Many companies around the world are investing heavily in various digital marketing techniques and at the root of every marketing campaign is a strong focus towards SEO. Search Engine Optimization will predominantly be the aim of numerous marketing campaigns and it alone can be the difference between businesses who succeed, and those who don’t. For smaller businesses it can be quite hard to compete with larger companies in terms of SEO, therefore many of them look to local SEO. While highly similar to SEO it is tailored to target more local consumers in the hopes of driving business due to convenience of location. But before going into the benefits of this tactic let’s first dive into SEO as a concept.  

SEO Explained

If you haven’t wrapped your head around SEO yet, then here is a quick breakdown of how it works. Basically when a customer is looking for a service or a product online they will search for specific keywords such as ‘SEO Melbourne’, and they will then be presented a list of businesses that are linked to this keyword with those with a higher SEO ranking appearing closer to the top of the results. Being high up on these results is not only important due to visibility with potential customers, but it has also been found that consumers rarely go past the first page of search results. Essentially, the purpose of SEO is to create trust with consumers, through producing engaging content, having strong links to your website and choosing relevant keywords to your business, which ultimately drives traffic to your website (improving SEO rank).  

Benefits of Local SEO

As mentioned previously, Local SEO operates in the same way as SEO only it aims its efforts to those seeking products and services in their local area. Over the last few years this tactic has proven to be effective for a number of businesses.

Over 46% of search engine searches are for local businesses and consumers are increasingly using functions such as ‘near me’ options on map providers. This has provided an opportunity for local businesses to increase sales and revenue from these organic searches. The benefits of great local SEO are direct sales, increased brand awareness and the chance of taking local market share from competitors. If you aren’t convinced, take a look at these stats:

-    96% of PC owners conduct local searches
-    64% of local customers use search engines to find local businesses
-    78% of local mobile searches result in a purchase

How to Rank Well for Local SEO

So how do you rank well for local SEO? It involves a number of different steps including localizing your website, which essentially means putting a map pin down on your website so the search engines know where you operate. Citation building is also important, which is the practice of updating your company’s information such as opening hours, location and phone number on any site which amasses this type of data, such as directories. Managing reviews and ratings is also important in ranking well, as is getting quality backlinks from well-regarded websites, this will work wonders in increasing your visibility.

Other steps also include implementing keywords into your copies that are linked to local searches such as “plumber ringwood” as well as looking to include tailored web pages for different areas. It is also important to make sure that sure that traffic is being driven to these sites through other channels such as social and email marketing to boost your webpages domain and page authority.

Alternatively, to make sure you are effectively carrying out a local SEO campaign it is wise to work with a trusted SEO agency. They will not only be able to consult you throughout the process, but will also be able to run it for you to make sure that there are no mistakes. Ultimately this is the smartest move for any small business, who want to get some real return on their marketing efforts.