Local SEO – 2019 Guide And Benefits

Local SEO is a smart way to effectively target your local audience and boost up your sales and profits. The amount of time you give to find customers online, you can promote your products and services at the same time. Whether you have a local restaurant, clinic or a repair shop, local seo will help in attracting maximum potential clients. Local SEO helps to optimize the online presence of your business for a given location.

Local Search

Local Search is when a user searches for some service or product near him or his geographical location. Searches such as “coffee shop near me”, “furniture shop near me” and more. As per the details by Google, “46% of searches have a local intent”. It might be easy to rank for a regular query like “the best coffee shop”, but takes huge efforts to get a business ranked for “coffee shop near me”. To handle with such search queries, Local SEO is done.

Local Search Engine Result Pages

When a user searches for something locally, the search result is quite different. Google shows 3 businesses in the “3-pack” right below the Google map. Businesses must focus on their local SEO efforts to get listed in this 3-pack. Let us take a query “coffee shop near me” as an example.

You can see how Google shows 3 businesses related to the query along with the ratings, address, store timings and more basic details of the business. Every detail that comes on this 3-pack listing is fetched from the Google Business Page of a business.

Google My Business

Google My Business is the online profile of your business. It is very important to claim your Google Business Page if you want to improve your local online presence. The information you enter here will be available for 3-pack listing and Google Maps.

The GMB profile of your business contains all the necessary details of your business like the NAP (name, address, phone number), business description, category, services & products, and more. A GMB profile takes up quite a significant portion of local SEO. an updated and correct GMB profile will increase the chances of your business appearing in all the related queries in the Google 3-pack.

The Main Local SEO Services

• Localizing the website- Make sure to use the name of your region or city in the website content in a natural way. If your business has multiple locations, you can create separate pages for each location. Get in touch with local communities and publish your articles on local websites.
• Building citations- This means, creating profiles for your business on the top business listing websites with correct details.
• Claim your GMB page- This will help to put your business forward on all the leading Google platforms like local search results, google maps.
• Customer review and ratings-  Ask your customers and clients to give honest reviews on your GMB page and other business listings. This will help to improve the online presence of your business. Google also considers these while deciding the SERP rank of your business.
• Link Building– Improve the backlink profile of your website with naturally obtained backlinks. Go for white hat link building services that will target the right audience from the right source.

Benefits Of Local SEO

1. It is free

With some patience and continuous efforts, you can easily learn how to do local SEO for your business. You can even take help from our blog for the main steps of SEO.

2. No need for paid campaigns

If the local SEO is done correctly, there will be no need of additionally paid campaigns to promote your business. You can get your business ranked for any related query with local SEO. For example, let us take “web design and seo services Miami”.

In the image, the searches that appear are known as organic searches. As per Google data, the maximum number of clicks happen on the top 10 search results i.e page 1 of SERPs.

3. Get listed in organic searches

If all is good, Google will give your business a place in the top 3 search results for a relatable query. The sophisticated algorithms of Google will find the best possible results for any user query made so that the closest results are shown to the user. Let us, for example, consider you own a coffee shop. Now the top 3 local SEO strategies to rank in the SERPs will include-

• Research- Users may search for “how is coffee made”.
• Options- Users may now search for options such as “coffee shop near me”.
• Purchase- After going through the local business on the SERP, the user will choose some coffee shop of his choice and further visit its website.

We have used the tool https://searchvolume.io/ to get an idea of the total number of monthly searches made for “how is coffee made” and “coffee shop near me”.

4. Be found on Google Maps

If you adopt a well optimized local SEO strategy, Google will list your business on Google Maps as well. Google maps are more important to mobile users who want to search for any nearby service of product on the go. For any local search query made, Google shows a map with the best results on the top of SERP. On a map listing, the user will be able to click on the website of the business, call the business, go through the reviews and get directions to the business location.

5. Google favors local businesses

Google always want the best businesses to rank higher for their location. For example, let us consider the search results of “appliance repair services new york”.

The SERP shows the local businesses in new york that offer appliance repair services. Now let us have a look at the SERP for the query “appliance repair services”.

As you can see, Google will always place local businesses first on the organic SERPs. Some search results even see a better ranking without the name of the city in the query.

6. Be parallel to your customers

97% of users search for a business on a local level before they purchase the services or products. With good local SEO strategies, you can be in all the related searches by users.

7. Long-term results

When you advertise your business, the results may last for as long as you spend money on advertising and marketing. But with local SEO, you can long-term results without investing a huge amount of money. But you should focus on building a long-running local SEO strategy so that you keep on getting the desired results in the future.

8. Stay ahead of your competitors

According to lsainsider.com, 56% of local business owners have not claimed a Google My Business page for their business. And the 44% percent which does have a business page is not fully taking the benefits of local SEO. Having a business page is not sufficient, you have to make sure that it appears in top 3 results for the related search queries. Local SEO can help you target the right audience before your competitor does so.

9. Not every competitor does local SEO

You must take advantage of your competitor’s weaknesses. It is not necessary that every competitor works on local SEO strategies. You can have taken this in your favor and adopt the best of local seo practices to stay ahead of your competitor.

10. Know exactly the intention of your customers

Google My Business allows you to keep a track of the keywords that your customers use to reach to your website. Follow the simple steps given below-

1. Log-in to your business page
2. Click on “Insights” on the lest of the page
3. Scroll the page to reach “queries used to find your business” section

This was all about what is local SEO and why should you not ignore it if you want improved sales and traffic.