As a local business, you depend on foot traffic to drive increased sales. However, the competition is cut-throat and outranking market leaders seems impossible. Merely getting your business listed on online directories is not enough to drive footfall unless you have a dedicated marketing strategy in place. Fortunately, SEO for local business gives you the ability to improve search engine rankings and brand visibility for location-specific searches.
If you run a local business, like an agency, restaurant, or shop, you would want to drive increased traffic – more importantly, relevant ‘local’ traffic that will convert into sales. Hence, it would be unnecessary to invest money and time in devising a marketing strategy with a global outreach.
Local Search Engine Optimization is a process of optimizing your website or business for a specific local region you serve. This will help improve your business’s search engine rankings when local audiences perform search queries related to your product or service. Example: “Beauty salon near me,” etc.
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Higher your search rankings, the more ‘visible’ your local business is to the audiences. As such, they are more likely to visit your site or store as most local searches are performed with the intent of purchase. According to HubSpot Marketing statistics, 72% of consumers who performed a local search visited a store within 5 miles.
So, local SEO is an effective way to boost your business ranking on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), improve visibility for your organic listings, and build a local prominence.
Here’s how you can leverage SEO for a local business for increased growth and revenues:
If you want to drive targeted local traffic to your business, it is crucial for search engines and online directories to recognize you as a local business. This is where your business citations come into play. It indicates your company’s name, physical address (including zip code), and phone number.
Building citations on Google, Facebook, or online directories can help improve your business visibility for relevant local searches. Citations are the 4th most important factor that helps determine your local ranking success, according to Moz Local Ranking Factors study.
SEO for local business further enables your local business to be found by the right audiences and at the right time when they are searching actively for a business related to yours.
When an online user searches a business, product or service with a “near me” or “location” tag, search engines or directories will rank the business that is in the closest proximity to the searcher. While you cannot influence this local ranking factor, you can certainly build a powerful local presence and engage your target audiences with Google My Business.
You can create a free Business Profile here and connect with your audiences via Google Search and Maps. It will not only display your local address, but you can also post special offers and photos to your Google My Business profile to stand ahead in the competition. Adding “Call” and “Directions” tags to the profile further reinforces your local presence.
Additionally, you can provide a host of other useful information such as web address, opening hours, phone number, and business category. Verifying your Google My Business profile and optimizing the same will help improve your brand reputation as well as maximize your local search presence.
Just like SEO for local business, there are several on-site and off-site optimization factors that can affect the amount of traffic and conversions you generate. Here are the latest on-site local optimization trends you should watch out for:
SEO for Local Business: The Final Words
SEO for local business is a powerful digital marketing tool to build your brand prominence and improve local visibility for relevant search queries. Hire professional SEO service to reach the right target audience at the right time when they are most likely to buy.
If you want your business to be successful in the present era, you must identify and implement the right online marketing techniques. One technique you cannot do without if you want to make your digital marketing campaign successful in increasing visibility on...
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