What is Local SEO?
In digital marketing, local SEO is a strategy that helps a business to rank higher in the area where they are providing services. The businesses with physical presence can benefit from local SEO without any spending. For a better understanding, when you search for some business or service, Google shows map results of three businesses related to your query. These results are shown due to Local SEO, known as map pack.
Why Local SEO is Important?
Local SEO increases the visibility of a business. It helps to get noticed by the potential customers. Moreover, Google Business Profile can help to get more calls, leads, and sales. It also helps to increase the foot count at your business location.
How Local SEO Works?
Google makes a perception for a business, and if it seems to be popular and trustworthy, Google ranks it higher on the local map pack. Local SEO is helpful for businesses to rank them for relevant queries.
There are some factors that Google considers before ranking businesses in Google Maps and the local pack, such as:
Relevance
Google considers if your business is relevant to what the user is searching for. For example, if a user is searching for a home inspection in Columbus, Google shows the home inspection companies in the map pack search results.
Distance
Another factor on the basis of which Google ranks businesses on map pack is distance from the user. If a user in Houston searches for anything without mentioning a specific area, Google will show the businesses on the map pack, which are located nearer to that user.
Prominence
It’s the most crucial factor. Google ranks that business higher in the map pack, which is well-reviewed. The well-known business with more positive reviews is likely to get a good ranking in local SEO.
Strategies for Local SEO
After having knowledge of how Google determines ranking of a business in a local map pack, it’s time to learn how we can formulate a local SEO strategy. To improve rankings on local map pack, the following are the steps to do:
Setting of Google Business Profile (GBP)
It’s the first step to set a GBP that can be trustworthy for Google and can rank higher in the map pack. Your GBP will drive local customers to your location. Your Google Business Profile must contain the following information:
Basic Data
You have to add the basic information about your business, like the official name of the business, its phone number, and address. There should be no error while adding this information.
Brief Introduction
There should be a brief introduction of your business, and the products or services you are providing with the right keywords. This section lets you claim why you’re the best in marketing. So don’t forget to let the audience know your unique selling point.
Real Images
After adding necessary information on your listing, you need to add real pictures of your business, whether these pictures are of your office, store, products, or pictures taken when the team is providing any services. For example, a coffee shop can add the inside images of the shop as well as images of a barista, coffee, or customers having it (if they agree to get their picture clicked).
Localize Site Content
Along with your Google Business Profile, the website also plays an important role in ranking at the top on the local map pack. So, the website and its content should be localized.
The content on the website must include the location of the business, the name of the city, region, or country. Having such information throughout the website will help it to reach more local customers. Secondly, you can add local SEO content to your website, like articles related to local happenings.
Such content helps to drive local traffic to the website, which can be a qualified lead for your business.
Selection of Right Keywords
When it comes to local SEO strategies, choosing the right keyword is the most important step. When you conduct keyword research, you must focus on long tail keywords having an area name. For example: “coffee shop in Texas”. Such specific keywords help to get more traffic to your website.
Optimize Near Me Searches
In the competitive market out there, your business needs to rank with the best local seo strategies. In the local pack, there will be multiple businesses ranking well at the search engine, and you will have to compete with them. Adding tag location-based content can help you to do well in local SEO. So the search engine will associate it with local queries. To improve local search performance, strategies like integrating “near me” must be implemented.
Reviews Management
Reviews on the business profile help the business to get noticed by Google for higher rankings. Businesses with a higher ratio of positive reviews are more likely to rank higher in local SEO.
Google recommends your business to users on the basis of previous customers’ experiences. A business having an overall good rating and positive reviews can have a higher rank in local search engines.
That’s why you need to get good reviews from your customers, and if there are any bad reviews, those must be addressed on priority to get a positive image for your business.
Well-Optimized Website
The website should be well-optimized, in case your audience skips the map pack results, the website should rank at the top in the organic results. So to achieve success in local seo strategy, you must have to get your website optimized according to the algorithm of the search engine.
Conclusion
If you are willing to experience the benefits of Local SEO for your business, you need the implementation of winning strategies for it. Formulation of the best strategies according to the algorithm of search engines is what Digilatics do at its best. Join hands today and grow your business with up-to-date SEO strategies.
