When your business depends on the residents of the city you’re in, there are very few things that can help boost more than local SEO. And worry not, Google is already doing it’s best to help you; in a local search, search engines provide the nearest results first. This is pretty logical if you come to think about it; if you’re searching for a restaurant, you probably want one very close to you.
However, having great visibility for your business on a search engine results page and having people clicking and converting doesn’t just happen out of the blue. You need to create your business page on the Google dedicated site, choose the right categories for your pages and have great general SEO altogether.
Local SEO Benefits
Of course, you need to keep in mind the latest Google update; now, mobile responsive websites have better rankings than the ones that are not mobile-optimized. Don’t think about this as an ordeal, but as the push you needed to get your website mobile – this is extremely important for local businesses, so it high time your started working on it.
So far, we’ve only spoken about the work you need to do, so let’s review what is local SEO and how can it benefit your business:
- More clicks from people that really matter can easily be turned into conversions. When you use local SEO, you are not targeting people all over the country, but those near you, those that are most likely to become your clients.
- If you don’t have the time to implement all the required changes and grow organically, you can always resort to paid listings in Google carousel. Be aware, though: they are marked as sponsored, so your clients will know right away.
- Today, people are constantly encouraged to buy locally, as a means to support the economy and protect the environment. Give them a chance to find you easily and they’ll do just that.
- Your competition is smaller. For instance, if you are the owner of a restaurant, you won’t compete with restaurants all over the country, only with those near you, so you have better chances of being found and getting customers with a minimal investment. Moreover, you don’t even have to compete with all the restaurants in your city. People often search for a restaurant in a certain area (e.g.: Italian restaurant Jarvis street Toronto) and it would be a pity not to find you when they are so close, right?
Let’s try a little test: do a quick search of your business and include your city name and/or your region/street. Make sure to delete the cookies or, preferably, do the search from a new computer or mobile device, one that doesn’t recognize your history (yes, Google serves you the search results according to your history and preferences). Are you in the first results? If so, congratulations, your local SEO is great and, most likely, so is your business doing. Are you not on the first page, but your competitors are? Then you are losing money every minute you don’t act to change that.
Invest in your business wisely: optimize your website locally and results will appear sooner than you expect. Find a great SEO company and you’ll get more business in less than a month.
