Local SEO—Basics
Build on the fundamentals of local SEO, an important part of your overall SEO strategy if your business targets customers in a specific geographical region.
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Whether it’s finding the nearest eatery, a good cleaning service or a hardware store in the vicinity, people often begin their local searches at Google. Region-specific searches, in fact, take a substantial volume of the overall Google searches.
According to Think with Google, 30% of the total mobile searches are related to location [59]. The same source also says that 76% of people who search for something nearby end up visiting a business within 24 hours, and 28% of the searches result in sales.
If we have a local business, it will need certain optimizations to help it rank higher in geo-specific searches. That’s where local SEO can help.
What is local SEO?
As a local business owner, one of our foremost goals should be to ensure that local searchers can locate us, contact us and choose our product or service over others operating in the area. That’s where local SEO can help us.
Local SEO is a set of efforts that can help increase our business’s visibility in local search results. With sound local SEO, our business can appear higher up in Google’s Local Pack/Map Pack.
Local SEO encompasses a number of optimization strategies, including researching local keywords in our niche, adding our business to Google Maps, building local citations, and beyond.
Who needs local SEO?
If we have a brick-and-mortar store at a location, we need local SEO. Local SEO can help potential customers locate us and reach us. If we offer services in a particular city or area, that is another indication that our business needs local SEO.
Here are some of the industries that can benefit from local SEO:
Home service contractors, such as plumbers and HVAC contractors.
Restaurants
Law firms
Medical service providers
Veterinarians
Real estate
Why is local SEO important?
How do search engines respond to local searches
Search engines, like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, have evolved to recognize the local intent in searchers’ queries. Phrases like on the go
, near me
or city names are strong cues for search engines that the searcher wants to see results in a specific area.
Even if we don’t give these cues, but search for things like pizza delivery
, burger
, cleaning services
or AC repairing
, Google’s smart algorithms understand that we are looking for businesses close to our location. Search engines will use our location to pull out a list of relevant businesses in the area.
If we type a specific city name with the keyword, for example, house cleaning los angeles
, search engines display a list of house cleaning businesses in Los Angeles.
Typing house cleaning los angeles
, here’s what shows up on Google,
Since the primary goal of Google, and other search engines, is to offer the best answers to people’s queries, including local searches, it has developed technologies to achieve this. Google My Business (GMB) and Bing Places for Business are two such applications that help their respective search engines provide the best results for local searches to their users.
Not only do these applications help search engines fulfill their users’ requirements, but it also helps boost brand awareness for local businesses. We can set up our business profile for free on these directories offered by search engines.
How do local search results appear on SERPs
Whenever there’s a local intent in the query, local search results take up prominent positions in the SERPs.
Local Pack
A Local Pack, Snack Pack, or Map Pack is a selection of three, five, or seven results. These are the businesses most relevant to the search query, whether in the location of the searcher or in the location mentioned in the query. The local pack typically appears above the organic search results and looks like the following:
Google My Business profile
When the user clicks one of the results in the Local Pack or searches for a business’s name, Google displays its business profile along with its location on the map. The profile will carry all the important details, including contact details, address, website, working hours, images, and customer reviews. Here’s how a business profile appears on Google.
For a business’s profile to appear on Google, it’s absolutely necessary that the business gets listed on Google. We can get our business listed on Google, and other search engines for free.
Organic search results
Organic search results appear just below the Local Pack. Here’s what the organic results look like when we type in house cleaning nyc
,
Since users making a local search are typically already at the end of the buying funnel, ranking in the organic search results for local searches can also be very beneficial for our business. Improving our ranking in organic search results for local searches requires us to implement all of the usual on-page and off-page SEO tactics.
Local ranking factors
According to Google, three main elements contribute to a business’s ranking in local search results [60]:
Relevance
Relevance is a measure of how well a business listing matches with users’ search queries. The basic information we add while creating a Business Profile will help Google match it with the relevant local searches.
Distance
Distance refers to how far the business is from the location specified in the search query. Naturally, nearby, relevant businesses are preferred over the far-off ones. If the location is not specified in the query, Google calculates the distance from the user’s location.
Prominence
Prominence refers to how popular the business listing is. Google uses the information about the business available across the internet in the form of articles, reviews, links, and the number of check-ins at the location to gauge the prominence of a business. The more prominent a business is, the more likely it is to appear in local search results. Popular cinemas and brands, for example, are more likely to show up in local search results.
Local SEO best practices
Local SEO encompasses a number of techniques to increase a business’s visibility in local search results. Local SEO best practices include:
Claiming our online business profiles
On-page optimization
Building local citations
Local link building
Attracting customer reviews and ratings
Test your knowledge
Choose the best answer for each of the following questions.
Which type of business can benefit most from local SEO efforts?
Online-only businesses
International corporations
Brick-and-mortar stores and local service providers
Any business with a website
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