The internet has made it possible for people from all around the world to find your business. With more than 3.5 billion Google searches made every day, there is endless potential for new customers to find you online.
What if the customers you want to find you are local? You own a local business that serves the majority of its customers in person in a specific local.
You need to be utilizing local SEO to market your business and find new customers. Not sure how the benefits of local SEO can help your business? Keep on reading to find out more.
What is Local SEO?
Standard SEO involves setting up your website in a certain way so people searching online can find it. There are numerous strategies to make your website more visible to people searching for the product or service in your niche.
Some of those strategies include paying for adverts to appear at the top of the search results. This is great for businesses with big marketing budgets, but what about small, brick-and-mortar businesses?
Local SEO uses the searcher’s location to find businesses near them that offer the service they are searching for. This levels the playing field for smaller businesses and is an excellent way for you to get discovered by new customers.
1. Benefits of Local SEO: Attract New Customers
The best thing about local SEO is that potential new customers can find you easily.
If you are listed on Google Business, Yelp, and social media pages, your potential customers will find you quicker. If you utilize local SEO, you become more visible in relevant local searches.
People searching for a business in a specific area have a clear search intent. Why is search intent necessary?
If someone makes a search such as: ‘Sarasota SEO company‘ they want to find this type of business.
If you can become one of the top businesses listed on search engines for your area, you will gain authority, and new customers will want to use your business.
2. More Enquiries and Sales
If you have a strategy for a local SEO campaign, you will reap the rewards in sales and inquiries.
Online visibility to potential customers in your area is one of the most effective ways to promote your business.
The more information prospective customers can find out about your business online (such as a price list and opening hours), the more likely they are to visit your store and use your services.
3. Reduce Your Marketing Spend
Another one of the many advantages of SEO for your local area? You don’t need a huge marketing budget to be successful. Small business SEO can be just as effective as it is for larger companies.
If you are listed on Google Business, Yelp, or Facebook, people can find you without spending anything.
Working on a content strategy, content promotion, backlink building, and press outreach are all time-consuming and expensive approaches to SEO.
If you are using local SEO, you should find relevant customers more efficiently and stop wasting money on advertising to people who will never use your business.
4. Build a Community
If you use social media platforms to promote your business, you will interact with both existing and potential customers.
You can use reviews to discuss relevant topics with customers and let them know of upcoming promotions or events.
Engage with peoples’ reviews and tell them how grateful you are for their custom. This makes customers feel valued and will more likely encourage them to make a return visit. Making people feel valued and part of something larger than just a sales transaction will promote loyalty and a sense of community.
5. Target People on the Go
If you are maximizing your efforts with local SEO, then you can get your business in front of people who are out and about.
They may be in your town or city and looking for a place that provides the service you offer. If you are easy to find on mobile apps such as Google Maps and Yelp, people will find you.
6. Build Authority in Your Locality
If you can master the search engine game, you will start to gain more customers and followers. This, in turn, will help you build a reputation in your local area.
Provide excellent service and encourage satisfied customers to write positive reviews. The more positive reviews you can build up, the more people will trust your business and want to visit. A high review score will also help your SEO.
Ranking high in search is still essential as 28% of people will only click on the search engine’s first result.
7. Highly Targeted Traffic
Last but not least, local SEO is excellent for your business because you will reach highly relevant people.
Optimizing for a general, non-specific keyword with high search volumes should not be a strategy.
You want the visitors to your online pages to have a strong search intent. This means they want to get a specific outcome from their search. Such as finding a business that offers the service they are looking for.
Master Your Local SEO Strategy
Sometimes the multiple platforms and methods for succeeding with SEO can seem overwhelming and feel like a puzzle you can’t complete.
Remember, the fundamental goal of the search engine isn’t to penalize your business but provide the searcher with the correct information they are looking for. This is why your business can reap the benefits of local SEO.
If you need some expert help and advice, you can always enlist the help of an SEO agency. They will be able to analyze your current online presence and tell you how you can improve it.
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