What Is Local SEO?
This is a question that many businesses are asking right now. So what is local SEO and how can it benefit your business? Let’s start with why so many businesses are prioritizing local SEO at the moment. On average there are over 5.6billion searches every day 46% of which want “local” results. This means there are 2.57 billion local searches every day! A large number of businesses started to realize that this somewhat untapped area of marketing could easily become very fruitful.
Now knowing the statistics is great but it doesn’t answer our question, what is local SEO? SEO stands for search engine optimization. This term encompasses a huge amount of marketing tricks to get your website to the top of search results. Local SEO is just one section of the large overreaching arm that is SEO, despite this local SEO can prove to be one of the most tangible marketing methods out there.
How Does It Work?
Typically local SEO works to get your website and physical store suggested to people searching for stores in your area. “Near me” and “close by” searches increased by over 900% in the past 2 years. Most Google searches come with two types of results now: 1 a local pack with a map of the searched-for area and a list of businesses within the area, and 2 the organic search results which are seen on every Google search. Local SEO will often entail effectively editing the business’s Google My Business (GMB) page and the business’s website to elevate the website and business to higher places on the search results.
What Are The Benefits?
Being one of the first results on a Google search is imperative for businesses. This is not just for the exposure but also the reputation they gain from being able to show that they can compete with global powerhouses. For instance, if you were to search for ‘Cafes Austin’ you would see the top 3 results are all independent shops. This proves that with the correct marketing small businesses can gain the edge over large dominant businesses.
Moz (an SEO tool creation company) researched Google’s 3-pack system. In their report, it was revealed that 44% of people who attempted a Google search would click on the local pack to see local stores near them, and another 8% chose to see more local results. Only 19% of the total people clicked on any of the paid results. This shows that local SEO can prove to be much cheaper and much more viable than other SEO tactics.