Local SEO techniques can be a great help to small and medium-sized businesses. Unlike regular search engine optimization, local SEO focuses more on local search listings, which potential customers will use to find businesses and services in their area.
What Do You Mean By Local SEO?
Local SEO refers to search engine optimization techniques specifically designed to find and attract visitors who are physically close to your business location. In other words, instead of focusing on attracting global customers, which doesn’t make sense for small or medium sized businesses, local SEO tactics are geared towards finding and generating interest in customers who live in the same town, city, or community.
This makes local SEO an effective and rewarding online marketing technique for brick and mortar stores. It has become clear in the last couple of years that businesses can no longer afford to ignore internet marketing techniques if they are to survive. Studies show that more than 80 percent of shoppers do an online search to locate specific products and services. With local SEO tactics, it becomes possible for small retail enterprises to tailor their online marketing techniques to appeal to people located close enough to benefit from their services.
Tips for an Effective Local SEO Campaign
It is essential to place the maximum stress on your physical location to put together a truly effective local SEO campaign. Start by updating your website to include your full physical address and zip code in the side titles. This makes it easy for the search engine spiders to locate, index, and cross-reference the information, which in turn, helps increase your local search engine rankings.
Be sure to research popular local mapping services and programs. Google maps is one of the most popular and widely used mapping services, but there are plenty of others too. The more services you sign up with, the greater are your chances of coming to the attention of potential customers. Register your business with the service. Registration is mostly free and tends to give you a higher ranking as compared to unregistered customers.
Optimize your website content and metadata to include local keywords. For example, if your own an interior decorating service in Manhattan, try using ‘decorators Manhattan’ as one of the keywords.
Local SEO is becoming a major tool for small business owners as more and more local directory services are being launched. Consult a local SEO specialist today to harness its power.
