Why Is Local SEO So Important to Your Business?

How do new customers find your website? Do they usually Google you?

Google hosts 92.2% of the world’s searches.

If your website isn’t on the first few pages of Google search results for your localised search terms you’re missing out. Chances are, local customers Google what you do + their local town or city when they’re searching.

Do you want to increase your customer base and make more local sales? Don’t underestimate the importance of local SEO (search engine optimisation).

Read on to learn more.

What Is Local SEO?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) raises your website in Google’s results without you needing to spend any money on Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.

You can use a free keyword planner to find keywords that are optimal for your business. Then, add them to your onsite copy and blogs. This will help Google’s algorithms to realise that your website is relevant to your customers and improve your Google results rankings.

You should also add the same keywords to the metadata on your website.

You can add the keywords to your Meta Description (this is the blurb shown on Google search results), the title of the page (this is usually in the bar right at the top of the browser), the H1 (this should be the title at the top of the page) and even the Image Alt, this is the name that Google reads for your first image.

By ensuring the search terms your local customers use are featured in the metadata of your website and on-page content you can gradually place higher and higher in Google search results and beat out your competition.

Brand Your Business Beautifully

Let’s say you do the search engine optimization we explained above. Can you convert them all to sales?

New customers will judge your business (and whether they can trust it) on the quality of your website’s look and feel. They will check that your logos match on Instagram and your website and expect the correct framing for them too.

Build credibility and a good reputation by ensuring that your social media images are all formatted correctly. Also know your sizes, a lot of marketing experts recommend if you want to save time make your images 1280 x 960.

Why?

Because it’s the size that works great on Facebook as both a photo post and a large shared link image and also translates well on other social media platforms.

Ask The Important Questions

In marketing, we often talk about qualitative vs quantitative data. To break that down, qualitative data is something like the result of a survey where local customers say they love your brand.

Quantitative data, meanwhile, are just the cold hard facts. How many sales did you make this month compared to last month

Positive reviews, survey responses and even likes and love hearts on social media indicate a positive brand reputation which is important. However, it doesn’t necessarily convert into sales and revenue for your business.

To analyse that, we need to dig deeper into quantitative analysis. Do social media posts drive new customers to your website? If not, why not?

Have you ever bought something and been asked: ‘how did you hear about us?’ This is one of the most important questions you can ask your customers. It helps you to see where in the sales funnel the majority of your customers are coming from and strategise on how to boost sales in that channel.

Not sure where your customers come from? It might be time to invest in a customer relationship management tool (CRM).

A CRM is a piece of software that enables you to store customer data safely and securely and track their relationship with you. The top CRMs are HubSpot, SalesForce and FreshWorks.

Local SEO Can Help Drive Local Sales

To summarise, there are simple actionable things that you can do to improve your local SEO and attract more local customers.

We’re specialists in SEO services, digital marketing strategy, PPC, social media, content creation and so much more.

Want advice from marketing professionals? We’re here to help small to medium businesses like yours. Reach out to us today, and we can talk about your local SEO.