What Is Local SEO?

Dec 21, 2020 | SEO, All, Digital Marketing

What Is Local SEO?

Local SEO is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique that allows a business to become more prominent in Google’s local search results. Any business that has a physical location or serves a local geographical area can benefit from local SEO.

Who Is Local SEO For?

Local SEO is for any organization with a physical location where consumers can visit or any company that services a particular local geographical area. Local brick-and-mortar shops such as restaurants, bars, laundry rooms, dentist offices, chiropractors, law firms, and grocery stores are all companies that can use and benefit local SEO.

Now Let’s Dive Deeper Into Local SEO Marketing!

Local SEO is all about how to optimize your website so that it ranks better for a viewer. Local SEO, often termed as Local Search Engine Optimization is also referred to as local SEO marketing. It is one of the most constructive ways to broadcast your local business online. For instance, if you want to boost your products and services to local consumers, you can do that through Local SEO so people can discover your offerings.

Why is Local SEO So Important For Your Business?

As we’ve just mentioned, when you’re a local company, whether it’s a car shop in Las Vegas, Nevada, a restaurant in San Francisco, California, or a furniture store in Dallas, Texas, local SEO plays a key role in generating and converting customers. In the current environment of online shopping and retail giants, I imagine that small business owners may feel unmotivated to compete against Walmart and Amazon for positions in search results.

Luckily, Local SEO is here to help you. Local SEO favors smaller companies over Amazon every day! Investing in local SEO is your chance to find local customers who are ready and actively looking for your services and products. Both Google and the shopping public understand the importance of small businesses.

This ensures that you don’t have to worry about competing against big multinational companies to get your small company in front of the important surrounding customers. Recent research concluded that proximity matters a great deal to local customers, with more than 92% commuting only 20 minutes or less to buy the necessities of their everyday lives. That should be reason enough to invest in local SEO for any size of company.

For brick-and-mortar or service-area companies, investing in local SEO will help bring more customers to your business so that you can start generating more revenue. Today, most companies have two storefronts that they need to manage: their traditional storefronts and their digital storefronts. Local SEO is what will make your digital store front more accessible and give you more customers.

How Does The Google Algorithm Work For Local SEO?

A complex program that determines what will pop up in the search results for a particular search query is called an algorithm. The organic Google algorithm governs most search results, but when it comes to local results, the algorithm is a bit different and takes into account more variables than the regular search algorithm. Let’s take a look at what Google finds relevant when you do a local search.

Google’s local algorithm depends on three main factors:

1. Relevance – is the company being surfaced relevant to the search query?
2. Prominence – is the company being surfaced trustworthy
3. Proximity – is the company close (distance-wise) to the searcher?

Relevance

Relevance is a key component of the Google local algorithm. In fact, relevance is a factor in the standard SEO algorithm, so it’s not just a local-specific algorithm. To ensure that search engines such as Google, views your company as important enough to appear in searches, you’ll want to make sure that you’re targeting keywords or subjects that potential customers will be looking for.

You can notify Google of the importance of your company through strategies such as:
1. Choose the right category for your directory company
2. Include keywords for your company in explanations and material
3. Creating relevant content for the expertise/services/products that your company offers
4. Use title tags and meta descriptions
5. Markup of Schema
6. Backlinks from industry-relevant websites

Prominence

Think of prominence as how well your brand stands out from the competition. Brands that have a better online presence seem more reliable and trustworthy to Google’s local algorithm. We know that search engines (especially Google) are collecting data from all over the web. So basically, if your brand is out there on the web, search engines will try to find this data and rate you on the basis of prominence. If it can’t find you or there aren’t enough signs of prominence, you’re far less likely to rank.
Let’s take a look at some of the important ways in which you can create and sustain the prominence online for your company. Prominence can be illustrated in a variety of ways:
– Developing a solid review profile
– Have Backlinks linking to your site
– Build and post relevant content
– Be listed in the directory sites
– Building up more online mentions of your company
– Active social media profiles

Proximity

Now that we know that your company is relevant to the search query of the consumer and has a good prominence, let’s look at our last ranking factor: proximity. Of course, when an individual performs a local search, it is important how close they are to your business. What’s the point of Google providing results of businesses from three far-away cities?

As such, proximity is probably the most important local ranking factor. It’s also a ranking factor that’s distinctly local. Although prominence and relevance in traditional SEO matters a lot, you don’t need online eCommerce stores to be nearby to buy from them.

There are three ways a user can conduct a local search; non-geo-modified, geo-modified, and ‘near me.’ To display your proximity to Google, you should always consider optimizing the various ways users search.

Conclusion

We hope this blog article provided enough information about Local SEO. If you ever find yourself in need of more help for your SEO Campaign, feel free to reach out to Cyrusson Inc, we are a team of experienced marketing professionals. We offer solutions that improve your digital presence and strengthen your business strategy. Teaming up with us will improve your brand’s market visibility, and you will have a stronger online presence. Our team of SEO experts will help improve your website’s ranking. Get in touch with us today and improve your SEO!

 

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