In this article, we’re going to be looking at what local SEO is and what kind of local SEO services you will need, why it’s important if you’re a local business, and what to do about it, how to get yourself ranking on those Google Maps.
What is local SEO?
Well, it’s SEO for local businesses. It designed to get you listed on that all-important Google Map Pack. So why do you need to bother? Well, if you’re a local business, or your business shows up for local searches, then that map is going to be right at the top of the search results. So if you’re only relying on organic visibility and you’re not targeting that local visibility, you could be missing out on clicks and traffics.
So it’s an excellent idea to get visibility in any local searches that your business is relevant. Maybe you’re targeting a phrase like local accounts in Nottingham or a digital marketing agency near me. By the way, you don’t need a digital marketing agency near you. We’re completely remote. Being able to touch someone face-to-face has no bearing on the quality of the digital marketing work. But you can imagine, right, when someone is searching for an emergency locksmith, they’re looking for a trusted local company near to them, not someone who’s 150 miles away who would take six hours to reach them.
What are the ranking factors of local SEO? and what kind of local SEO services?
what are the ranking factors of local SEO and how can you manipulate them so that your website is ranking top when people search for local terms?
Well, the number one ranking factor is location. Location is critical. If somebody is searching for an emergency locksmith near me, they don’t want to be seeing that business 150 miles away. And if they do see a business that’s outside of their location, then it’s going to be because that business is powerful in other ranking factors. Location is super important. The proximity of your business or your registered address to the searcher’s location is one of the primary ranking factors for local SEO.
Ranking factor number two is citations. Citations are instances of your business’s name, address, and phone number, or NAP. Now Google is looking to see that a business’s listing in the Maps is registered there. So it’s looking for lots of citations of your business’s name, address, and phone number around the internet. Those are votes of confidence in your business. It stands to reason that a business which talked about or mentioned in lots of different places is a reliable choice because they’re being talked about and mentioned in a lot of places. Reviews are also a significant factor with local SEO services. We used to see back in the day that you get an average star rating on Google once you got more than five reviews. Now I bet that you’re one of those unique people that look at reviews before you make a purchase, and your customers are the same. So people want to see that your business has good reviews and that you’ve reviewed well. It doesn’t always have to be 100% positive. Our studies show that people are looking for negative reviews to believe the average review score for a business. But you must have a good number of reviews.
And the final ranking factor is links, so backlinks to your site. Now, these are important to increase the visibility of your site in the search generally, but they help with local SEO as well. So those are the ranking factors.
How do you take all of this information and improve your business’s visibility?
Well, the first thing to do is to go to google.com/business and register your Google My Business page if you haven’t already. Your Google My Business page is the first place that Google will look for details about your business and its location. It’s also a great place to get reviews as well because it’s the first review that people will see. It’ll be the reviews that are showing in that Local Pack search results. The next thing to do is to increase the number of reviews that you have. Now, this isn’t always easy because it’s not the easiest thing in the world to get reviews on Google My Business. It’s a consistent complaint that people have. I’ve sent out 100 emails asking for a review and I had one review. Well, then you’ve got to send another 100 I’m afraid. There’s no easy way to get around it. But the good news is that your competitors are having the same problem. We suggest that you have automated emails that go out requesting that people leave a review and giving them instructions on how to do so.
So go to Google, search for your business name, and then click on Write a Review. And if you do this multiple times for each person until they leave a review, then you’re going to start picking up some reviews. You can also have your sales or your customer success team mention that, hey, if you’ve enjoyed the service, feel free to leave us a review on Google. It makes a difference to our business.
Does getting listed on business directories will help your SEO?
The next thing that you can do is increase the number of citations that your business has. So get listed in lots of good quality business directories. And you can find good quality ones by typing into Google business directories. If they’re good quality, they’re going to show up in the search results typically. But if they’re absolute junks, spam, trash, then they’re not going to rank so don’t bother with them.
The next thing to do is optimize your website with the sort of location information that’s important to you. So an excellent idea to mention where your business located on your website, also mention the areas that you serve. So if for example you’re based in London, but you also serve the Southeast of England, then what you might wanna do is include some mentions of the different towns and cities that you’ve worked in before, you could even include some testimonials or case studies from those areas with mention of the people and which town they were based in. All of this is going to help Google to understand where your business located and where you serve. You could also have an area you serve page which lists all of the different areas that you work in because this is important for Google. Still, it’s essential for people as well, particularly if you’re a business that goes out to your customers, they need to know that you come out to them before they’re going to get in contact. What they’re not going to do is spend time going through your sales process if they don’t even know if you serve them. So make sure that information is displayed on every single page of your website.
What is Schema in local SEO services?
And the final thing that you can do is use Schema. Now Schema is a kind of hidden text on your site, which tells Google information about your business. If you’re on WordPress, there are loads of plugins that you can use to implement Schema on your site. If you’re a local business, go to Google and type in local business Schema plugin, and you’re going to find a whole bunch of different stuff there. Most of it is pretty much the same so go for the one which seems the easiest to install. So to recap, local SEO is search engine optimization for local businesses specifically designed to rank in the Map Pack. All local businesses should be targeting local SEO services, and even if you’re not a business that’s reliant on location, often people searching for a service near them are going to see local results, so it makes sense to optimize your business to show in those local results because it’s just extra visibility for local traffic which is more likely to convert anyway. Ranking factors for local SEO include location. It’s tough to get ranked in a location that you’re not based in. Reviews and ratings, citations, links, and content on your website. The most important things that you can do to improve your local SEO is making sure that your Google My Business page is registered, make sure you got lots of juicy reviews on there and that you’ve got a follow-up process in place to get more reviews, also make sure that you’ve got as many citations as possible in good quality directories, make sure that you got links coming through to your site, and also make sure that you mention your target locations on your website copy as well. So I hope you found this article useful and you smash your local organic rankings. In case you want local SEO services or any other SEO help, we are here to help you.
