Over the years, the way small businesses run and attract their target customers has changed drastically. Thanks to various updates to the search engines, and improving mobile technology, it’s now much easier for consumers to find the products, services, and brands they’re searching for nearby.
Today, local SEO is more important than ever before. As customers spend more time glued to their phone, helping them figure out where they should go for lunch, which stores they should visit, and more, it’s crucial for you to make sure that your brand has a local presence.
Why Local SEO Works
The small business industry might be primarily digital, but that doesn’t make local advertising any less important. After all, customers aren’t going to be searching for your business in the newspaper anymore. If they want to figure out where they should go to get the best shoes in Sydney, or the best repair company in Melbourne, they’re going to look online.
Engaging in Local SEO practices, such as making sure that you rank for geographical works linked to your target audience, helps to ensure that your digital efforts will bring you the customers that are right for your business. After all, you don’t want to invest all your advertising money into a digital campaign that attracts the attention of people who are nowhere near your business, when you’re not offering something you can ship or post across local boundaries.
Besides giving you access to your ideal audience, local SEO also helps to boost your authority as a brand too. When people are deciding who to do business with, even in brick-and-mortar shops, they go online to read reviews and find information. If you don’t have an obvious online presence, then your customers simply won’t trust you.
Local SEO Tactics that Still Work Today
Although SEO practices have changed drastically over the years, there are some techniques that still remain essential in the world of local SEO today. Though you might not be able to stuff your content full of keywords in an attempt to get the right results, for instance, you can still focus on certain keywords, used within relevant content, to enhance your rankings.
Just some of the things you can do to improve local SEO include:
- Clarifying the meta title and content description: The meta title and description of your content help to clarify your content to Google and your readers. Including geographical keywords and local SEO Terms in these areas will help Google to understand the context of your posts so that it knows where to rank you. At the same time, it’ll make it easier for you to attract the right customers to your posts.
- Google My Business: Google My Business is still an essential practice for local business. When you complete your Google My Business page and fill in the right information, you can ensure that your company gets the right exposure on local searches.
- Online reviews and listings: Finally, listing websites and review websites will always be beneficial to local SEO. After all, when your customer goes online to research your company, they want to know information like where you are, what your phone number is, and what other people think about you. By getting yourself on directory websites and review sites, you increase your chances of being seen and ensure that you show yourself to be an authority in Google’s eyes.
