Why Local SEO Is Important for Small Businesses

Prospects will readily trust businesses with good reviews found on these authority sites. Practically every business can benefit from boosting their local SEO. And another part is that people who are searching for local businesses are more likely to buy sooner than others. If you end up moving your business, opening a new location or getting a change in telephone number, make sure to correct this information everywhere it is listed.
Small local clients are still impacted by the issues that come along with having a slower website such as higher bounce rates, lower conversions, and worst of all, a poor user experience. Amanda shares her experience with speed optimization, and the positive results for her client. Learn how to make great local content for chains and individual businesses in this Moz Academy video. Mike will walk through the projects that his individual team members took on to improve how they handled local links, reviews, reports, and lots of areas in between.
This meant that many local businesses could be featured in the search results. If you don’t have customer reviews or testimonials, you could be missing out on potential sales. Encourage current customers to leave helpful reviews of your products, services, and location. Local SEO is one of the most effective ways to reach nearby customers online and increase traffic to both your website and physical location. Local SEO solutions are important if Google Maps listings dominate the first page of results when you search for your keywords or phrases.
It also extends to managing online ratings and reviews, local-centric social media engagement, and beyond. Check out the Insights reporting in the back end of your Google business listing. Compare the performance of your branded vs. nonbranded search queries in terms of your overall visibility. Branded search queries are people already looking for your business (these are called “Direct” searches in GMB).
After it went live, some businesses noticed a dramatic fall in organic traffic from areas outside their immediate vicinity. By 2018, local search was central to Google’s business model. The search giant knew that being able to search and navigate to local businesses provided its users with profound utility.
You can also use the Reputation Builder tool that makes it easy for you to prompt customers via SMS or email to share a review. It also calculates your Net Promoter Score , which indicates the experience of your customers with your business. Since it offers unlimited LSI keyword search 24/7, you have access to extensive data on keywords you need to get a higher ranking. You can also get search volume data of every LSI keyword for the past year. This way, you don’t have to scribble them down in a notebook or make an extra document. As mentioned earlier, 61% of people who performed a local search ended up calling the business.
That means it will not be that difficult to outrank your local competitors in local searches to get all of that business. In fact, only 44% of businesses have claimed their Google My Business listing, which is one of the absolute first steps in any local SEO optimization checklist. Take an organic keyword related to your business and make it a localized keyword by adding the name of a city or region, or phrases like “near me”. These are the most valuable keywords for a local business because they’re being used by people who are in your area. People who are actively looking for a product or service that you sell. The same principles that apply to many businesses in regards to local SEO also apply to schools.
Furthermore, you must use the exact same details or format when you mention your address on other websites. This micro lesson is from one of our globally recognized digital marketing courses. A place to discuss algorithm updates and important feature changes related to GMB or Google as a whole that relate to local search. With a team of in-house experts culled from many different specializations, SEO Werkz has all the experience and knowledge needed to improve the performance of your website. Combine that level of expertise with SEO Werkz’s own suite of proprietary tools, techniques, and processes, and you have all the ingredients necessary for success today.
Nonprofit marketers can leverage this to engage supporters, drive donations, and share their nonprofit’s mission with the world. Use this example analysis and downloadable spreadsheet to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of multiple businesses and devise a plan to win. Top Brands in the industry discuss the impact of Home, Cortana, Alexa, and Siri related to voice search, machine learning, contextual search and how this effects local marketers. In this article you’ll learn about the basic technical criteria a local site must meet in order to be fully set up for SEO and search marketing success. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, Periscope… The seemingly never-ending world of social media can leave even the most seasoned marketer flailing among too many tasks and not enough results.