The importance of Local SEO for local businesses in 2021

Who needs local SEO?

Any business that sells products or services in local search areas can benefit from local SEO. It can help to drive more traffic to your website and put you in front of local customers and clients who are specifically looking for businesses like yours. Be sure not to underestimate the importance of local SEO for your company.

What are the main benefits of local SEO?

There are many benefits of using local SEO to improve your business. One of the first is that it has a higher conversion rate. This is due to the results being much more focused and relevant to your base of local customers. If your result is showing up, it is because someone nearby is searching for the service that you are providing. They aren’t looking to trawl through thousands of other similar companies which are all thousands of miles away, they are finding a business that is near to them and offers what they want, so are highly likely to use you. According to Search Engine Watch, 80% of local searches convert, meaning that the most important thing you need to focus on, is helping them to find you – through local SEO. When people search through Google, it has been found that 86% of people rely on the internet to find a local business and 46% of all internet searches are for a local business, so if this is something you aren’t doing, you are missing out on a lot of searches.

With COVID meaning that many businesses are having to shut their doors, or preventing people from being able to travel to anywhere outside their local area, local SEO has never been so important. No longer are people relying on finding businesses when they are walking out and about, they are having to turn to Google to find the service or product they are looking for. Statistics have found that 97% of consumers check a company’s online presence before deciding to visit them, further proving just how important being able to be found online really is. As Well as changing the way that many businesses operate, COVID has also changed the way that people think and shop. Whether it was from seeing the treatment from larger conglomerates to both their employees and to loyal customers or having the time to learn more about local businesses, COVID has had a huge shift in the way we shop. More and more people are now shunning large companies in favour of smaller businesses. If it is your industry that people are looking for in these times, you want to show that you are a local business worth their support and be able to be found easily when they are searching on Google.

The two ways to be found in local search results

Google determines local rankings through three main features – how relevant your business is to what someone is searching for, the physical distance of the business from the searcher’s own location and how well known the site is. There are two ways that you can be found in local search results. The first is through Google Maps. A potential customer or client simply needs to be on the maps page and search for something such as “hardware store near me” and if you have done your local SEO correctly, you will show up. The other way is through organic listings which is where your business will show up beneath Google maps.

Google My Business – Google Maps

A Google My Business, Google maps account listing ensures that when someone searches for you on Google maps, you will come up – helping your local SEO. It will have a pinpoint where you are on the map and inform them of local details such as your address, website and phone number as well as any other relevant details so they can get in touch with you or find your store. With Google maps you can only rank in specific locations that you are already both registered and verified in – this is to ensure that businesses who are based elsewhere don’t try and rank in random locations. Google maps works based on the location of where the person searching is located at the time of the search, or they can input a location where they want to find the business. For example, they could be out but search for a supermarket near to their home that they can visit when they get back. Your business can easily be found by those that are both nearby and that are searching for a specific service in a specific location.

Getting to the top of the map pack

There are a few different factors that can impact your ranking on local SEO, and a few were listed above. In order to have the best chance at ranking highly, it is important that you pay attention to your ordinary SEO to try and increase your site’s traffic, as well as some more specific things. You must ensure that you fill out as much information as possible on your Google My Business listing. Not only does this make you seem the most legitimate both to customers and to Google, but it also means there are more ways for potential customers to get in touch with you if you require your services. You also need to get as many Google reviews as you can and ensure that you respond to them all, both good and bad. It’s always good to acknowledge a good review but ensure that you don’t ignore it if you get any bad ones. If you do happen to get a bad review, it is important for your local SEO to be benefitted to show that you both acknowledge it and have done everything you can to resolve whatever the query or discrepancy might be. It can also be tempting to copy and paste your answers to all your good or bad reviews, but it is best to give individual and unique responses.

Citations

A local citation is any mention of your business and its details and it’s important you don’t underestimate the importance of local SEO citations. If your business name, phone number and address is mentioned somewhere, this counts as a citation and can help you to rank higher on Google maps and improve your local SEO strategy. Citations can be anywhere from social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram, on apps or on local business directory websites. A citation is important as it helps search engines to determine the legitimacy, accuracy and relevance of your business location. It is important that they are consistent with your Google My Business page and are from high-quality sources. If you are seen to be spamming low-quality websites with your details just to up the quantity, it could end up having negative effects on your ranking. It is much more important to have fewer links and citations, but those that are of a higher quality. One way you can source for the best ones you should be using is to research the citations that your competitors use and also get yourself listed on these. The main elements of a citation are nicknamed NAP which means your company’s name, address and phone number, although a website link is also very common. Other elements that a citation could be the hours of operation, the business categories, images, videos, a business description, email addresses, social media links, Google forms and driving directions alongside others. This can all help your local SEO.

Organic Listings

When you list on a search engine you can either do so as a paid or organic listing for your local SEO. Paid ads, as the name suggests, listings that have been put up through paid marketing techniques and are considered an ad. An organic listing is a natural and unpair listing in a search result page. These appear due to Google having crawled the page and determined it a valuable result to show for a given search term. The more value Google considers the page to be, the higher it is ranked.

It is important to work on your organic SEO (as well as your local) as this will mean you can be found anywhere in the country and will also benefit your local SEO at the same time. Organic enables you to rank for any given topic that you are aiming to rank for, anywhere in the country. You can work on your SEO with both on and off-page SEO. On-page SEO looks at what your site is all about and focuses on what is within your power to control. Off-page SEO looks at the authority your website holds and how powerful it is. This is determined by you increasing your domain authority through generating backlinks off of other sites and creating valuable content. Off-page tends to determine how highly you rank in the search results for a given term, while on-page SEO determines what it is that you rank for.

Choosing the right keywords for local search

Finding the best keywords for you to rank for local SEO is an important step in getting your listing ranked as highly as possible. It is not as simple as just trying to aim for one phrase such as “party planner in London.” You will need to find other related phrases to target too. There are many keyword research tools out there which can create a list of relevant terms that you can search for and try to rank. For example, it could suggest “party planners London”, “London party planners” “Best London party planners” and so on. One of the most important things you will need to do is specify your location where you are based and the areas that you want to target for the search. If you are based in London for example, you can target “London” as well as more niche areas such as “Central London” “East London” or even more specific such as “Hackney.” This will enable you to reach all of the people you offer the service to, in the areas that you offer it. You will also want to include keyword modifiers which can make the search more specific. These words help to expand your reach and are more niche. The most common keyword modifiers include quality words, such as the “best” or “top,” occasion modifiers such as “birthday” or “anniversary” and special offering words. This could include things such as “retro” “fancy dress” (if you are a party planner) or “all-inclusive” if you are a travel agent for example.