SEO splits down to multiple fractions, including local SEO – a strategy to help you sell your products to nearby customers, primarily by climbing up the local Google search rankings.
If you have a physical location, even if that’s just a home office, you’ll find that by taking local SEO courses you’ll learn some great techniques that allow you to boost your visibility in Google’s search results.
You can test how local SEO works by heading to your browser and typing in any keywords related to your business. You’ll see a map with three listings, and a Google Maps thumbnail called a map pack.
Local SEO is a set of strategies and techniques that make it so that your business is the one appearing on both the map pack and the listing!
Let’s get into it a little further to help demonstrate the benefits of local SEO and why it’s something businesses should pay attention to.
Understanding How Google Search Results Work
Before you can get to grips with what local SEO is and how to use it as a marketing strategy, it helps to know about what’s going on with Google behind the screen.
We’re not going into massive detail, but in essence, Google has stacks of processes which rank thousands of sites at ridiculous speeds. Every time you search a topic, the algorithm goes over the index and delivers you a list of results it thinks you want to see.
Search results are ranked based on relevance and popularity, so the more prominent your site, the higher you climb!
Therefore, optimizing the digital footprint of your site is the first step to launching a great local SEO plan.
Local Organic Search Results
Google eventually caught onto the fact that we mostly want to find something close by – say you’re searching for a locksmith or a burger, you don’t want search results that are a two-hour drive away. To avoid this, the local search algorithm includes a proximity rule, so it will try and dig out some results close to you, even if you didn’t add your location or ‘near me’ to your inquiry.
Try Googling ‘pizza delivery,’ and you’ll see what we mean.
Local SEO is all about utilizing the growth of mobile search to make Google showcase your business to nearby potential customers.
How To Use Local SEO To Your Benefit
Getting on the local map pack is your goal when it comes to local SEO, and it’s powered by slightly different algorithms than the standard Google organic search system.
That means you need to:
- Show up in the main organic search results, AND
- Outrank your competitors in the local map pack
There are all sorts of ways to build your local SEO visibility, and Google considers several factors just as it does in the traditional algorithm. Even if you have a massive amount of functionality on your site and an active social media presence, you’ll need to put in some legwork to get the attention of local search algorithms.
Some of the strategies to facilitate this include:
- Posting localized content with local links.
- Creating geographical landing pages for each location.
- Optimizing title tags and meta descriptions (including your company name and contact details on each location page).
- Following general SEO best practices.
It’s vital to make sure you don’t lose sight of elements like readability, fast loading speeds, link building, and excellent information architecture because they are just as important. However, complementing those efforts with additional pages detailing every company location (or every customer area you serve) will sweeten the deal.
Location-Specific SEO Tasks
Finally, if you’ve got a slick, optimized site with plenty of localized content, you’ll want to back that up with directory listings and a Google My Business account.
The more touch points you have that Google can see to link your company to a customer search, the better your prospects will be.
Asking customers for reviews through Google My Business is also time well spent, since this data is aggregated and helps determine whether you get onto the local map pack.
Local SEO looks at website content, citations, review signals, keywords, and location-specific content to prioritize among search results.
Think of it like a beacon you’re holding up to the sky – the stronger your signal, and the louder it is shouting out your location, the easier it is for the algorithm to know where you are.
Any business that serves a local area, a city, a town, or a region should look at how they’re performing on local searches since it’s a great way to help more potential customers find your business.
Of course, that’s more relevant to in-person companies than digital services, but if you’d like more feet coming in through your door, local SEO is a great place to start.
