Why Local SEO is the Key Ingredient That’s Missing from Your Digital Marketing
The vast majority of businesses have websites in 2020. Many of them focus on SEO, some of them focus on content marketing, but many are failing to make the most out of local SEO.
Local SEO is particularly important for bricks and mortar businesses which rely on the custom of local people. If you’re a local lawyer, or a baker, or the local florist, bringing in thousands of visitors to your website from around the world isn’t beneficial if you don’t have those distribution capabilities.
What is important is getting local people into your store and buying your product. This is why local SEO should be a top priority with your website.
Local Searches Deliver Results
When someone makes a local search like “bakeries near me,” they generally have intentions of following through on their query by going to the bakery and buying something. If your bakery is showing as the number one result in your local area, then this means more customers, and more revenue.
A large majority of location-based searches result in an offline purchase. If you compare this to showing up in the top spot for the query “the best Danish Pastry recipe”, sure, you’ll get lots of hits, but it’s highly unlikely that those hits will turn into people coming to your store.
Stop Competing with Global Companies
When you compete for big global keywords, you’re competing with big global companies, with even bigger budgets. Try typing “digital marketing” into Google and then compare the competition to “digital marketing (insert your city)” and you’ll see there’s a big difference.
This doesn’t mean local SEO is a free ride to the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), but it gives you a more realistic shot of hitting the top of the rankings and reaching the right people.
It’s Easy to Incorporate into Your SEO
Local SEO follows many of the same principles of regular SEO, so you can easily start and get your website ranking for the right search terms.
It’s important to make sure that you’re creating content that is relevant to your locality and using the right keywords to show Google that you’re a local business. By focusing your efforts on building local links and business listings, you can start to feature in Google local packs and start getting those important clicks.
If You’re Not Doing It, Your Competitors Will Be
If you’re a local business, then you can’t afford not to be showing up in local search results while your competitors benefit from it. Even if your website isn’t the biggest part of your marketing efforts, these are clicks you can get without having to spend money, so there’s no reason to neglect them.
There are many opportunities in local SEO that can help your business grow, but you’ve got to be switched on to them. It’s also important to make sure you’re getting the basics of local SEO right so that you can benefit from them.