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Best 5 Strategies for Local Search Engine Optimization

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Local search engine optimisation is about attracting the attention of potential customers who are close to your business. The goal is to increase the likelihood that your business will be found locally by these potential customers when they use their mobile phones or other devices with internet access.

If you choose not to optimise your business for local SEO, you may be missing out on countless opportunities. 

Enhance your business growth through local Search traffic optimization by implementing these 5 effective tactics.

  1. Focus on a Local Business Listing
  2. Optimize your Website for Mobile Devices
  3. Use Social Media to Your Advantage
  4. Understand the Importance of having a Google Business Profile
  5. Understand the Importance of Google Maps

By following these five strategies, you can increase the visibility of your local business and drive more qualified traffic to your website.

In this article, we will go into a little more detail about each of these strategies, explain how they work and give you some tips on how to implement them.

However, let us first explain the basics of a local SEO guide

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What is local search engine optimisation?

Local SEO is a form of search engine optimisation that focuses on local results, which can be a country, a city, a town or even a street. It is a separate form of SEO that focuses on local results. By optimising a website for local search results, businesses can increase their chances of being found by local potential customers.

Local search engine optimisation is an important part of the online marketing strategy for businesses of all sizes. Local search engine optimization can be done through a variety of methods, such as optimising your website for local keywords, creating and publishing relevant content, and participating in online communities. Google has made an effort to improve its understanding of the local market and rank websites accordingly. 

Why does Local Search Engine Optimization matter?

Local SEO is a strategy that helps local businesses rank for specific keywords in their local area. The goal is to rank for as many local search queries related to your business as possible. In this way, local businesses can reach a wider audience and potentially increase their sales.

Following a search engine optimization for local ranking matters because local search is a big part of the overall search engine market.

The 7 important Local Search Engine Optimization statistics that every business should know:

  1. Local searches account for about 46% of all search queries made each month on Google Source. (Source Social Media Today)
  2. 4 of every 5 potential customers prefer ads that are customized to their zip code, locality or city. (Source Think With Google)
  3. The first result of local business searches receives 24.4% of all clicks. (Source Safari Digital)
  4. 61% of B2B marketing experts confirmed that SEO generates more leads than any other online marketing effort. (Source Inter Growth)
  5. On average 50% of users of Google Maps, visit the store they were looking for (Source Search Engine Watch)
  6. Location-based mobile searches result in consumers making a purchase 78% of the time, (Source SEO Tribunal)
  7. Around three-quarters of web users who search online look for local businesses. (Source 99Firms)

The Benefits of Having Skillfully Executed Local Search Engine Optimization Strategies in Your Industry

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Executing a local SEO program is more important than ever before. If you own a business and you are not using the best local SEO strategies, you are most likely missing out on a lot of potential sales. If your website is not optimized for local search engine optimization, then you will be at a disadvantage compared to your competitors. And you don’t want your competitors to be at an advantage, do you?

For example, a study by BrightLocal found that 78% of consumers who use mobile devices to search for local businesses visit the store they were looking for. This is why you need to have a local SEO strategy in place. 

The truth of the matter is that, if your business doesn’t rank high in local search engine result pages like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, then you will not be able to gain the trust of potential customers. And if they don’t trust your business, then they won’t buy from you.

These are the top 10 benefits of having a well-implemented local SEO plan:

  1. It will help you reach a larger audience.
  2. You’ll be able to convert customers that are within your area into paying customers.
  3. It will help you build your brand.
  4. It will help you get more local traffic to your website, which means that you’ll be able to increase the number of leads and sales for your business.
  5. More people from your locality will be able to find your business online.
  6. You’ll have a higher chance of ranking in the organic search results for your business’s location.
  7. It will help you rank better in the local map results.
  8. It will help you get more reviews on your business profile pages in Google and Yelp, which will increase trust and credibility for your brand.
  9. Building a community on local social media will help you increase your brand awareness.
  10. It will allow you to create more connections with potential customers or providers, and it can also help develop relationships that might turn into sales leads.

The list of benefits could go on and on depending on the industry, but this should give you a good starting point.

Now that we have covered some of the benefits of local SEO strategies, let us talk about the most important elements of a successful local SEO campaign.

Best 5 strategies for local search engine optimization

Types of Local Search Engine Optimization:

The type of Local SEO plan that you can use will depend on your business, the size of your budget and how much time you can commit to managing your local SEO.

There are two main variations of Local SEO strategies:

1. Local SEO on-site strategies:

This is the most basic type of local SEO. It involves optimizing your website for local search engines, and it can be done for one page in just a few hours with a little bit of research because it is a per-page strategy.

2. Local SEO off-site strategies:

This involves creating content that attracts backlinks to your website and getting reviews on local business directories, PRs issuing, etc. This strategy is more time consuming, but it is also more effective.

5 Steps to Implement Your Own Local Search Engine Optimization Ranking Strategy:

#1 – Create a Google My Business account

This should be your first step.

Google My Business is a free or paid tool developed by Google that allows businesses to create and manage their business listing on the internet. It is very important for local businesses as it helps your business to be found by potential local customers. This includes other locations of your business around the world.

You can create a Google My Business listing for your business in just a few minutes, and it’s free.

#2 – Add your business information to other services that are an alternative to Google My Business Profile

Google My Business is not the only service you can use to create a listing for your business. There are many other services such as Yelp, Yahoo! Local and Bing Places.

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Business Listings: 10 Google My Business Alternatives for Local Search Engine Optimization.

WebsiteTraffic (Monthly)Users (Monthly)Years in the MarketSearch VisibilityRanking
Yelp2.05B190M200494%1
BrightLocal1.25M100K200989%2
Moz Local1.1M90K201288%3
SEMrush1M80K200887%4
Bing Places950K75K201486%5
Birdeye850K70K201185%6
Reputation750K65K200684%7
SOCi650K60K201183%8
SE Ranking550K55K200882%9
Yahoo! Local450K50K200481%10

* Traffic and user data are from Similarweb.
* Search visibility data is from BrightEdge.
* Ranking data is my own subjective assessment, based on a combination of factors, including traffic, users, search visibility, and popularity.

Please note that this table is for illustrative purposes only. The data may not be perfectly accurate, and it may change over time.

Yelp:

Yelp operates primarily in the US, one of the strongest markets for this business. If your business operates mainly in the US, you need to be listed on Yelp. But Yelp not only dominates the US, but it is also expanding to other countries like Canada, the UK, Australia and other 30+ countries. You can also use the website APP. Support is available in over 40 languages and you will probably find your language there.

Yelp has many features that help local businesses grow their business by increasing traffic, leads and sales. Yelp’s free listing service is available to all businesses, but paid services are also available.

Using Yelp in parallel with GMB for local listing service will help you to create your business page, add photos and videos of your business and more.

BrightLocal:

BrightLocal is a locally focused, dedicated search engine optimization platform. Its powerful local SEO tools and reports allow agencies and brands to improve local rankings, generate more traffic and leads from local search, and manage reviews/reputation.

Having your main local area for business in the UK, this company should be your second step when executing your local SEO plan. The platform is based in London with offices in New York and San Francisco. Founded by William Hunt, CEO of BrightLocal.

Major companies like Ikea, IProspect, Hilton and the Home Depot have trusted BrightLocal to increase their visibility online. There are no-credit trial plans available and B2B plans start at just $29 a month with plenty of rankings available on 2022’s most comprehensive local search engine. You can visit G2 online today to see how well ranked BrightLocal is there.

Moz Local:

Moz is widely regarded as one of the best SEO tools available. But it’s a great place to get started with local search engine optimization if you have money to spend. For $99/month, Moz Local will get you a list of local businesses, their contact information and more.

SEMrush:

SEMrush continues to improve its local search engine optimization options. Their most recent addition is a free tool that will show you the location of your competitors and their SEO strategies.

Both Moz Local, and SEMrush are online Marketing tools, but when it comes to covering a wider range of local search engine optimization, they are both very useful for Local SEO research.

In fact, I use them both to get information on my own clients and competitors.

If you want to know a little bit more about SEMrush, You can read a review of them here:

SEMrush – Answering Essential Questions

Bing Places:

Bing has a special but very useful feature that automatically indexes businesses. If this is the case for you, you should try it out. It’s good to have your business indexed on Bing Places, but you need to claim it before someone else does. Or if you want to add another listing.

Remember that Bing is owned by Yahoo and Yahoo is owned by Microsoft, the biggest competitor of Alphabet, Google’s parent company. These are the types of listing portals you should not disregard.

Birdeye:

Birdeye, with all the integrations and analytics that software companies offer. Birdeye is an all-in-one platform that allows website visitors to contact a company’s customer service, browse product listings and view company news.

It’s an easy-to-use platform where you can see what people are saying about your business on the internet, regarding local SEO. It is the ideal platform if you want to have more control than the usual platforms.

Birdeye’s plans allow you to monitor your business reputation on:

  • Google Places (Google+)
  • Yelp!
  • Facebook Page Reviews

SOCi:

SOCi is a social media management platform that allows you to schedule and publish content on multiple social media channels. It also offers detailed reports, analytics and insights into your business’s performance. SOCi is the perfect platform if you want to manage your social media accounts with ease.

SOCi’s plans allow you to monitor your business reputation on:

  • Facebook Page Reviews
  • Yelp!
  • Google Places (Google+)

SOCi also allows you to monitor your business on:

  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn

SOCi provides a number of features that allow you to manage your business reputation on the above-mentioned social media channels. These include:

💡Responding to reviews

SOCi allows you to respond directly to your customers’ reviews on Facebook, Google+, Yelp! and Twitter. This makes it easy for you to resolve customer issues on the spot and allows you to maintain a positive reputation.

💡Monitoring your reviews

SOCi provides real-time monitoring of all your reviews across social media. You can see all the reviews that your business has received, and you can respond to them directly from SOCi’s dashboard.

There are more features that can help you manage your business reputation. By now, and because this post is not about SOCi (❁´◡`❁)ノ, I’m pretty sure you have an idea of what SOCi does.

Don’t forget to check out their website and the documentation. It’s a great tool that can help your business grow and improve your reputation.

SE Ranking:

Now, this tool is a bit different from the others listed above. It’s not necessarily local listing service-oriented, but it can help you with your local rankings.

Aiming to get more customers by increasing your local search presence and market share? Interested in managing the enormous amounts of data that you have on your website? SERanking have the solution. They called it SearchEngAssistant.

This partial GMB alternative is a powerful tool that combines data from Google, Bing and your website to provide you with an in-depth analysis of your local online presence. It’s very simple to use and it will help you improve your online visibility.

SERanking is a company that develops tools for search engine optimization and web marketing, so they know what they’re doing. This tool can help you track your local rankings in Google, and other search engines like Bing, analyze the keywords that you’re ranking for and find new opportunities. It will also help you measure your website traffic, social media presence and local listings.

Why is SERanking a good alternative to Google Analytics? The biggest advantage is that it’s easier to use. You don’t have to worry about installing any special software on your website, and you can check your rankings from anywhere.

Yahoo! Local:

Yahoo, you already know it. The search engine giant is one of the most popular websites in the world, and its local listings are a great way to get your business on the map. You can create a free listing on Yahoo! Local.

If your business is a local brick-and-mortar store, then this may be the best way for people to find you. We are mentioning Google’s biggest competitor, but we would be remiss if we didn’t tell you that Google has a bigger local listing. So why leave Yahoo! Local out when you can have them both?

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10 Google My Business alternatives final words.

Do not take this list a pick one and leave the rest, it is a great idea to have all of them on your website and in Google My Business.

When it comes to keeping your business alive, you need to use the best tools available.

If for some reason Google decided to shut down its Google My Business ( GMB ) services, what would you do?

This is why having multiple profiles on other platforms and websites is such a good idea.

Google My Business alternatives are great to have and they will help you keep your business alive, no matter what happens in the future.

#3 – Create an optimized website containing all information about your company

Your NAP (name, address, and phone number) should match across all of your online profiles. If you have a business that operates in more than one location (such as a chain), each location should be mentioned in your NAP.

These days, people use the Internet to search for businesses near them (also known as local searches). If you want to attract more customers from your area, you need to make sure that your business is easy to find on Google Maps.

For example, if you have a restaurant in New York City and live in Philadelphia, it’s likely that you will search for restaurants in New York City.

Don’t take your NAP information loosely. Make sure that it’s consistent across all of your online profiles.

Finding your NAP online: a step-by-step guide.

The easiest way to find your business’s NAP is by using the Google My Business app. Simply log into your account, and you’ll be able to see your NAP in the dashboard.

If you don’t have a Google account, or if you want to check your information on other platforms, use the following:

If you’re using Bing, enter your business name and address into the search bar.

If you’re using Yahoo, type in your business name and city into the search bar.

And if you’re using a platform like Yelp, you can find your NAP in the business information section.

Here’s what I found for my local SEO agency:

Local search

As you can see, it’s important to have your NAP information consistent across all of the platforms you’re using. Because those NAP mentions will serve as consistent signals to Google that you’re a real business.

If your NAP information isn’t consistent, or if it’s missing from any of the platforms you’re using, then you will not be sending all business signals you have online to Google. And that’s the last thing you want.

So, make sure your NAP information is consistent and accurate across all of the platforms you’re using to promote your business. I cant address enough how important this is.

If you want to learn more about NAP, including why it’s so important for local SEO and how to make sure your NAP information is consistent across all of the platforms you’re using, check out Citations, All You Need To Know.

#4 – Improve the on-page SEO of your website to address the issue.

This is something that can really affect your rankings, especially if you’re a local business. You see, Google wants to show searchers the most relevant results, and they do this by using something called “on-page SEO.” Lately, lots of online businesses are losing ranking because of poor on-page SEO.

Now, on-page SEO points not only to fixing the layout of the text, user experience, content quality or relevancy, this is deeper than that. You need to E-A-T your main content. and by this I don’t mean eating it literally😋, I mean making sure that your content is having “expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.”

There is a myth I want to debunk here: You don’t need just any “good” content writer for your website. The truth is that you always need to be on top of your game, especially if you’re a local business. You need a content writer with E-A-T in your industry. This means that you need to have an expert in your field that can write the content for you.

I’m sure most of us don’t have this luxury, but if you do, make sure to use it.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use freelance writers, as long as they have E-A-T in your industry, sure you can.

Ensure that your content possesses the subsequent elements:

Experience Demonstrated expertise and knowledge in the subject matter.

Expertise – Is your content written by an expert in the field?

Authoritativeness – Does your business and author have supporting evidence, citations and links to validate the posted information?

Trustworthiness – Is your author and business having a good online reputation in the field?

Now that you know what E-E-A-T is and why it’s important, let’s go over some ways to make sure your content has this quality.

Spotting these three things can be done quickly by conducting a Google search.

Use me for example, search for — Jesus Guzman “SEO” —

You will see that all first Google page result is about me as an SEO or digital marketer.

This means I can write about SEO because my online reputation is already established.

The same thing applies to your business.

👍 Takeaway: Ensure that both your authors and/or website business possess E-E-A-T before publishing any content. This is crucial and should be your top priority.

If your company is new or small, then you should focus on building your E-E-A-T until you have enough E-E-A-T to write about your industry.

👍 Pro-Tip: Hire an expert with a supporting online reputation in your industry.

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#5 – For a Good Local SEO Strategy, Google Advice Making Sure a Website is Mobile Friendly

This is another big one. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re losing out on a lot of traffic. In fact, Google has announced that from June 2015 onward, they will be giving preference to mobile-friendly sites in their search results.

This is huge.

If you’re not mobile-friendly, it’s time to get your act together:

  1. Update your website template so that it is responsive and easy to use on a mobile device.
  2. Update your content so that it is easy to read on a mobile device.
  3. Make sure you have an app for your business if possible, or at least make sure you have a mobile-friendly website.

4) Make sure your business is easy to find through Google Maps. If you aren’t on the map, then people will have trouble finding you when they search for businesses in your area.

This is a good time to get started on local SEO strategies and to make sure you are ready for the impending mobile-friendly search engine changes.

Local Business SEO — Summing up

Local SEO is an important part of your Internet marketing strategy. It’s a great way to increase the number of people who see your business on the search engines, and it can help you get in front of the people who are most likely to buy from you.

Don’t miss the opportunity to use all the available tools for local SEO. Local SEO is a long-term strategy that can take time and effort to see results, but it’s worth your while if you want to get more business from your online marketing efforts.

If you want to learn more about local SEO, check out the following resources:

Resources for Local SEO:

Local SEO: The Definitive Guide (2022) – Backlinko

Top 25 Local Search Ranking Signals You Need to Know

How to Use Google My Business to Get More Customers in 2022

What Is Local SEO and How to Improve Your Local Ranking

Local SEO [Free Local SEO Cheat Sheet] – Moz

Now It’s Your Turn

You found here a good source of local SEO information and tools. You can share these SEO resources with your friends, colleagues or anyone who might find them useful.

If you have any questions about local SEO, please ask them in the comments section below.

Thank you for reading! And remember, in order to get the most out of this post, you should apply the local SEO tips given above.

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Jesus Guzman

M&G Speed Marketing LTD. CEO

Jesus Guzman is the CEO and founder of M&G Speed Marketing LTD, a digital marketing agency focused on rapidly growing businesses through strategies like SEO, PPC, social media, email campaigns, and website optimization. With an MBA and over 11 years of experience, Guzman combines his marketing expertise with web design skills to create captivating online experiences. His journey as an in-house SEO expert has given him insights into effective online marketing. Guzman is passionate about helping businesses achieve impressive growth through his honed skills. He has proud case studies to share and is eager to connect to take your business to the next level.