Local SEO is a variant of digital marketing aimed at making businesses more visible in local search results. It helps search engines like Google understand the place, services offered, and the credibility of your business so that you may communicate with prospective customers in your neighborhood. It is particularly helpful if one’s business operates from a physical location or postulates to serve specific areas.
For example, if a user is looking for “pizza near me,” proper local SEO results in your pizzeria ranking top of the search results or at least visible on the local map pack. All of this visibility, in most cases, is purely based on proximity, the most relevant, and positive customer reviews of any given location.
Why is Local SEO Important?
It is important to do local SEO because search engines have now become a major tool on which people rely to find businesses nearby. Consider these statistics:
- 30% of all mobile searches are location-based.
- 78% of mobile searches for local businesses result in a visit within a day.
- 28% of local searches lead to a purchase.
If your business isn’t optimized for local SEO, you risk losing valuable traffic, customers, and revenue to competitors who are.
How Does Local SEO Work?
Local SEO operates on two fronts: local pack results and organic search results.
- Local Pack Results
Local pack, or map pack, shows up top in search results and provides a map of the three closest businesses. These listings contain vital information, such as business names, ratings, and contact details.
- Organic Search Results
These are the organic or classic “blue link” outcomes beneath the local pack. They list websites most relevant to the user’s query, considering factors like quality of content, keywords, and backlinks.
A successful local SEO strategy works toward optimization with both result types in mind, ensuring maximum online presence and reach.
Building the Perfect Local SEO Strategy
An effective local SEO strategy requires an initial setup and ongoing optimization. Once you’ve laid the groundwork, you could put systems in place to help you scale visibility with much fewer hands-on adjustments. Here’s a step-by-step process:
Optimize Your Google Business Profile
Your Google My Business listing is a free listing that may include, but is not limited to, business name, address, phone number, hours of operation, and customer reviews. This is a crucial ranking factor in local pack results.
How to Optimize Google Business Profile Best Practices:
- Be specific in your business category to describe your services.
- Fill out all the required information accurately and thoroughly, including your address and service areas.
- Add high-quality photos to showcase your location, products, or services.
- Encourage happy customers to leave reviews and respond to those reviews in a timely manner.
Why It Matters:
Google will favor listings that have the most complete and most active profiles. In fact, according to Google, such businesses are 70% more likely to attract local visits and 50% more likely to drive leads into sales.
Gather and Manage Reviews
Customer reviews are one of the most effective local SEO tools. They boost your business’s credibility and affect search engine rankings. In the BrightLocal survey, reviews were responsible for 17% of map pack rankings.
How to Get More Reviews:
- Ask for reviews nicely from happy customers over email or in-store.
- Provide a direct link to your Google review page and share it.
- Respond to all reviews—positive or negative—to demonstrate customer care.
- Avoid soliciting fake reviews or incentivizing feedback, as this violates Google’s guidelines.
Build Local Citations
Citations are mentions of your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) on directories, websites, or social media. Consistent and accurate citations signal to Google that your business is trustworthy and legitimate.
How to Create Local Citations:
- Submit your business data to heavyweight directories such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Facebook.
- Consistent NAP information in all your listings.
- Use citation services like Yext to automate submissions and update information.
Do Local Keyword Research
Local keyword research enables you to find out what your target audience specifically uses when looking for businesses just like yours. A plumber would want to target keywords such as “emergency plumbing in Dallas” or “water heater repair near me.”
How to Conduct Effective Local Keyword Research:
- Brainstorm Services: Think of all the services you are offering, for example, drain cleaning, boiler installation.
- Use Tools: Employ the use of tools such as Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner, or Keywords Everywhere to find applicable terms.
- Check for Local Intent: Google keywords that should potentially bring up local results in the form of map packs or listings nearby.
Get Backlinks from Local Sources
Backlinks refer to links from other websites back to your own. This is considered a “vote of confidence” in your business, which helps with organic and local rankings.
Ways to Build Local Backlinks:
- Team up with local blogs and newspapers for coverage.
- Sponsor community events or charities in exchange for asking for a backlink.
- Find competitors’ backlinks using tools such as Ahrefs’ Link Intersect and replicate them.
Optimize On-Page SEO
On-page SEO helps make your website informative to users and search engines and provides an easy way of navigation through the website. This is crucial for ranking in regular organic search results.
On-Page SEO Checklist:
- Use target keywords in title tags, meta descriptions, and headers.
- Develop different pages for each service or location you target.
- Include internal links between similar pages to help navigate.
- Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly and quick to load.
Monitoring and Performance Analysis
Ongoing monitoring of your local SEO will ensure that not only are you on the right path, but it also highlights areas for improvement.
Tools to Help:
- Google Search Console: See how your site is performing in search.
- Google Business Manager: Profile activity and engagement.
- Ahrefs Rank Tracker: Monitor your keyword rankings at a hyper-local level.
Local SEO Tools You Should Be Using
Here are a number of tools to make your local SEO life a lot easier and, quite frankly, fun:
- Google Business Manager: Manage your Google Business Profile.
- Google Keyword Planner: Find local keywords and search volumes.
- Ahrefs Rank Tracker: Keep track of keyword rankings in specific cities or ZIP codes.
- Yext: Automate citation management and ensure NAP consistency.
- Grid My Business: Visualize how your business ranks across the different areas.
Conclusion
Accomplish the power of local SEO through building the desired visibility of your business in the community. This will include optimization of your Google Business Profile, collecting customer reviews, building local citations, and focusing on on-page SEO.
Remember, local SEO is not a one-time task—it requires consistent effort and optimization. Start implementing these strategies today to ensure your business stands out in local search results and captures the attention of nearby customers.