Local SEO is an essential marketing strategy if you are a physical business with local services or products. If your clients are all local, then you should prefer local SEO over standard SEO. Local SEO is a host of techniques used by website owners to compete for the highest rankings in local searches in their area of business for specific keywords related to their products and services.
For example, if you are a doctor in a city, your customer demographics will primarily consist of people from your city and not from the country at large. Google, with its launch of local SEO algorithms, has made it very clear that local businesses have a special place and not in international SEO. They should divert their efforts to focus on local SEO.
Local SEO can turn the tables for any local business. If you are looking to build a large client base, you need to find a reputable local SEO company that can handle your business needs. When your website shows up in results for other cities, those results pretty much go to waste because these visitors won’t convert into actual sales after all. It’s the local customers you want, and this new trend could help you easily capitalize and build a better clientele.
If you are a small business, local SEO works better for you, rather than multinationals. It will definitely increase the popularity of your business, get reviews and feedback from your customers for free, and help new prospects find you easily. When you initially start local SEO, your main focus should be on lesser used keywords that are longer, commonly known as long tail keywords in the industry. These keywords can be easily ranked and will start to bring you some traffic easily without much effort. Once you’ve eliminated them, you can focus on keywords that are more lucrative and harder to rank for. While this will take time and effort, the wait is often well rewarded with leads and sales.
For local SEO to work as you intend, your website needs to be optimised, so that Google understands where you are located and the nature and scope of the services you offer. The local component of your business, which is the city or town, must be present either in the domain name, in the title of the website or in the content and if possible, in all of them. This ensures maximum visibility. If you hire a local SEO company, be sure to talk to them to understand their goals for your business and the efforts they’re willing to put in. Quite a few campaigns disappear into obscurity with no sales or leads just because there was no execution plan.
Another important factor is the main keyword, which can be included in the business name for online marketing purposes. While the name may sound generic, it will give you a better edge than most of your competitors have ever had and get you leads and sales faster than anyone else. For example, if you have a bakery in a city called Bartholomew, you could have the business name online as Bartholomew Bakery that ends with the name of the city. The name sounds generic, but it will help you a lot as you expand your local SEO efforts. This is a powerful and ingenious SEO strategy that is often overlooked and can be your secret weapon to monopolize your ranking in your city.
Your website can also work well if you have your name, address and phone number – NAP as we call it in the industry – on every page, conveniently located in a place that is easily visible to your customers. This is valuable, both from an SEO and customer standpoint. Your customer shouldn’t have to fidget on the website to find a way to contact you, and Google should be referenced at all times to your physical address and number so you know who to link the page’s content to. The best place for this information is in the header or footer, with the former being preferable. Your address helps build trust with the user. How many times have you seen an office address displayed prominently on every page of the website? This is something the user needs and if you deliver it, it helps them believe you. If you’re willing to go the extra mile, you can also post a Google Maps map of your location, furthering your cause and helping your prospects easily find your location.
Modern psychology explains that a buyer goes through a variety of different phases before making a purchase. He’ll need to make sure he’s targeting buyers at the right stage. His keywords should be carefully selected to get only those people who are serious about buying the products or services he is selling. Window shopping is also prevalent on the Internet, and you won’t be happy with having those types of visitors to your website. To do this, put yourself in the customer’s shoes and think about what they would look for if they were looking for your services. This is a process of elimination. Eliminating wasted keywords can exponentially increase your sales and reduce your efforts, all at the same time. This task is essential and can only be done by you, who have a deep understanding of your market.
These tasks are time consuming and must be performed by an expert. Be sure to hire a reputable local SEO company with a long list of clients who have been successful with their campaigns. The best way would be to talk around your neighborhood and ask for referrals from people who have benefited from local SEO and have seen a good number of customers referred from your online presence.
While the above points don’t fully encompass the soul of local SEO, they are a good starting point and definitely generate some sales to encourage you to dig deeper. Implement these points efficiently and watch your clientele grow, steadily but safely.