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How Local SEO can help your local business grow

Smaller businesses that have a physical presence such as retail shops, gyms, and restaurants should focus on local SEO as compared to businesses that have a national presence. National SEO focus on searches across the country however, local SEO for your local business mainly focuses on searches for a specific location. For example, a bakery would love to show up on a search result page of a user who resides near the bakery location.

Benefits of local SEO services

Since people try to find most businesses online, local SEO is even more competitive. According to a report published by Google, 76% of people who search for local businesses online, tend to visit those businesses in the next couple of days. This clearly means that traffic from local search does get converted and who wouldn’t love to have that? Optimization of your local SEO helps to bring more traffic to the website which generates leads and in-turn gives more conversions. One advantage of doing local SEO is that you are not competing with bigger brands that have big budgets for SEO and are looking for national coverage. Therefore, local SEO for business growth becomes a very focused strategy. Not having local SEO could mean that you are losing some significant search traffic.

Here are some of the basic things you need to do for local SEO:

1. Sign up for Google My Business Account and optimize

Just login to Google My Business Page and register your business. Google maps will start showing your business to users as per its algorithm. This service is free. Also, this applies for searches across all devices and it also authenticates that your business is legal. Sometimes Google might even show your business on the sidebar space of google search. Make sure you have done below things:

• Verified your listing
• Updated accurate information
• Information about your services, business logo, working hours, etc.
• Revert to customer reviews
• Create some posts about your services/products

2. Try to get some customer reviews

Customer reviews are very important for local SEO strategy. You automatically rank higher if you have a good number of positive reviews. Make sure your average google rating is above 4.5 stars. Not having a review may indicate google that your business is closed or offline and may not give you a good rank. Reach out to your customers via email and ask them for reviews. Add a QR code on your merchandise packaging which can be linked google review so that people can review your product/service after they have purchased it from your store.

3. Create local news content

Publish content which have local news. You can try to write about a flea market that happened in your business neighborhood. You can talk about local charity events that you participated in or your business supported. Creating location-specific pages with quality content will help you to rank local searches.

A local real estate business can have different google map pages for different properties. This can help them to rank their property in specific location. Local content can be a good bait for local readers to share your content as well. People might talk about your business when they come across local articles. Include local places in your meta titles and descriptions.

4. Optimize website for mobile

Majority of the local searches happen on a mobile. Website traffic from mobile has grown drastically as compared to desktop visits. A study conducted in 2017 by Acquisio showed website visits happening from a mobile had better walk-in to stores than desktop. These numbers are enough for you to convince that your website should be optimized for mobile view and be a better player in local seo. Some things you should consider for your mobile website:

• Loading time
• Big and simple fonts
• Use of correct images
• Good UI and UX experience

5. Use of online business directories

Online directories like Just dial, Sulekha, India Mart and yellow pages not only helps to publish your business on their online portals but also helps in visibility and boost your local seo. Give accurate information in online directories and add a backlink to your website. Also make sure the descriptions has your targeted keywords.

Grow your local business with SEO

SEO is very dynamic. You have to be constantly updating yourself, content and website. Google always introduces new features and the only way to know them is to constantly read articles published by Google. By implementing these action items and setting your local seo objectives, you can ensure that your business can take benefits of local seo and also build a good solid base, so that you do not loose ranking even when algorithms change.