What is Local SEO and Why is it important?

With 6.8 billion smart phone users in the world, mobile use is now influencing local results with seventy six percent of those searching using a smart phone visiting the business within one day, twenty eight percent make a purchase.

The majority of people searching for local businesses use review sites and Google Business profiles to find information, such as operating hours, directions, phone numbers, and more. While local SEO has proven to be imperative in today's digital world, it's surprising that seventy five percent of businesses are not yet taking advantage of this digital marketing strategy.

Local SEO vs Traditional SEO

While they are both search engine optimisation, both focusing on reaching your audience, boosting visibility, and driving quality traffic to your website, they are both very different. They target different audiences with local SEO focusing on the optimisation of your website and online efforts for a local audience. This means your website, keywords, and content are optimised for your local audience.

Traditional SEO, on the other side, is targeting short tail keywords that covers a wider audience throughout the world. These keywords often have higher search volumes, meeting a variety of preferences and interests from users around the world. 

Why is Local SEO so Important?

Many business owners are under the impression that local SEO is only tailored to small businesses with a limited budget. Every business, both small and large, should be implementing a local SEO strategy, driving qualified traffic to your website. If you are wondering why local SEO is so important, you will find it offers a number of benefits, including:

• Technological advancements has changed how people find local businesses. Many potential customers will search and review local businesses using search engines
• Increased rankings in local search results. Local SEO is not as competitive as traditional SEO, enabling you to reach your local audience 
• Increased in-store foot traffic. When your website is optimised for local SEO, you can see an improvement in the number of visitors to your brick and mortar store
• Increased visibility and credibility in local search results
• Give a competitive edge, evening out the playing field in terms of local rankings

Valuable Local SEO Tips

There are a few valuable tips you can use to improve your local SEO ranking, these include:

1. Optimise your website for local SEO. Add local keywords to your high quality content, improve user experience with fast loading pages that are easy to navigate, and remember to optimise your meta titles and tags, along with images
2. Encourage reviews by asking happy customers to leave a review on your Google My Business profile or on your social media page, helping to build trust and credibility with your audience
3. Create individual location pages if you provide your services to more than one area. Each page should provide unique content focusing on your contact information, products and services, reviews, and directions to your store.

Conclusion

With an effective local SEO strategy in place you can experience an increase of foot traffic through your door. Local SEO is essential in today's digital world, helping you reach your local audience, drive qualified traffic to your website and store, helping you improve your conversion rates.