Local SEO in 2020
Local SEO-If you want your business to get noticed online in 2020 and beyond, you’ll need to do a lot more than simply Google “local SEO agency New York.” You’ll also need to understand what local SEO is, how it works, and how the local SEO visibility of your business should play into your overall marketing strategy. Marketing companies make millions of dollars per year directing search results to local businesses, and in this guide, we’ll provide you with everything you need to know to start optimizing your business for customer searches in your local area.
What is local SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making the web presence of a person, business, or organization more visible when internet users search for relevant keywords. Local SEO is simply SEO that has been applied on a local scale.
For instance, the keyword “local SEO agency New York” should ideally connect searchers with that city’s best local SEO agency. Web designers, SEO services, and marketing companies use location-based keywords to drive relevant local search traffic to a particular business.
What are the advantages of local SEO?
The primary advantage of local SEO is relatively self-explanatory. Like other internet marketing techniques, local SEO directs internet traffic to your business, resulting in increased revenue and better profits. As all SEO experts worth their salt recognize, however, optimizing your business for local searches offers countless impressive advantages that do far more than simply increase your company’s ranking in Google for highly competitive keywords.
Increased local traffic to your website
If your business offers services within a particular geographic area, you should target your inbound traffic to that particular area. It wouldn’t do an SEO company based in Boston, for instance, any good to optimize its site for search terms like “local SEO NYC” or “local SEO Brooklyn.”
Instead, the goal of local SEO is to send local internet traffic to your website and not the website of another business in your area. As search engines have evolved, this process has become considerably more complex, but local SEO still primarily serves the purpose of connecting SEO searches with a particular company’s website or another facet of its Google presence.
Improved search engine rankings for local keywords
Approximately 46% of Google searches have local intent, which means that the people conducting these SEO searches are in pursuit of services or products that are particular to their local areas. Someone looking for SEO help in NYC, therefore, will be highly likely to search for “local SEO New York” and less likely to search for a keyword that isn’t location-based like “local SEO agency.”
Since the vast majority of Google users don’t go past the first page of search results, it’s vital for an SEO business in Brooklyn to rank within the top 10 search engine rankings for “local SEO Brooklyn” or “local SEO expert NYC.” As one of the major advantages of local SEO, optimizing your company’s rankings for local keywords makes it much more likely that your business will appear when people in your local area search for relevant, location-based keywords.
It’s an integral component of social media marketing
Savvy operators of social media services understand that local SEO isn’t just about ranking high in Google. Local SEO is also necessary in social media marketing since every major social media platform features a search engine.
Many people search for local services on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter before turning to Google, making it necessary to optimize your company’s social media platform with local SEO keywords and locally focused posts. Social media services that focus on SEO, for instance, will do everything in their power to rank highly for Facebook and Instagram search terms like “local SEO NEW York” and “local SEO expert NYC.”
Impressive return on investment (ROI)
Local SEO is a return on investment service, which means that it provides increasing returns after an initial investment. Once a piece of SEO content has been published or your company’s Google profile has been optimized, no further investment is necessary. With a one-time investment, local SEO services will seamlessly integrate with your marketing strategy to provide returns that increase over time. It’s necessary to constantly improve your local SEO, however, to continue enjoying impressive returns.
How does local SEO work?
Now that you have an idea of why local SEO is such an important component of online marketing, it’s time to start examining how local search engine optimization works. SEO experts use the methods and information we’re about to discuss to improve the rankings of local businesses around the world every day. If you learn how local SEO works, you’ll be able to enjoy these benefits as well.
Understanding the Google map pack
The primary goal of most local SEO efforts these days is to land businesses in the “Google map pack.” When you search for a type of local business in Google, an embedded Google Maps widget right below the search bar displays a local map that lists three businesses. Google selects these businesses based on how optimized for local SEO they are, which is one of the primary reasons that increasing your local search engine optimization is so important.
It’s widely understood that Google users invest the most trust in the results that rise to the top of their search queries, and businesses in the Google map pack inspire even more trust since they are perceived as being sanctioned by Google. Plus, Google makes it easy to click through to the businesses listed in the map pack, making it even simpler to access these businesses than it is to access businesses at the top of conventional search results for a particular keyword.
Getting into the Google map pack is usually considerably easier than snagging the top spot in a particular keyword’s search results. While Google leverages a wide variety of different types of conventional SEO metrics to determine the top placers in its conventional results, the businesses featured in the map pack are usually selected simply based on the level of detail provided in their name, address, and phone (NAP) information. If the NAP information your company provides on its website matches the NAP information provided in your Google My Business profile, for instance, that might be enough to get you into the map pack on its own.
Researching local SEO keywords
Even though placing in the map pack is becoming increasingly important over time, that doesn’t mean that placing highly in conventional local search results is suddenly irrelevant. At the same time that you do your best to make it into the map pack for relevant keywords, you should also focus on conventional local organic rankings.
Conventional local SEO is relatively simple on its face. If you’re an SEO marketing firm in New York, for instance, keywords like “local SEO NYC” should be featured prominently in your title tags, meta descriptions, and on-site content.
Even average web designers know enough to help you rank competitively for relevant local keywords. If you truly want to dominate local SEO, however, you’ll need to take enough time to adequately research all of the relevant keywords you should include on your company’s website.
One of the simplest way to research relevant keywords is to put a basic term that’s relevant to your business, such as “barber shop,” into Google’s search bar and examine the suggested searches that come up. You can also use advanced keyword research tools like SEMrush or rely on an expert SEO marketer in your area.
Building your Google My Business profile
Your business website will always be important. If you want to show up prominently in search results and make it into the map pack, however, you’ll need to focus heavily on your Google My Business (GMB) profile. Thankfully, compared to optimizing your website for local SEO, building your GMB profile is considerably easier.
The first step is making sure that you have a GMB profile. To do so, you’ll need to register your business with Google and confirm a few basic details, such as your company’s name and its address. Then, fill in your GMB profile with as much information as you possibly can. Google provides a metric when you access your GMB profile indicating its level of completion, and you should strive to get as close to a 100 percent completion rating as possible.
While you might not initially understand the importance of adding subcategories to the services you provide or listing the products you offer, Google uses all of this information to determine how highly your business should rank in its search results. Perhaps even more importantly, your GMB profile is one of the main factors that Google uses as it determines whether your business should be included in the map pack.
Your GMB profile must be laser-accurate to be effective. It’s most important to ensure that your GMB NAP information correlates to the NAP information you’ve provided on other platforms such as Yelp and your business website. If this information changes, it’s critically important to update your GMB profile immediately to avoid making Google think that you’ve provided inaccurate information.
Writing location-specific SEO content
When you’re selling products or services locally, SEO content isn’t the most important factor. Crafting compelling, concise SEO content is much more critical when you’re competing with other online businesses for the attention of consumers spread across the nation.
At the very least, however, you should have a landing page for each location in which you offer your services. If you are a plumber in New York who services Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, for instance, you should write three separate service pages. One page should include keywords like “plumber in Queens,” another should include keywords like “plumber in Manhattan,” and a third should include keywords like “plumber in Brooklyn.”
You should also make sure that your entire website is optimized for local SEO by updating your title tags, meta descriptions, and the basic content populating areas like your contact page and about page. It’s also important to use schema to your advantage to make your company’s website look as attractive as possible in search engine result pages (SERPs).
Encouraging local backlinks
If you have relationships with other local businesses in your area, you should ask your clients or suppliers to link to your website. Link placement on authoritative or location-relevant websites can boost your organic search rankings and increase the likelihood that your company will make it into the map pack. Even if it’s simply a business that happens to be your neighbor, asking any company in your local community to assist you with your link building strategy is worth a shot.
It’s likely that your local chamber of commerce maintains a directory of local businesses. Reach out to your chamber of commerce to determine if this is the case, and if possible, ask for a link to your website to be added to this list. When it comes to link building, any link helps, and links from authoritative websites are the most valuable.
Other local SEO tips and tricks
Let’s finish things up with a few final tips you can follow for local SEO success:
• Sponsor a local event to generate a link to your business on the event’s website.
• Land a story in your local newspaper to drum up a word-of-mouth following and generate links.
• Embed a Google Map on your about page to emphasize to Google’s bots that you’re located in a specific area.
Invest in local SEO to take your internet marketing to the next level
Local SEO is an indispensable component of online marketing for businesses that offer local products or services, and investing in your company’s location-specific SEO presence will improve your revenue and help consumers trust your brand. Use the methods we’ve discussed to boost your local SEO presence, and rely on an expert for additional assistance:
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