Generating leads is the most important thing that keeps business thriving. Local search is a powerful tool for businesses of all types. According to statistics, 46% of Google searches on Google are related to local intent. That’s why every business must leverage local SEO to attract potential customers.

But how can you perfect your local SEO strategy? Before that, you must know what local SEO is and how it works!

In this article, I’ll share local SEO techniques and why your business needs them. You will also learn how to optimize your business to increase customers and make them buy your products or services.

What Is Local SEO?

Local SEO is the procedure by which we increase rankings of local businesses in google my profile to improve online visibility. It’s for anyone running a local business or with brick-and-mortar locations. By implementing local SEO, you can increase organic traffic. You can find searchers and get relevant buyers in nearby areas.

There are different signals on which search engines are dependent. Some of them are;

• Links
• Local content
• Social profile images

We will discuss more signals in another section of this article. Google will gather all the relevant information and provide the person with an improved local search result. That’s why it’s important to optimize your website and GMB profile accordingly.

With local SEO, every business can position its services and products to a local audience. If you don’t know about this type of SEO then it’s time to learn about it in more detail and how you can become better at SEO.

How Local SEO Works?

Most people believe that Google uses complex and unachievable SEO ranking factors to increase ranking in search algorithms. But that’s not true, let me share three key factors that play a primary role in local SEO.

• Relevance: How closely your product or service relates to customer search queries.
• Distance: Depends on the distance or location difference between your business and your customer.
• Prominence: How essential Google believes your business is to customers.

However, what if Google knows nothing about searcher location?

What will happen in this situation?

In this case, Google will calculate the distance based on the data it already has of the searcher.

In a report by Whitespark’s ‘2021 Local Search Ranking Factors’, they collected data from SEO experts. These are some of the most important Local Pack factors that are crucial in ranking.

• GBP primary category
• Keywords available in the listing
• The proximity of the business with respect to the location of the searcher
• Quality and authority of links of the domain
• Keywords present in native Google reviews

Firstly, there are local Pack and organic results. Organic results are the most common; you must have seen them on Google with a blue link.

Local Pack

Local Pack appears on the search engine results pages on the topmost part. These are specific listings that appear along with maps. You can see pins showing the location of the business.

But is Local Pack important?

Yes, getting featured in Local Pack is highly important for your business. The top three links get the highest clicks, which can result in high sales and profitability.

Remember that Local Pack results aren’t based on your business website. It’s based on your Google Business Profile; optimize it to ensure you rank high.

Local Finder

Depending on the search, it is a long list of all business profiles relevant to local businesses. If you click ‘More places,’ this button is at the bottom of the Local Pack. It will direct you to Local Finder.

Localized Organic Results

It is present just under the Local Pack. But how is the order of listing decided?

It’s simple! The order depends on the local search algorithm. It is based on local ranking factors such as on-page optimization, customer reviews, links, etc.

Google Maps

It is an extended list of local businesses that appear on Google Maps. You have to move the map and use ‘search this area,’. It will help you explore businesses in different locations.

7 Tips For Improving Local SEO

In order to increase your local SEO, you have to work on different marketing tactics. They collectively contribute to enhancing local SEO and improving ranking.

1. Optimize Your Business Profile

Your local SEO is incomplete without a well-optimized business profile. This factor is most important as it decides the success or failure of your local SEO strategy.

But what will happen if you don’t optimize your profile?

If that’s the case, you are missing many opportunities and customers. Your business won’t appear in any local SEO, i.e., Local Pack, Local Finder, or Google Maps.

To set up your profile, you have to do the following tasks;

• Add photo
• Write a keyword-optimized description
• Make content persuasive

Furthermore, keep monitoring your GBP and do the following optimization tasks regularly;

• Keep updating your information regularly
• Don’t post outdated content, including photos and videos
• Add regular Google Posts
• Be active and respond to GBP Q&A

2. Maintain A Strong Reputation

Businesses often ignore reputation management, but it’s a crucial component for local SEO. But many people don’t know how to achieve the benchmark of reputation management.

Here is how you can do it!

• Earn high-quality reviews
• Show the personality of your brand online
• Stay active on social media
• Show your brand reputation via email marketing

But by earning reviews, what do we mean? Does that mean fake reviews?

No, it means consistently delivering the best services to your customers. Impress them with your exceptional customer service and high-quality products. That’s how you can end up getting a lot of five-star reviews.

Suppose you are running a restaurant. How can you improve your reviews?

You should give amazing services from waiters to food. Everything in your restaurant should be top-notch so that anyone who views your business on Google will compel to know more about it. And after visiting they will leave good comments.

If people see your restaurant has good reviews on Google, TripAdvisor, or websites like that, you can easily attract more leads.

But what’s next? You have many good reviews, but is that enough?

You must professionally respond to these reviews and check out response templates which will save you a lot of time.

The next part concerns social presence and email marketing, which can power your brand’s online reputation. Don’t confuse your audience with your brand statement. Keep it consistent and professional. It includes NAP!

• Name
• Address
• Phone number

Try incorporating a friendly tone so your customers can deeply connect with you.

3. Work On Your Website

Optimizing your website is important for search algorithm ranking. It can attract more buyers to your websites and compel them to purchase. You should remember these five important points for optimizing your website.

1. Create high-quality content
2. Build internal links
3. Make your website mobile responsive
4. Optimize all the content and images
5. Provide a positive experience to users

Suppose you read an article on how to market your book as an author. According to the search query, it’s clear that you aren’t looking for any marketing strategy for your restaurant business.

Then make sure you are talking about relevant things in the blog. The attention span of people is reducing.

So here comes the most important question! How can you keep them engaged?

You can add animations, videos, infographics, and many more things. Write short sentences and keep the tone friendly.

But there are many more benefits of writing good content!

It will help you generate inbound links, another factor for increasing your local search rankings.

In the 2021 update of Google, it was made clear that user experience is an important part of the organic ranking. You can check the ‘page experience score’ available on Google Search Console. If you want to make your website user-friendly, prioritize Core Web Vitals, another important update of Google.

But what if you have the best content and practice ethical link-building strategies, but users can’t find what they want!?

Then you need to work on your website’s navigation, which will improve user experience.

Suppose you have done excellent keyword research, and your website is finally ranking in the top three searches, but the bounce rate is extremely high.

Why? What’s the reason behind it?

It’s because the user can’t find what they are looking for. So make the layout simple and interactive.

4. Stay Update About Your Competitors

You have to keep checking what your competitors are up to. What strategies are they adopting, and what results are they getting from it?

But how will it benefit you?

It can help you get clarity, and you can modify your strategies accordingly. You can also learn from their mistakes and pinpoint the pain points of the audience they might be missing.

You can get a good idea of their strategy by checking the content they are posting, the keywords they are ranking for, and how they are getting backlinks.

Check their citations and review their profile.

5. Monitor Changes in Google

Many websites face penalties and thus fail to rank because they are not updated about Google policies. These warnings pose a great risk to your business.

You must understand all the monitoring volatility that will help you stay updated about the latest changes and updates of Google.

But how do you know your website is facing such an issue?

If your ranking is changing, it might signal there is an update, and you might need to update your SEO strategy.

Remember, if the ranking of two to five articles drops, it doesn’t necessarily mean a Google update. But if the number is high, then Google update might be a reason.

6. Spam Fighting

It is an unethical approach for businesses, and it might give you short-term results, but in the long run, it can be drastic for your business. Let’s see if you are implementing these in your business or not;

• Keyword stuffing
• Making fake accounts
• Adding inaccurate local data

If you are doing any of these, you must stop immediately. But what if someone else is doing it? And they are even outranking you?

This situation can be extremely overwhelming and frustrating. But if you believe a business is following wrong practices, you have the right to report it.

7. Do a Local Seo Audit

By now, I’m sure you have a clear idea of optimizing your business profile and website to increase local SEO rankings. But this part is most important and will help you improve your strategy.

You must perform a comprehensive SEO audit to check which article or page gets the most traffic. Things you are doing wrong and how you can reduce it. Here are a few things you can do for your SEO audit.

1. Google My Business: Ensure that all the information on your profile is accurate. Check the rankings of your Google My Business in the SERPs.
2. Google Search Console: Ensure your website is crawlable and has no potential issues hindering it from ranking.
3. On-Page SEO: Thoroughly check the on-page SEO of your website and ensure you have adopted all the necessary techniques to optimize your website.
4. Citation: In business online directories, your citations should be accurate.
5. Competitor Analysis: Your website should match the expectations of users. Check the best-performing websites in your competitor’s list and find gaps in your website. It can be content, layout, message, or positioning.

SEO Vs. Local SEO

You might have tried a lot of optimizing techniques for improving rankings. And you may have an idea about what SEO is. Here comes the question that you might have in your mind.

Is local SEO and SEO the same? Is there any difference in both terms? Let’s find out the main differences between these terms to get clarity.

	Local SEO	Search Engine Optimization
Focus	Focuses on optimizing a business’s online presence for location-based searches	Focuses on optimizing a website’s online presence for search engines.
Optimization	Includes optimizing Google My Business (GMB) profile and getting listed in local directories.	Includes optimizing website structure, content, and backlinks.
Requirements	Requires consistent and accurate NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information across all online platforms.	Focuses on creating relevant and high-quality content to rank higher in search engines.
Target Audience	Targets specific geographic locations and audiences.	Targets a broad audience with a potentially wider reach.
Ranking Factors	Reviews and ratings on platforms like Yelp and Google play a crucial role in rankings.	User experience, website speed, and mobile responsiveness play a crucial role in rankings.
Example	It requires a different approach to keyword research, as it often involves targeting location-specific keywords like “plumbers in Los Angeles” instead of more generic keywords like “plumbing services.”	You choose some target words and ensure your website ranks in SERPs. They are of different types such as on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO, etc.

Tools For Local SEO

Now, you are familiar with local SEO and its power. But we still don’t know what practical tools we can use.

By using tools, you can save a lot of time and increase accuracy as well. Here are three important tools you should use to skyrocket your website’s local SEO.

1. Whitespark Local Citation Finder

This tool can help you find online mentions of any local business. It can gather a lot of information which includes;

• Name of business
• It’s location or address.
• Their phone number

With citations and businesses can make a mark in the online world. With these tools, you can manage the accuracy of information on all platforms. It will increase the loyalty and trust of customers in online listings.

With Whitespark, you can do this job effectively. It can manage local listings, even recommends the best place to do listing, check your competitors, and increase your rankings in local SEO.

2. Screaming frog

One of the best SEO desktop program that is advanced enough to do all the crawling. It includes crawling website;

• Links
• Content
• CSS
• Apps

It relates all of that to SEO. You might have an error 404 page. Or meta descriptions of your content are missing.

With Screaming Frog, you can check around 500 URLs without paying a single penny. However, for unlimited analysis of URLs, you have to get a premium version.

3. Moz Local

It’s the top choice of most SEO experts because of its price. It’s not expensive compared to other tools in the market.

So if you want to verify your business listing on all the platforms, especially Google and Facebook, and distribute your listing without spending a lot of money, then Moz Local is a suitable choice for you.

The best feature is its collaboration with data aggregators, increasing your listing visibility.

Benefits of Local SEO

Local SEO has a lot of benefits for businesses. Local SEO can be your biggest savior if your business isn’t getting any traction. Let’s look at how local SEO can help businesses.

• Increases Lead: In research conducted by Google, almost 76% of people search for a local business. They visit it within a day, and almost 28% of searchers become customers.
• Maximizes Reach: You will be surprised that more than 40% of searches on Google are related to local businesses.
• More Customers: In a recent survey, around 61% of people regularly searched about local businesses or products.
• Quick Decision: According to a report, almost 82% of people read online reviews of businesses before becoming their customers and spend only 14 minutes deciding on a purchase.
• Ease To Visit: 86% of people heavily depend on Google Maps to guide their business location.

So are you using local SEO accurately? Remember, it can be a game changer for your business.

Make Your Business Powerful With Local SEO

Now you know the importance of local SEO, and you are ready to start implementing local SEO for your business. It’s a great way to increase your search rankings and ensure that more customers buy your product.

There are plenty of factors that can impact your online visibility. But with the right approach, you can easily stand out from the crowd.

EchoFish is here to assist you and help your business rank on top of local SEO. We have helped many businesses experience exponential growth, and you can be next! Contact us today.