What Is Local SEO and Why Is It Important?

What is local SEO?

Being a larger business entity comes with its perks, such as the ability to reach a larger audience across the country, or even the globe, with relative ease.

This process isn’t as simple for smaller businesses, however, as those with single brick-and-mortar locations will often have to cater primarily to those located in their area, and must turn to special marketing methods to achieve this. Fortunately, there are practices that help local businesses to reach consumers more effectively.

Perhaps the most important of these practices is local seo. The following points will help explain why local SEO is so crucial and what it can help your local business accomplish.

Local SEO is an SEO strategy designed to help local businesses receive more exposure via search engines so that they can better advertise to potential customers who are searching for services or products near them.

A successful local SEO strategy is comprised of a variety of methods, such as proper website construction, acquiring inbound links from multiple local and authoritative sources, claiming your business on Google My Business, ensuring that your business contact and location information is correct and uniform across the web, and receiving a host of positive reviews for your business, just to name a few.

In addition, there is also the process of ensuring that your offline marketing efforts are improving the community’s engagement with your business and with external sources such as your social media channels.

Local SEO is important if you want your business to be visible to local searchers, as this has a major impact on attracting customers and improving your sales.

However, some may not realize how big of a role this SEO strategy plays for brick-and-mortar businesses. Let’s take a look at just how necessary a local SEO is for those who rely on consumers in their area for continued business.

The importance and impact of local SEO

Time and time again, statistics have proven that the right local SEO strategy produces quality business results. In fact, a few of these notable statistics include:

• Nearly 50 percent of individuals who conducted a local search on their mobile phone visited a physical location within one day of conducting the search.
• Around 34 percent who conducted a similar search on a computer or tablet device also visited a physical location within one day.
• Approximately 18 percent of local mobile phone searches lead to a sale within one day.
• Around 78 percent of searches based locally resulted in purchases being made offline.
• In 2017, it was found that around 97 percent of consumers seek out local businesses online and that 12 percent of these consumers were looking for a local business on a daily basis.

Local SEO Strategy

With the proper local SEO strategy, you can become one of the businesses tapping into the large and active consumer base listed in the statistics above, and transcend the limits of what an offline-only marketing strategy has to offer.

Local SEO is a vital marketing strategy for businesses that rely on their community to continue operations and make sales. It can help businesses gain exposure among those searching for services within a certain vicinity of their location.

It is important to keep in mind that local SEO is not a one-time job. It takes proper implementation that starts with the business website and extends to Google and beyond.

To help you rank above your competition and show up in the search queries of potential customers, it is advisable to seek the help of an agency to successfully create and launch a personalized local strategy tailored to your specific goals and needs.