It’s estimated that Between 30% to 40% of new customers find local companies through maps. Understanding What is Local SEO can help give a business strong map visibility to ensure that customers can find their companies.
The benefits of local SEO can be profound for a business and its little wonder that so many companies look for a high quality digital marketing agency that is capable or optimizing for local search results and has a good working knowledge of Google My Business pages.
In this article, we’ll explore what local SEO is and how to get started with it for your business.
What Is Local SEO?
Local optimization is different from website SEO.
Local SEO involves making sure your business has a Google My Business (GMB) profile, and that it is optimized to include keywords and links.
Several of the strategies used to improve local SEO include:
- ensuring business name, address, phone number is consistent
- link-building
- image geotagging
- engaging with reviews on GMB profile
A local SEO expert can help ensure that all information is consistent across multiple locations, as well as research the best keywords to target. These optimizations define local SEO.
By making these adjustments, a customer could search, “What is a local restaurant near me?” and your restaurant would appear near the top of the results.
Getting Started With Local SEO
Local optimization or local SEO for your business should begin with your Google My Business page.
You can locate a digital marketing agency that specializes in local SEO services to help with this process or you can claim a profile yourself very easily through Google. If you choose to have an agency do this for you they will set up the profile and fill out all the necessary information to ensure your business appears in search results.
Website Optimized for Mobile
The next thing a digital marketing agency will suggest for local SEO solutions is to optimize your website for mobile devices. Forty percent of people conduct online searches on their smartphones.
Localize Your Content
A part of local search marketing services offered by digital agencies includes website localization. This means including the city, county, or region name throughout the website in a natural manner.
Local internet marketing will help boost your local traffic and generate organic traffic for your niche.
A few examples of further localizing your website’s content would include:
- landing pages for the city
- interactive map widget
- local news section
Gather Online Reviews
This part also known as reputation management is very important and can make a huge impact in how your results are displayed. Encourage your customers to leave a review on Google once your Google My Business page is complete and join business directories like Yelp and Angie’s List to help increase brand awareness and garner more reviews. The more reviews the better here because it builds trust.
About 88% of people trust an online review as much as a personal recommendation. That means that if your business doesn’t have any reviews or worse the reviews are negative, you’ll be missing out on a lot of potential customers.
Obtain Quality Backlinks
Backlinks or citations from websites and local directories with authority will help search engines associate your website as a trusted source. Once your website is viewed as trustworthy and credible, this boosts your local search algorithm.
Being linked to by a local newspaper, blogger, or other businesses can all help boost your local SEO efforts.
Hire an SEO Expert Today
If you need help boosting the local SEO for your business, a digital marketing agency can help. Identity Solutions has experts on hand who can get your company started with innovative and engaging digital marketing services.
Contact us today to get your business ranked through local SEO!
