As a local business owner, you might think that competing with big names like Walmart and Amazon for top-tier rankings on Google is a lost cause. While that might be true for the main organic listings, it’s a different story for local search.
Whether you have a physical bricks-and-mortar location or serve a specific geographical area, local SEO enables you to connect more effectively with people in your neighborhood, town, or city. This is crucial given that 81% of consumers now turn to Google to evaluate local businesses.
Benefits of Local SEO
- Better Online Visibility:Local SEO activities, such as citation and link building, increase your online visibility. This makes your business more easily discoverable by new customers.
- More In-store Foot Traffic: Greater local visibility brings more foot traffic to your bricks-and-mortar location.
- Tap into Local Shopping Boom: Post COVID-19, more than half of consumers now prefer to shop locally and support smaller brands. Local SEO puts you in contention for these new business opportunities.
- Targeted Web Traffic: Optimizing your site for local search delivers more targeted traffic to your website, which can lead to more leads, subscriptions, sign-ups, and sales.
- More Calls: Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) optimization can lead to enhanced Google Maps visibility, resulting in more calls and in-person visits.
- Thought Leadership: Content marketing can help you establish a thought leadership position, making you an expert in your field.
- Enhanced Trust Levels: Reputation management builds trust in your business.
- More Sales: Consumers use online reviews to help with decision-making when choosing a local business.
- Improved Conversion Rate: Website optimization can bolster your conversion rate, increasing contact form submissions, phone calls, email subscriptions, or sales.
- More Competitive: Local SEO makes you more competitive by encouraging you to study your rivals’ tactics and integrate successful strategies into your own approach.
This is Why Local SEO is Important
Imagine you’re a bridal boutique in Hyderabad, India. A bride-to-be actively looking for “bridal boutique, Hyderabad” is your ideal customer. However, the organic search results are populated by big-name brands such as directory sites, top 10 lists, and blogs. This makes it hard to compete and difficult to imagine a route for the bride to find her way to your store.
Benefits of Local SEO Example
However, if you perform local SEO, you’ll appear at the top of the search results and in the Local Pack with useful information such as opening times, your phone number and location, an image, and your five-star review rating. The bride-to-be can see you’re close by, offer great service, and can easily plan a visit or call your store. You’re now in the running to make a sale.
The 10 Benefits of Local SEO
1. Better Online Visibility
Many local SEO activities not only improve visibility in local search results but also build better overall online visibility. Citation building, for example, involves getting mentions of your company’s name, address, and phone number across various directories, social media profiles, and review platforms. This makes it easier for your business to be found by the right people at the right time. For instance, a TripAdvisor NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) could help a B&B in Upstate New York attract guests.
2. More In-store Foot Traffic
Greater local visibility can drive more foot traffic to your physical location, whether you’re a café, dry cleaner, or hardware store. If you’ve invested in specialized equipment or a unique space, increasing foot traffic can help create buzz and boost sales.
3. Tap into the Local Shopping Boom
Consumer buying habits have shifted, with more people prioritizing local businesses. Research shows that 56% of consumers purposefully shop at local stores, and 76% plan to shop more locally in the next year. Local SEO helps you reach these consumers when they need your products or services, leveraging this shift to grow your business.
4. Targeted Web Traffic
Local SEO helps filter out irrelevant traffic, ensuring your business is visible to users in your area who are likely to convert. With 59% of search users researching purchases they plan to make in-store, this targeted visibility is a significant advantage.
5. More Calls and Visits from Maps Users
Optimizing your Google Business Profile enhances visibility on Google Maps, leading to more calls and visits. Google Maps is designed to help users find local services and plan journeys, so optimization directly increases your visibility and customer engagement.
6. Establish a Position of Thought Leadership
Content marketing and link building help establish prominence and relevance, key pillars of local SEO. This activity also builds your reputation as a thought leader. Discussing local topics and involving the community strengthens your position as an expert, builds stronger customer relationships, and increases engagement.
7. Enhanced Trust Levels
Reviews are crucial for local SEO and building consumer trust. More reviews lead to higher visibility and trust, as half of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Fresh, top-rated reviews boost local pack prominence and consumer confidence.
8. More Sales
Online reviews influence consumer decision-making. Frequent online searches for local business information mean that authentic peer recommendations are powerful. Reputation management through local SEO underscores why it’s important.
9. Improved Conversion Rates
Local SEO tasks like adding local optimization, reviewing landing page text, and improving page load speed enhance website performance. This leads to higher conversion rates, with more contact form submissions, calls, subscriptions, and sales.
10. Your Business Becomes More Competitive
Local SEO involves benchmarking competitors and adopting successful strategies. Learning from competitors’ reviews and tactics helps improve your business’s competitive edge without the trial-and-error phase.
Investing in local SEO offers numerous benefits that can significantly impact your business’s success. By enhancing visibility, driving targeted traffic, and building trust, local SEO positions your business to thrive in a competitive market.
