When it comes to gaining business online through your website, local SEO is a lot more complex than a standard SEO campaign. A business targeting the entirety of the UK will have a completely different SEO strategy to a local business targeting a specific region. With Google’s algorithms changing all the time, it’s important to understand how to rank locally for your products and services, and why you need to!

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is the process of optimising on page and off page elements of your website to rank locally in the search results. Local SEO is for businesses that have a physical address, such as a café or gym, whose target market is within the local area of their business. With the rise of mobile phone usage in recent years, the number of queries for users looking for products or services in their area has also seen a significant rise which has made Local SEO more competitive, and necessary, than ever before.

A study carried out to analyse the behaviour of users searching for a local business in their area showed that 88% of users then went on to call or visit that business within the next 24 hours!

 

How Will Local SEO Benefit My Business?

There are many ways that optimising your website for local SEO will benefit your business, including:

  • Mobile and desktop users are actively searching for local services like yours, in fact – 46% of all Google searches are local searches!
  • By implementing a local strategy and submitting your website to local citation directories, you could be found by up to 64% of all local searchers that use directories and search engines to find local services
  • 78% of local searches made on mobile result in a lead or sale
  • In 2015, mobile Internet usage was declared higher than on desktop and more users are using mobiles for local searches
  • Traditional advertising such as local newspapers are becoming increasingly more irrelevant in the days of online marketing, with some local newspapers declaring that they have lost up to 80% of their readership in the last 20 years

Get in touch with our team of SEO experts to discuss how local SEO can help your local business succeed!