What is local SEO and how does it help businesses?

Do you know how SEO helps businesses? Many business owners believe SEO is all about creating a website and being active on social media. But this is far from the truth. Having a well-established web presence is beneficial for your business, but employing local SEO methods allows you to drive traffic to your website. 

As a small business owner, you may wonder if SEO is really important for business growth. How can it help you grow your company? 61% of entrepreneurs state that improving SEO and organic presence is a crucial marketing priority, and 70% think SEO is more effective than PPC. Local SEO lets internet users find your business offering your company enhanced visibility and increased revenue.

So, how can you boost local SEO and ensure your customers find you on the web? The following guidelines tell you what tips you can use to grow your company. 

Create a Google Business profile

If you want to What is google local SEO, you’re probably looking for a way to get your company on Google. The first step in establishing your brand as a reputable one is to create a Google Business Profile listing. When you create a Google Business profile, you list your company on the yellow pages of the net. It shouldn’t surprise you that this is one of the key factors that impact local SEO. 

You can create the Google Business Profile without the help of an SEO expert because it’s simple. Just make sure that your profile is 100% completed and provides all information necessary for a prospect who wants to find more about your business. Fill in all fields so you can obtain a 100% profile completion rate. 

Recommendations to create a great Google Business profile. 

– Create a great business description

– List the products and services you offer

– Get reviews on the Google My Business Page

– Answer frequently asked questions

List your location in strategic parts of your website

It’s not enough to list your business location only on your contact page. It’s essential to place it strategically around the website to boost SEO. Hire an SEO agency London based to review your website and identify the places where you can add your location to improve local SEO. If you created pages that provide information about your products and services, make sure you list the location in five places:

– The heading

– The body copy

– The footer

– The title tag

– The meta description

If it’s relevant for your services, include the location in the URL address to help customers find your business easier.  

Use the right keywords

You probably heard that it’s important to use keywords to boost SEO. But it would help if you used the right keywords, those people really search, to get the best results. To find out what prospects are searching on the Internet, perform keyword research. A digital marketing agency can do it for you to picture which keywords are most relevant for your business and sector. Keyword research also offers a sense of how much competition you face for particular keywords. 

Keyword research is essential because it helps you identify the keywords that people search frequently and you can rank for. Including these keywords into your website content and meta fields enables you to boost search results and improve overall SEO. 

Encourage your clients to write reviews

Your company provides a valuable product or service to your community, and therefore you probably have several happy, loyal customers. Your regular clients are priceless when it comes to promoting your business to other prospects in your area, and the best way to take advantage of their loyalty is to encourage them to write reviews. 

There are many ways to encourage clients to leave reviews for your services. Your staff can ask each buyer to provide their feedback after they purchase your services. Your customer service specialist can engage with existing reviews, solve issues, or show gratitude for feedback. Another way to motivate people to leave a review is to give them an incentive to share their opinions. However, if you incentivize reviews, you must do it for the negative and positive feedback. 

Create local content

If you hire an SEO specialist, they’ll tell you that SEO marketing often revolves around non-local content. And it’s not bad for your business to engage a wider audience, especially if you want to expand your company. But if you address a local group, you need to receive website traffic from your target audience. Creating local content could maximise your marketing efforts to produce high-quality leads. The easiest way to create local content is to write about events in your sector or local news your clients may be interested to read. It’s advisable to incorporate local keywords into general topics to help search engines crawl your website. 

Optimise your website for mobile

Optimising your website for mobile is essential for good SEO in general. However, if you want to improve local SEO it’s even more important for your clients to view the website correctly on all devices. Why? Google revealed that one-third of web searches come from mobile devices, so your clients most likely search the products you offer using their smartphone or tablet. 

When your website doesn’t work well on mobile devices, you can lose many prospects because they cannot find you. Accessing an unoptimized site for mobile devices is impractical, frustrating, and doesn’t inspire reliability. Your customers have plenty of options from which to choose, so they’ll immediately exit your website and access that of your competitor if yours lacks functions for mobile devices. 

Submit your website to local directories

You can list your business on several business directories to help your clients find your business when they need the services you offer. You should search for the most reliable local platforms and list your services with them. Submit your website to both local and national directors to boost search rankings and ensure prospective clients can always find you.