As a business owner or manager in today’s connected business environment, you probably already know that it’s a best practice to optimize your website so that it attracts organic search traffic. While that’s reasonably common knowledge, you can do more to reach your target audience. And focusing on your local SEO is one of the things you can do.
Local SEO vs National SEO
To fully appreciate how focusing on local SEO can help you connect with your target audience, it’s helpful to understand how local SEO differs from national SEO. Local SEO refers to things that will help your website show up in searches that are based on location. Whereas local SEO is location-based, national SEO is about getting your company’s name out there regardless of where someone is located.
In other words, local SEO is about catching “fish” in the figurative pond immediately surrounding your business. By contrast, national SEO is focused on casting a much wider net in the ocean waters bordering the country and everywhere in between.
Benefits of Local SEO
While national SEO has a wider reach because it’s not location specific, local SEO has the potential to yield several key benefits that national SEO can’t. These benefits include:
- Increased Foot Traffic or More Orders from Locals: If you have a brick-and-mortar store, local SEO can increase the number of people who visit your physical location. If you run an ecommerce store exclusively, you can still benefit from local SEO because it can help you earn a larger number of orders from locals.
- Google Recommendations (sort of): Consumers trust Google and Google Maps to provide the local search information they’re looking for. When your business appears in search results produced by Google or Google Maps, it’s almost like a highly trusted resource, meaning Google, is recommending your business.
- More Local Business: Local SEO can help you attract more business from people in the immediate vicinity of your company’s location even if your primary market is located in another state. This can help increase the attendance at events you host and help locals be more loyal to your business.
Tips to Improve Your Local SEO
If you’re ready to start enjoying the benefits of local SEO, it’s time for you to pick up some tips that can help you improve your local SEO. Here are some tips that can help:
- You need to claim all of the online listings for your business, removing any duplicate records and ensuring the information in every listing is current and accurate. Don’t forget to update your Google My Business listing while you’re at it.
- Check all your listings for name, address and phone number consistency. Pay attention to details here. If one listing has a suite number and “road” spelled out at the end of your street address, each of your online listings should include the identical information in the same format.
- You should add location pages to your website for each of your business locations so search engines can easily find your locations and provide relevant results to searchers.
- Getting online reviews is one of the most effective ways for businesses to improve their local SEO. Encourage your customers to leave reviews on websites like Google to help your website rank better in local searches.
- Creating local content is a must to gear your SEO to hit your local audience. If your local content is meaningful and relevant to your niche market, it can dramatically improve where your site ends up in local search rankings.
Working with a digital marketing company that understands local SEO can help you improve your results even more dramatically. To learn how our local SEO services can help your business, contact DB Marcom today.
