Any business with a physical location that helps customers find them can benefit with local SEO. What does local SEO even mean and why do I need it?
Learn about how local SEO can help any local business and is actually pretty simple to do. As more and more people are searching on mobile devices, local SEO is becoming need more.
What is local SEO?
It is optimizing your website to gain higher local search engine rankings within a specific geographic location. Any business that has a physical address that customers can visit can optimize local searches. For example, let’s say you were a local golf course. With local SEO, if people searched the term “golf courses” your local business can be mixed in with regular searches for people that are searching within a general distance to your business.
Being a golfer myself, I moved to a new home and had to find myself some golf courses that were closer to my home. I did a simple search of “golf courses” and what do you know! I found there were 4 golf courses less than 5 miles away. These businesses had utilize local SEO so people like myself could find them.
Do all businesses need local SEO?
Any business that receives plenty of customers or clients locally should look into local SEO. From a local lawyer, restaurant or bowling alley to dentist and doctor. If you expect people to visit, you should be doing local SEO for your business.
Where to begin with local SEO?
The first step to local SEO is creating a local Google (and all desired platforms) business page. Your business local listing typically is what shows up for localized search results.
Even the smallest factors come into play with local SEO. Make sure your local citations match your local listings. For example if you abbreviated “street” to just “st,” stick with it. Google is becoming smarter and having different forms of writing can throw it off.
Reviews, reviews, reviews. Having good quality reviews for your business Google page is one of the most important factors to higher local rankings. Though there will always be factors that are never in your control, such as the distance someone is searching for similar businesses like yours.
Make sure you have quality content on your Google business page including images, videos, and any other useful post related within your industry.
How do I recommend a customer or client to review my business?
Asking is key! They won’t even think about it unless you politely ask. There are many ways to do this depending the type of business you’re running. You can always send a follow-up email asking to review their experience on your Google page or even sending direct mail. Any way you can get in front of your customers to ask for a positive review.
Be aware that this will open up doors to negative reviews as well. So make sure that you are providing excellent products and/or services that people will want to give a positive review. With word of mouth, negative reviews spread like wildfire and that can hurt your company’s reputation.
DO NOT BUY REVIEWS. Though it may be tempting to do so and get higher local rankings, Google is catching on to this and it can lead to penalties to your website.
Local SEO is ongoing.
Like any SEO strategy, local SEO will need to continue to receive more reviews and updated content to ensure that you stay ahead of your competition.
