that you identify as well. Modern search engine algorithms are very complex, so you consider working with a reputable SEO specialist who knows how to take advantage of opportunities in the current online search landscape.
