If you want to find valuable leads that increase business revenue, customers need to find your business online. The best approach to increasing website traffic is understanding the local SEO’s ins and outs and making it work for your business.
Local search engine optimization is an SEO marketing tactic that optimizes your website for local search results. Anyone who has ever searched for a business online has likely used local search terms. This includes terms like:
- Electrician near me
- Doctors in (your city name)
- Plumbers by (local city name)
- Cleaning service in (your state)
Leveraging local SEO is a great way to pull in new customers to your brick-and-mortar business. A strategic process that focuses on optimizing your website, local SEO marketing efforts include content optimization, on-page optimizations, and link building. Another significant focus of local SEO is to make sure your essential business information is correct and consistent across all search engine platforms.
Let’s take a closer look at local SEO and why it can be an excellent asset for companies looking to reach their goals and grow their business.
Why Local Search Is Important
Local search continues to be an essential service for businesses hoping to find success in 2021. Let’s look at some statistics about the importance of local search:
- 50% of people who perform a local search on their mobile device and 34% searched on their computer or tablet went into a physical store within one day.
- 18% of local mobile searches lead to a sale within one day.
- 60% of American adults use their tablets and smartphones to search for local services or product information.
- 50% of searchers use their mobile phones to look for things like local business addresses.
- 78% of local-based searches on a mobile device end in offline purchases.
- 71% of people surveyed say they search for a businesses’ location to confirm before they go for a first-time visit.
- 1 in 3 smartphone searches was conducted just before the customer arrived at the store.
Who Benefits From Local SEO & Why?
Now that you understand why local SEO is essential let’s look at what types of businesses benefit from local SEO.
Doctors and Medical Practices SEO Services
When someone searches for a doctor, they are generally looking for one that practices nearby. Since most patients don’t want to travel several hours to visit a doctor, the most common way people search for a doctor is by using the term “near me.” If you are going to see a doctor regularly, you don’t want to go out of your way to get to their office.
When potential patients go online to search “doctors near me,” there are several reasons why you want to have local search results. Potential patients are presented with the highest-ranking local doctors’ names, business information, phone number, and Google ranking. Even better, your potential patients have access to an instant “directions link” that brings them to the map application of their phone. This gives your potential patients an easy way to find you and get in touch.
Plumbers SEO Services
Plumbers are another business industry that benefits from local SEO. Think about what you do when you have a plumbing emergency. Do you run out of the house to the local hardware store to get supplies and fix the problem? Most likely, no. When someone has a plumbing emergency, they usually go to Google with the search term “plumber near me.”
Optimizing your local search results as a plumber gives you an easy way for new customers to learn about your business, read reviews, and get in touch with you when they need your services most.
Landscaping SEO Services
Businesses in the landscaping industry undoubtedly benefit from local SEO. While many landscapers drum up business through word-of-mouth advertising, the rise of technology has made having an online presence essential to the landscaping industry.
Landscaping is another service that customers choose to hire locally. Since most landscaping businesses will not travel beyond a certain mile radius, finding local customers is essential to your success. Optimizing your local SEO if you are in the landscaping business is not just a good idea for business growth; it’s vital to your future. Since most customers look for landscaping services on their mobile devices, using local SEO marketing will help your business stay visible to local customers. It will also give your potential customers the easiest, most convenient method of getting in touch with you.
Electrician SEO Services
Like plumbers, electricians greatly benefit from local SEO. Whether a customer has an electrical emergency or is merely looking for someone to install new lighting in their home or business, most consumers hop online to search for a local electrician. With electricians in high demand these days, leveraging local SEO to boost your online visibility is a game-changer.
Electricians who use local SEO give customers an easy way to get in touch, learn about their services, and see reviews from previous customers to increase the level of trust new customers have with you as a professional.
Air Conditioning and HVAC SEO Services
Air conditioning and HVAC are essential services used all year by home and business owners. As a popular consumer service, air conditioning and HVAC SEO services allow your business to draw in more customers and become an established service source in your industry. The more you use local SEO to improve your online visibility, the higher you will rank in the local searches when potential clients are looking for your services.
Accountant SEO Services
With tax season just around the corner, accountant SEO is essential to keep those tax clients coming through your door. It seems like, across the U.S., new accountant businesses are popping up everywhere. With a high level of competition, how can you stay relevant and draw in new customers to continue to grow your business?
Local SEO is a great way to let local clients get to know your business. You can pull in a great deal of business by ensuring you show up at the top of the local searches when potential clients are looking for an accountant in your area.
Chiropractic SEO Services
Like accountants, chiropractors greatly benefit from SEO services. While most chiropractors have regular clients, there’s always room for more. Since today’s average individual is stressed and overworked, more and more patients need chiropractic services to keep their bodies healthy.
With local SEO, you can be sure that your name will pop up at the top of the search results when potential new patients are looking for a chiropractor in your area.
Dentist Marketing SEO Services
As the healthcare industry becomes increasingly competitive, dentist marketing is essential to the survival of your practice. You need to be sure you are working hard to compete with your area’s other dental practices. With local SEO, you don’t just make your way to the top of the local search engine results. You also give your potential patients an easy way to get in touch with your practice and book their next appointment.
Martial Arts SEO Services
Whether you are just starting or you have a well-established martial arts studio, local SEO services are a great asset to your business. Amidst the global pandemic, businesses across all industries are struggling. As life goes back to some resemblance of normal, you want to be sure you survive the economic decline. Local martial arts SEO services help potential students find your services and get in touch with your business.
Cleaning Service SEO Services
Cleaning services are essential now more than ever. With countless options for cleaning services, you need to ensure your business keeps the competitive edge necessary for survival. Local cleaning service SEO helps potential customers learn more about your business. They can compare you to other local cleaning providers in your area and quickly get in touch with you. When you use a local SEO service, you can have peace of mind that you will show up at the top of search engine results when potential customers are looking for cleaning services.
Carpet Cleaning SEO Services
Carpet cleaning services are popular among residential and business owners. Of course, when customers look for a carpet cleaning service, they’ll be searching for a local provider. With local SEO, your carpet cleaning business will come out at the top of the search engine results. This gives potential customers all the details of your business, including an easy way to call to schedule an appointment.
What Are the Important Parts of Local SEO?
When we refer to local SEO, we’re referring to an overall service that combines several different tasks to bring your business the results you need to succeed. Where organic SEO gets results without work, local SEO takes time and effort. Your team will perform keyword research, content optimization, link-building, and on-page technical SEO services to increase your visibility. Similar to overall SEO services, local SEO simply adds a local focus to the efforts.
Combining the various local SEO elements properly will allow your business to outperform your competition in the search engine results. Local SEO focuses on the searches being conducted in the immediate area surrounding your business. Since you want to attract viewers who are physically located within a reasonable driving distance to your location, local SEO incorporates your city and state into their efforts.
Keyword Research
One of the most critical elements of local SEO, keyword research, gathers the specific words users tend to search when looking for the goods and services your business provides. As mobile devices have increased, it comes as no surprise that local searches are so common. If potential customers are looking for an electrician, it’s easy to find one at the touch of their fingertips. All they have to do is hop on their phone and search “electrician near me.” Location tracking devices then allow the search engines to pull a list of electricians geographically relevant to the viewer’s physical location.
Your local SEO team will do a full analysis of your business industry when it comes to keyword research. They will use an SEO tool that identifies the most common keywords searchers use when looking for the goods and services you provide. They’ll also analyze your competition to create the best strategy to outrank other local businesses in your industry. Tools like SEMrush, Keyword.io, and AnswerThePublic will also give you the most common questions people are searching for regarding your business.
Once your local SEO team has gathered a list of top keywords, they’ll also go through and analyze the search volume. This allows them to pick the keywords that will be most beneficial to your strategy to achieve optimal results.
The Importance of Content to Your Local SEO Efforts
Adding a local focus to your website content is also a great way to improve your search engine ranking. As the most respected search engines continually change their standards, relevant and high-quality content has always been a ranking factor. Content with local focus enhances your search engine rankings, but there is a strategy for developing your content.
Writing long, keyword-dense content is no longer the best approach. To get the best results, you need to focus on your query results and your audience. Does the content fit the user intent? When users turn to the search engines with a question, does your content clearly and accurately answer that question? Your local SEO team will develop quality content that the most popular search engines will pull forward as the best response to local results.
A Brief Primer on Local SEO Link Categories
When it comes to local SEO, several link categories come together to create a quality local SEO profile. Let’s explore!
Citation/NAP Sites
Citation or NAP sites are sites used to help businesses increase their local search presence. Citation sites are NAP-focused. NAP refers to the name, address, and phone number of your business. Essentially, it’s the essential information you want searchers to find when looking for your business. The primary function of these sites is to increase your NAP presence on the most trusted search engines.
Local Directory Websites
Local directory websites are the second biggest focus your local SEO efforts should have. Submitting your business information to these websites and ensuring that what they have is accurate will help increase your website’s link authority for local searches.
Industry-Related Local Sites
Industry-related local sites refer to any website that offers local link opportunities and relates to your business. This includes:
- Newspapers
- Schools
- Universities
- Government Associations
- Business Associations
Submitting your business information to these sites will help increase your local link profile’s value and add to the authority your site needs to rank high in the search engine results.
Local Partner Sites
Local partner sites refer to business websites that relate to your industry but aren’t in direct competition with your business. While Google forbids excessive link exchanges, turning to local business partners to achieve links is a great strategy. For example, if you are an electrician who uses a local provider for your parts, you can work with them to add links from their website to yours.
An Evolution of Google Local Algorithm Changes
As the top search engine globally, Google continuously changes its local algorithm to ensure searchers are getting the best results. These updates allow Google to regulate website ranking in the search engine results, so they are high-quality, relevant, and trusted. Let’s take a quick look at how some of these updates have shaped the current local search algorithm for Google.
- On May 1st, 2007, Google performed a massive update to their overall algorithm that significantly impacted local SEO. This change took the standard search results and combined them with all other aspects of Google search. This includes video, images, news, etc.
- On April 1st, 2010, Google Places’ launch re-branded the Google Local Business Center, consolidating places pages with local SERPs and implementing a local adoption.
- On February 27th, 2012, the Venice update implemented more aggressive localization in local search data displayed to consumers. The update improved ranking for results and improved local results by targeting results from a searcher’s locale with greater reliability.
- On October 4th, 2012, the August/September 65-Pack update rolled out as a group of updates. This group of updates changes how local results were assessed for the searcher. User-intent-based changes through this update provided better results by looking at the reasoning behind a search query.
- On August 20th, 2013, the Hummingbird update was a core algorithm update that augmented improvements with conversational search. This update helped improve results by going beyond just finding pages with matching words.
- On July 24th, 2014, the Pigeon update took the local SEO world by surprise. The change was focused on delivering more useful, relevant, and accurate local search results. A significant portion of this update included better ranking parameters that specifically targeted distance and location.
- On September 1st, 2016, the Possum update shook up SERP results. While Google didn’t officially confirm the update, the significant improvements, especially to Google Maps local results, suggesting a considerable update had occurred.
What’s Next for Local SEO?
Based on the updates we’ve already seen, it’s clear that local SEO is headed towards a substantial shift in improved context and understanding. As our point-and-click society becomes ever more reliant on smartphones, hands-free devices, and other electronics, we can expect to see enhanced algorithms. With the introduction of voice search results, higher-quality, faster, more improved algorithms will be necessary to serve these enhanced user requirements.
Regarded as the top search engine across the globe, we can always expect Google to be adjusting and updating its algorithms to improve search results. While this keeps local SEO experts on their toes, it also shows us that the service will continue to be relevant for years to come. Investing in local SEO services isn’t just essential to your business’s future; it’s a smart move financially as your team can more easily stay on top of algorithm changes and search engine requirements.