What is Local SEO?| Benefits of Local SEO| Importance for local business

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is often confused with organic SEO. Listing and updating your business into the local directories is known as local SEO. This part of SEO requires constant management of photos, reviews and other details on site like Yelp and Tripadvisor. The majority of the business owners think that investing time and money into Local google presence as there are other already established businesses out there which makes it truly difficult for you to compete with. But when it comes to the local prominence of a business, the google presence locally does matter.

Imagine you need to find the “best Chinese restaurant nearby”. Upon typing this keyword, you are sure to see all those big to small chains of Chinese restaurants in your city. Google shows those businesses that are close to your location, this means that even the small businesses can beat the competition with local SEO.

Importance of Local SEO for small businesses

There are certain factors that Google uses to know the geographical relevance of business to any user who is conducting a “near me” search. Local SEO allows you to compete against large and long-established businesses and give visibility to your business for the local customers.

Local SEO just like other SEO strategies requires you to perform certain actions that help Google and other search engines to enhance your visibility. Forming content with the right keywords, filling in the details such as the town, city name, zip code, and adding reviews, building links, adding photos of your business, having a maintained Google my business page, etc are some of the practices that can drive consumers to your business locally.

Google uses three-factor to rank your business based for local SEO:

Proximity
Relevance
Prominence

Benefits of Local SEO

Affordable digital marketing

Local SEO tools are almost free. To set up your local business listing you can use free tools such as Google My Business and Facebook. This is so much more beneficial and cost-effective than other digital marketing services.

Enhances local customer visibility

If google maps find your business, then there are more chances of you getting more leads than higher. Local SEO will put your business in front of the user based on their search keyword and intent.

Brings the trust factor to your business

We know how we perceive a business based on their google reviews and ratings. This is the same for local businesses worldwide. Research suggests that over 85% of the local shoppers look for google ratings and go for businesses not less than 4 stars before buying a product or service locally.

Ways to Improve your Local SEO

Add accurate local citations such as your business name, address, contact information, website, etc.

Add your business in the local directories like Yelp, Yext, Bing Places, and Facebook for the user to check whether your business is legit or not.

Maintain your Google My Business page for better SEO signals.

Pay heed to the reviews because reviews make a business legitimate.

Add local keywords to your website to earn more visibility locally.

You can also use a Local SEO consultant or agency in London to help you rank better among other local businesses.

Being an established digital marketing agency in London, we help businesses with fully-developed websites, content writing, SEO and graphic designing requirements.