Local search can be a powerful tool for small businesses to boost their presence online. It helps to connect customers and business together in the local area.
Four out of five customers use search engines to find local information. If you’re not optimised for local search you could end up missing out on a huge amount of potential customers.
Search engines essentially work as big recommendation tools. Once you type something in, you’ll get a series of websites that might be relevant to what you’re looking for. These results will depend on a few things:
- Websites being optimised for relevant keywords
- Having fresh content
- Being reputable – high traffic, good backlinks
- Being optimised for local search
For example, when searching for shops there’s no use getting results for businesses on the other side of the world (unless they ship). Search engines will filter those out and show results for shops that are closer to you as they’re more likely to be relevant.
How can local SEO help my business?
Those in the local area are often more likely to become your customers so optimising for local search ensures you’re seen by those people will boost your business.
It’s always easier to concentrate on ranking for your local area because there’s less competition than you would have if you were trying to rank globally.
What can you do?
So how do you start ranking your website locally? You’ll need to optimise your website to include region-specific keywords in things like page titles and meta descriptions to start with.
Google My Business
Google is no doubt the biggest search engine and most people’s first stop to find information online. Optimising your business for Google can be done through Google My Business.
It ensures that key information such as opening hours, customer reviews and contact details are viewable through search results before anyone even clicks on your website. It also puts your business on Google Maps which makes it easier to find.
Location pages
Make sure you’ve got an address and local phone number on your contact page and in the header or footer of your website as Google will pick up on this.
You may want to include separate location pages on your website. This is particularly useful if you have more than one shop/office and need to list the details of each. Include things like opening hours, information about facilities and customer reviews help optimise your website.
If you have a blog, you can also make it more locally focused by including some location-focused content to get your website seen. Getting guest posts on locally-based business websites is also going to give you a boost.
Make your website mobile friendly
Mobile search and local search go hand in hand. People will search for companies and product reviews when they’re out and about before buying. So if you want to make your website easier to find locally, ensuring it’s mobile friendly will help.
Need some help with local search?
If you’d like help getting into local search results and to get your website seen by the right people, then get in contact with Team Organic. We focus on organic, local SEO services to get your website where it needs to be. Get a free website review from us here.
