Local SEO 101: A Quick and Easy Overview

Want more foot traffic, delivery orders, and praise for your local business? It's time to optimize your local SEO. Local SEO is a sector of search engine optimization that increases your business's visibility in online searches. A business with a brick-and-mortar spot or one that caters to a local community will significantly benefit from local SEO.

What Is Local SEO and How Does It Work?

Before understanding local SEO, it is helpful to understand traditional SEO. Traditional SEO uses a crawler, also called a spider, to scan all the internet web pages to exist and "crawls" back with all the content to form the search engine index. This index is individual to each engine, Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.

Once a user plugs a search into Google the index will show them the pages with the most matches to what they've searched. Website visits are an important part of increasing ranking on the search list. Make sure your website is running smoothly to get and keep visitors. The algorithm also factors in ads and site quality.

The "local" part takes into account proximity when someone plugs a search into an engine. If someone types "grocery" into their mobile device, Google will automatically show them the supermarkets nearest to their location.

How Important Is Local SEO?

Local SEO is an integral part of standing out amongst competitors. Local SEO is what will get tourists to visit your coffee shop instead of the one down the street. It has been revealed that an astonishing 80% of local searches convert into sales.

Tips To Improve Local SEO

The main way to improve local SEO is to make sure you are doing everything to get your traditional and local SEO search rankings up. There are a variety of ways to do this, but we've listed some of the most important below.

1. Make Sure Your Website Is Always Up To Date

Include your business address, phone number, and have a Google business page so when customers in your neighbourhood search your product or service, Google will pull up your page. Make sure this data is in a consistent format to be trusted by crawlers.

2. Get Good Reviews

Once you've nailed the local SEO part, you want to make sure when your page comes up, people have a reason to go there other than distance. When there are a few options on the local SEO search, customers will generally look into the one with the most praise.

3. Consistent Branding

Make sure across all landing pages, Yelp, Google Business, and more that your branding is targeted and consistent. Taglines like "Nashville's Best Chicken" or "Boston's Favorite Boating" will funnel users to your brand based on your location and service.

Boost Your Local SEO

Local SEO is organic marketing that will not only increase your brand awareness via proximity but create the opportunity for returning customers. In such a crowded space crafting an effective SEO strategy can be tricky. We're here with our expert help if you need direction on elevating your local SEO!