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If youve stumbled upon this page in a bid to learn more about local SEO and local search marketing then congrats! Youre in the right place.
In this guide to local SEO well walk you through the ins and outs of getting your business found in local search results from online reviews to citations local link building to content creation and beyond.
Read on to discover how local SEO can benefit your business who local SEO is for and how to execute the key tactics and strategies required to succeed in local search.
In the first chapter of this ultimate guide to local SEO youll find everything you need to know to get started including who local SEO is for who it attracts and the benefits. Plus well break down some important key terms (like what the heck a SERP is!)
Local SEO is for any business that has a physical location where it greets customers or any business that serves a set local geographic area.
Local brick-and-mortar stores like restaurants bars laundromats doctors surgeries law offices and grocery stores are all businesses that should be using local SEO.
Additionally service-area businesses (think plumbers construction workers locksmiths and other similar professionals that travel to their customers) are eligible to practice local SEO and will benefit more or less equally from the benefits it offers.
And the list definitely does not stop there!
Any business that is local and serves local customers can benefit from local SEO and the practices laid out in this guide.
As weve just established when youre a local business whether thats an auto shop in Boise Idaho a restaurant in Jacksonville Florida or a furniture store in Houston Texas local SEO plays a crucial role in generating customers and conversions.
In this current climate of online shopping and retail giants I imagine that local business owners can feel unmotivated to compete against the likes of Walmart and Amazon for positions in search results.
Fortunately for you local SEO is here to help. Local SEO favors smaller businesses over the likes of Amazon any day!
Investing in local SEO is your chance to get found by local consumers who are ready and willing to invest in your business instead.
Both Google itself and the shopping public recognize the value of local businesses. In fact Google has a specific set of local ranking factors that it uses as a measure to determine whether or not your business is geographically relevant to a user performing a near me search (well cover this in more detail a little later on).
That means you dont have to worry about competing against large international corporations to get your local business in front of relevant nearby consumers.
Research conducted by Access concluded that proximity matters to local consumers a great deal with more than 92% traveling just 20 minutes or less to purchase their day-to-day essentials. For any size business that should be reason enough to invest in local SEO.
For brick-and-mortar or service-area businesses investing in local SEO can help drive more customers to your store so you can begin generating more revenue.
Today most businesses have two storefronts that they need to manage: their physical storefront and their digital storefront. Local SEO is whats going to make your digital storefront more visible and get you more customers.
Local SEO (local search engine optimization) is a series of actions and strategies designed to improve your visibility on Google and other search engines when people close to your physical location perform a search or when a search includes a specific location.
For example local SEO tactics are what help businesses surface in Maps or search results when someone out and about on their phone types in best pizza New York or Pizza near me.
The same goes for people who are looking to visit your town or city and searching for businesses in your area in advance.
While it might sound complicated at its core SEO is just another name for the tactics that improve sales through building online visibility.
To boost online visibility there are a few tried-and-true tactics available to you. In general we want to show Google that your business is worthy of appearing at the top of search results for certain terms and searches.
In the case of local SEO this may mean doing things like including your town or city name and zip code in content building links from local websites and getting more online reviews. Well be going through each of these tactics and more in this guide.
As the name suggests local SEO focuses on attracting customers in more focused areas (versus the global reach of online stores) such as those in a particular town or city. Its usually practiced by local businesses that aim to reach this audience to drive footfall to their physical location or develop business within a service area.
For many brick-and-mortar and service-area businesses local customers are the best customers.
Why?
Well firstly theyre easier to reach and secondly theyre more loyal and will keep coming back if they like what theyre getting.
Local SEO is the perfect way to get in front of these more valuable customers.
Local SEO focuses on improving visibility everywhere online but well largely be focusing on Google and Google Maps throughout this guide.
And no were not being sponsored by Google — there is a very real reason that Google matters most!
Google is by far the most-used search engine not only in the US but in the world. Statcounter reported in 2020 that Googles search engine market share worldwide is a whopping 92.18%.
