Local SEO – Benefits, Tips and More

Local SEO is essential for businesses focused on a specific geographical area, such as physical stores, hotels, bars and restaurants, educational centres, workshops, service companies that cover a room and many other types of companies. They have the common characteristic that when working in a specific city or area, they will compete in Google mainly with those businesses in the exact location, so when it comes to working, it will be easier than if they were talking about companies that operate at a national and international level. International.

The Benefits of Local SEO

SEMrush has already covered local SEO strategies in previous articles. In short, these strategies prioritise optimisation for local search results. The information available to search engines makes users’ addresses and geolocation highly relevant.

For example, suppose you perform a search with a geographical component, such as “hotels in Barcelona”. In that case, local SEO solutions will allow you to take advantage of impressive results for this type of search.

The main objective of local SEO strategies is to advertise your brand, products and services to local contacts. Suppose you are a small business operating regionally. In that case, they allow you to get traffic from users ready to make an acquisition and increase your conversions, thanks to fewer generic keywords.

5 Tips to Improve the Local SEO of your website

It is the search engine positioning of our company or brand in the area where we offer our services or sell our products. For example, suppose you have a veterinary clinic in Madrid and an excellent good local SEO strategy. In that case, the client can find your website or the location of your clinic through words like “Veterinary clinic Madrid” or “Veterinary clinic near me”. We are going to see five essential steps to start positioning locally.

1. Create and optimise your business listing on Google My Business

It is a free Google service; it allows you to control how your business appears in Google searches. Sometimes we can find that there is already a Google My Business file created for our business. In this case, we must claim and verify the data that appears in the list; it is the key to improving the local ranking. So make sure all your information is accurate and up-to-date, and add relevant photos, compelling descriptions, and customer reviews.

2. Use keywords in your headings and descriptions

Keywords or keywords on your business’s website in the titles and meta descriptions can appear in the results when people search using those words or phrases. Also, ensure that the website is updated with the correct contact details and in a suitable format necessary for local SEO. It includes your business name, services and products, address, phone number, and website URL.

3. Make sure also to add local keywords

Your site and its content must be optimised for the keywords people in the area use when searching for products or services. It includes both general terms (such as “vet”) and more specific terms (such as “Clínica Veterinaria en Madrid”), continuing with the example of the clinic.

4. The website must work on mobile

It means designing it to look good and easy to use on small screens and making sure the site loads speedily on mobile devices. It is vital as most searches for local services are complete on mobile devices. Many websites are not optimising for mobiles; from the design, the way of displaying the information or the loading speed, one more second when loading the web can make the difference between capturing the client or going to a site of the competition. You can go to Google’s Page speed Insights to check your site’s loading speed.

5. Customer reviews

Google and other search engines like Bing consider online reviews when determining search result rankings. Therefore, if you can get positive customer reviews, you will improve your chances of appearing higher in the results. In case we receive a negative review, which can happen, nobody is perfect. We need a plan to answer the client and try to give him a solution, so not only will that client receive a key. But also other clients who are comparing several competitors will see the problems other clients have had and how we have been able to rectify and help them.

Why is Local SEO Important?

Local SEO is essential as many people use search engines to find local businesses.

In fact, according to Google :

• 30% of all mobile searches are location related.
• 78% of people looking for something nearby on their phones visit the business during the day.
• 28% of searches for something nearby turn into a purchase.
• And in periods like Christmas, 78% of consumers who visited a store previously searched online.

In short, customers are looking for your business. If you’re not there, you’re missing out on opportunities.

Conclusion

The local SEO strategy can take a long time, whether creating the content or designing the strategy. But the benefits for our business are clear visibility and more clients. In case of not have the necessary time, we offer local SEO as a service in our SEO agency.