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If you want to increase the popularity of your physical business locally, you should give local SEO a try.
However, how does local SEO work? Is it effective?
Let’s find out!
What Is Local SEO?
In simple terms, local SEO refers to optimizing a website for a specific location.
For instance, say you want to make people visit your consultancy agency. In this case, you can optimize your website for local searches and make your business visible to your local audience.
Now, some may doubt the effectiveness of local SEO. If you’re among them, we would like to inform you that local SEO is effective, and it can significantly increase the number of customers to your business.
Search engines like Google personalize the results to people primarily depending on their location. Thus, if you rightly optimize your website for local searches, it will rank high on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
If your website ranks high, of course, many people will know about your business, and you’ll get more customers.
Is Local SEO Different From Ordinary SEO?
Generally speaking, local SEO works pretty similarly to ordinary SEO. Moreover, the end goal is the same for both SEOs (i.e., ranking high on the SERP).
However, the differences arise in the optimization part as the ranking factors of local SEO and different from regular SEO. Below, we have listed some of the ranking factors that affect local SEO.
- NAP citations (includes name, address, and phone number)
- Reviews
- Star rating
- Social media shares
- Google My Business listing and optimization
By optimizing your website for these factors, you let Google know that you want your business to be visible to the customers in the area where your business is located.
Summing up the differences, local SEO aims to target people in a local area. Ordinary SEO is broad and intends to target people globally (or at least nationally).
Set Up Google My Business
Google My Business can significantly improve a business’s local search visibility.
With Google My Business, you can display information about your business like its location, open hours, phone, etc.
Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to set up Google My Business. The following are the steps involved in setting up Google My Business.
- Go to Google My Business and click on “Manage Now”. Sign in using your Google account.
- Type your business name.
- Enter your business category.
- Select whether you want to add a location to display on your listing.
- Add your phone number and website.
- Enter the mailing address and complete the verification process.
I would also like to note that the information you enter on Google My Business should be legit and match other sources.
For instance, the phone number of your business should be the same on your website, third party website, and Google My Business. If the information differs, Google may not rank your listing.
Local SEO Statistics
The following are the stats that prove local SEO’s significance. (Source: Go-Gulf).
- 46% of searches from Google are local searches.
- More than 50% of searches with the phrase “near me” result in a store visit.
- 30% of mobile searches on Google are related to location.
- 78% of local mobile searches result in in-store purchases.
- 86% rely on the internet to find local businesses.
Final Words
We hope this blog gave you a clear idea about local SEO.
Local SEO is an excellent strategy to increase customers to your local business. It’s both long-term and cost-effective.
To get started with local SEO, all you need is a website for your business. Thankfully, with WordPress, creating a website has become pretty simple. In 2022, it’s possible to create and publish a website within $60.
A few years ago, web-hosting used to cost a lot of money. However, due to the growing demands of hosting, top-notch web hosting service providers like HostGator have started to offer affordable and feature-loaded hosting services.
