If you are a small business owner that is looking to grow their sales and build their online presence, investing time and money into local SEO is most likely to prove to be the most beneficial digital marketing strategy for you. Local SEO essentially refers to any efforts made towards optimizing your search engine presence locally in a specific geographic location. For instance, a small pizza parlour that delivers and operates only in Sydney, would opt for SEO strategies that improve their SEO score exclusively within Sydney and not within the rest of Australia. Such a business would most probably also seek help from the best SEO company in Sydney to handle their online visibility and SEO efforts. For businesses that serve a set locality or geographical area such as restaurants, salons, doctors, grocery stores, etc., local SEO does wonders in improving their reach and online visibility.
Other than the above, listed below are three reasons why local SEO is important:
- Local SEO helps businesses compete
Local SEO efforts help businesses compete within their locality for their customers’ attention. There exists a lot of local competition for everyday businesses and competition is especially higher in its intensity if the business or industry has no room for niches. In such a case, companies can gain an added advantage by focusing on local SEO efforts and ranking on top of their local competitors on search engine results. For instance, a laundromat that focuses on local SEO is likely to gain more customers than other laundromats that do not focus on local SEO.
- Local SEO helps businesses gain visibility
For small businesses, local customers and the public in their locality essentially determines the everyday running and daily operations of the company. Hence, in order to remain profitable, it is important that companies gain local attention and visibility within their localities. Local SEO allows companies to do just that as it essentially involves the creation of a local business listing on Google that contains all details about a company’s location, its products, services, operating hours, and contact details. Customers are likely to place their trust in a company that has all its details available online rather than trusting a company that doesn’t. infact, customers may not even be able to find local businesses that do not have an online presence.
- Local SEO catches onto the trend of buying local
A growing trend of hyperlocal purchases and hyperlocal supply chains has created conscious consumers that seek out purchasing from local companies and small businesses. That is to say, customers are on the lookout for local companies that produce, operate and sell locally in an effort to promote small business and reduce their carbon footprint. Businesses can take advantage of this growing trend by focusing their efforts on local SEO and garnering local crowds for their products and services. Customers are looking to spend their money and direct their purchases towards small producers where their money actually makes a difference, rather than contributing to big players that are involved in employee maltreatment and poor HR policies. Local SEO can greatly help companies in this regard.