The global onset of Covid-19, followed by a worldwide pandemic situation, led people to live a life in complete quarantine and explore possibilities that go beyond the conventional means. The pandemic came with numerous restrictions in terms of business operations. Since the virus was highly communicable, the government of most countries curbed offline business operations and induced a state of “complete lockdown”. Such adverse scenarios posed a massive hurdle for businesses that lacked an online presence.
Stores and outlets that didn’t have brand visibility on Google or on social media platforms have suffered huge financial blows over the past couple of years. Within the first quarter of 2020, 90% of businesses that were strictly offline had to switch to online modes of marketing to continue revenue generation to keep the business up and running. However, in order to establish great brand visibility online, creating a website and regularly posting on social media is not enough. There are millions of businesses under any specific niche available on the internet, you can’t let your brand voice fade away amongst the cacophony of millions of competitors. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing tactic that can help you stay ahead of all your competitors and establish a strong brand voice on the internet.
What Is Local SEO?
Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the method of enhancing the exposure of local businesses to search engines, especially for those having a physical presence. Businesses can enhance website traffic from searches done by customers in neighbouring locations by adopting local SEO best practices. In order to give users the most appropriate local results for their searches, browsers rely on signals such as local data, social meta tags, links, and citations. Local SEO allows businesses to promote their products and services in front of local clients and prospects who are browsing for them.
The number of “near me” searches has grown by 900 % over the past few years, according to Google. Understandably, Google strives to satisfy the demands of its users. In order to better serve its users, Google decided to offer more suggestions for specific geographical queries based on proximity, significance, and popularity.
Here’s where local search tactics for smaller businesses come into play. You may outperform your rivals by putting in place an efficient local SEO plan. How? Local SEO ensures that your targeted audience discovers you when a user is searching in the browser, showing effective search results if your company is nearby or if you provide the goods or services they need.
Does Your Business Need Local SEO?
Although Local SEO can be really beneficial to most businesses, it would not be the most befitting strategy for every business out there. Businesses that cater to a very specific geographical area can benefit from a well-chalked out Local SEO strategy. If your prime business focus is to build effective brand authority and stand out among the rest of your competitors within your local market, local SEO is definitely the right strategy for you. Not only will it boost your brand visibility, but having your business domain on the first page of Google in your local area will also attract fresh customers to your business. For instance, if you own a veg restaurant in Udaipur, any visiting tourist who types out “veg restaurant near me” will be able to locate your business.
Although local stores benefit the most from local SEO strategies, many corporate giants and large-scale companies with multiple locations are also inclined toward using this technique to improve their brand authority and rank across multiple keywords. Building an impeccable SEO strategy ensures that Google recognizes your business, and crosschecks all relevant information and verification details to promote your business before the target audience.
What are the Benefits of Local SEO?
When we talk of SEO strategies, irrespective of the business size, the first thing that comes to mind is website traffic. However, the perks of implementing local SEO into your business can go far beyond website traffic and visibility. SEO can help boost sales, provide immense credibility to your business and maximize brand authority over time. Moreover, it will play a significant role in business positioning and help you stand ahead of your competitors.
If you’re seeking long-term results from a marketing strategy, implementation of Local SEO strategies can do the job for you.
1. Improved Organic Traffic
One of the most prominent benefits of local SEO is organic traffic directed to your website. Local SEO plays a significant role in attracting newer audiences into your website, and the directed audience, if interested, will visit your social media handles for a better perception of your services. Local SEO plays a significant role in attracting newer organic traffic into your website and helps improve sales without any additional expenses on ads.
2. Traffic Retention of Relevant Audience
If you want relevant business from your website, you need to focus on attracting the right kind of audience to the website. Attracting specific audiences who are already in the buying mindset helps in easier conversion of leads. Local SEO helps to streamline your audience and narrow it down to the specific target audience range who are already in the buying mindset. Retaining relevant audience into the website plays a crucial role in improving your sales and in revenue generation.
3. Minimal Expense on Ads
One of the most recognised benefits of Local SEO is the amount of money companies can save from their ad expenses. With proper implementation of local SEO techniques, your website can appear on the first page of Google SERP ranking organically. Avoiding Google ads to achieve ranking can help your company save a good proportion of their revenue that would otherwise be dedicated as adspent.
4. Improved Domain Authority
If you have recently created a website, your first priority is to improve its domain authority. Local SEO techniques help your website attract good quality traffic, including local traffic into your website. Websites with a higher domain authority tend to attract newer audiences easily. Additionally, if your domain authority is high, it will indicate to Google that your website is credible and has an inflow of organic traffic. This, in turn, plays a crucial role in improving your SERP ranking and establishing your unique brand identity.
5. Better Localised Backlinks
Backlinks can truly transform your business identity. Creating good quality localised backlinks helps you connect with the most trusted business spaces within your locality. Once Google notices that some of the most credible websites in your business niche within your geographical location have built relevant backlinks with your page, it allows Google to categorise your business as credible and relevant. This helps you in gaining higher traction, improving sales and building strong brand visibility online.
6. Better SERP Ranking for Local Keywords
By now, we have very clearly established the importance of SERP ranking on Google. Search Engine Results Page (SERP) determines your website’s ranking on Google. For every keyword, Google can display thousands of results. However, only a handful of these makes it to the first page of Google. By implementing authentic local SEO techniques, you can ensure that your website is displayed on the first page of Google for any particular local keyword based on your niche. This ensures higher traffic, drives higher sales and improves brand authority.
Top 7 Effective Ways to Attract Clients
Attracting clients through Local SEO requires an expert strategy along with a combination of various on-page as well as off-page SEO tactics that can work together to boost your page visibility and attract a new set of the target audience into your website. If you’re looking to improve domain authority and gain traction through your website, here are some strategies that can help your local small business gain significant visibility through local SEO:
1. Keyword Research
Keyword research helps to clarify your clients’ purchasing journeys, your competitive environment, and how to adapt your content strategy. Using SEO-relevant keywords, you may make content decisions as a website or marketing manager that are supported by data and statistics. The development of keywords is a crucial part of SEO.
To find out what people are looking for, engaging in a keyword research tool is one of the most efficient hacks in SEO ranking, and then you can focus all of your content optimization efforts on those keywords. Gathering data from sources like Google Trends and even simply your own data in Google Search Console will help you determine what terms people are looking for when they view your company website.
Examine some of the keywords that your competitors are aiming for or ranking for Use a pre. To map out these local keywords on your website and develop a marketing plan, you can find out which local keywords every particular page is ranking for and save that list in a CSV format.
2. Keyword Mapping
The act of listing out the many keywords that your website pages are each ranking for is known as keyword mapping. Additionally, it enables you to shape future target keywords and the sites you want people to see when they perform such searches.
You may use keyword mapping to determine the website layout, which makes it crucial. An effective keyword map ensures that a website’s pages target several theme phrases rather than simply one term on each page. Additionally, it aids SEOs in identifying the keywords they are competing for and any possibilities they may have overlooked to increase their exposure in search results.
3. Optimize for Google My Business
In local search, Google My Business has emerged as the top dog. Google My Business is a perfect tool to assist your company in meeting Google’s requirements because Google willingly supports, validates, and distributes its own material.
To make sure you’re ready for Google My Business, you should do the following:
- Make a Google My Business page and authorize it.
- Within your account, utilize Google Posts.
- Motivate your clients to leave online reviews.
- Review responses should be genuine and location-specific.
Google may provide your company with a highly sought-after sidebar spot in its local search if it can confirm your company’s legitimacy. Make sure you’re not just doing this for SEO. You may make it easier for potential consumers to locate you if you have reviewed and updated your contact details and business hours. Due to the anticipated disruptions in consumer purchasing habits and corporate operations in 2020, finding current data is more important than ever for consumers. Google now places a greater emphasis than ever before on social network material. Share your stunning Google My Business profile on social media to further integrate social and search.
4. Create Local Content
Content producers may now compose more for people and less to please search engines as a result of Google’s ongoing technological advancements. While writing about general subjects will draw in a sizable audience, there are times when it’s more crucial to narrow your target and write about regional or industry news in order to draw in a specific readership.
Encourage local industry events, stories, employees, and other instructive information on your blog to establish yourself as the neighbourhood expert in your field. Consider creating leading content that extends beyond what your company offers. A local events calendar or a map of nearby services might both be useful for your image and offer on-page local signals that are extremely relevant to your public image.
Since you’re targeting a neighbourhood, make sure to find out how popular it is!
Anything below 200 searches per month may not produce inbound links for you because the majority of keyword planners provide a search volume based on national searches.
Employing a thorough local SEO strategy is vitally essential if you work in the local service sector and if you want to show up at the top of the rankings whenever prospective clients browse for your services.
Don’t just create junk for the sake of producing content; keep in mind that you want your subject matter to be distinctive and valuable. You genuinely want to contribute to your neighbourhood.
Customizing your content on the particular aches and issues that local SEO customers are searching for is the greatest approach to do this. Every fresh blog post you create offers you the chance to create a new indexed page for your website, target a different geographical search term, and improve your chances of appearing in search engine results.
The URL, title, header, meta description, and content of every document you create need to be optimized for search engines by employing high-volume keywords. If you’re struggling to come up with geo-targeted content, think about showcasing case studies and client success stories.
5. Optimize Online Directories and Citations
Any internet reference of a local company’s name, address, and phone number is referred to as a “local citation.”
Citations are critical in helping local companies show up in online searches, and when local companies actively monitor their sources to verify the authenticity of the data, it helps build confidence in these online classifieds. Check that your citations are accurate and consistent in all four of these data collected from various sources since consistency is important. Google may not display your company enough in search results if it cannot identify whether the information about it is accurate. Removing duplicate listings from web directories is a good idea. To gain a localized external inbound connection, join the Chamber of Commerce in your area while you’re at it.
6. Get Inbound Links With Relevance and Authority
Every incoming link informs Google you’re a genuine business, and inbound links may help increase your domain authority. Inbound links are enticing possibilities to improve your local SEO. Here are several methods for obtaining inbound links:
- Partnerships or Sponsorships
- Grants for Guest Blog Posting
- Scholarships
Begin with your connection, which includes BIDs, licensing authorities, trade groups, resellers, suppliers, and other affiliates. Consider holding a community event, sponsoring a webinar or meet-up, advocating a local cause you care about, and cultivating connections with influential individuals. Additionally, have the confidence to ask potential partners to include you in their collaborator directory. Furthermore, guest blogging might aid in generating links. Engage in constructive dialogue with and about other professionals in your field, and serve as a community resource. As a result of your participation in community discussions, you get more inbound links, users on social media, and media attention.
7. Use Appropriate Local Schema
Schema markup is a kind of structured information that simplifies the task of web crawlers and supports search engines in comprehending the content of your website, despite the fact that it is not a ranking component.
It’s a success if you can make Google more adept at matching your website to a suitable query. Schema markup may assist in bringing up rich outcomes in search results that highlight extra details like breadcrumbs, reviews, FAQs, and site links. It is essential to implement schema correctly before testing and verifying your markup since mistakes might prevent you from getting those rich results.
Final Words
Throughout this blog, we hope we have been able to paint a picture of the pivotal role local seo can play if you are a local business owner. Small businesses are driven by a blend of local crowds and tourists looking for a particular product/service in a stranger city. Working on your local SEO will not only help you improve your traction and revenue, but it will help you build a strong brand voice and stand quite ahead of your business competitors who have not yet leveraged Local SEO tactics into their businesses.
Here are 7 easy but powerful tips and tricks that will help boost visibility for your local business. As a small business, tackling local SEO might be intimidating. The administrative and marketing chores that come along with being an entrepreneur may leave you without a specialized marketing department, and it’s not unusual for business owners to feel overburdened. According to research by Moz, review signals are one of the elements that Google takes into account for local search ranking. Here, ranking factors like review amount, review velocity, review diversity, etc., are taken into account. Focus on motivating customers, especially those who leave great evaluations. It may do wonders for increasing your exposure and improving the standing of your company.
