The Valen Digital SEO & Marketing Blog

As a local business, you need to have a constant influx of leads to enable your business to be successful. Traditionally you had to rely upon getting your business in front of potential customers via newspapers, leaflets or your local yellow pages directory. You know the one, that big yellow book that you never opened yourself. That was until the internet exploded. Businesses bent over backwards to get online in the hope to acquire new business from there website. As you probably experienced, even then you had to market your business using organic SEO campaigns and/or PPC platforms like Google AdWords. All of which can be expensive for a small business. However, a small local business can still leverage SEO. Specifically a branch of SEO called Local SEO to get new business. We are going to explore what local SEO is. How it be a powerful tool to acquire new customers and the steps you can take to ensure your online presence is optimised so even a beginner can leverage our guide to local SEO to its fullest extent. All of this and more without breaking the bank! Table of Contents. What is Local SEO? Local Vs Organic SEO Who Benefits from Local SEO? What Influences local SEO? Optimise your GMB Listing Bing Places Apple Maps Gather NAP citations Onsite SEO Local Reviews Want to skip the intros and the ‘boring’ stuff and are just too eager to start learning from our guide to local SEO then click here. 1: What is local SEO? To put it simply. Local SEO is ensuring your online properties (your website, Google Business listing etc.) are optimised to attract more traffic from mobile searches conducted by users in your local area. A recent statistic shows that 46% of all searches conducted using the Google search engine are looking for local information. And Google’s search engine isn’t the only one being used for local searches either. You also have Bing, Apple Maps, Yelp, Thompson local etc all being used to look for local businesses and information. Utilising local SEO will help you to promote your business, products and services to local customers. 2: Local vs Organic SEO. One of the biggest differences between organic SEO and local SEO is that you are optimising to get included in what is commonly referred to as the ‘local map pack’. These results display local business to where the user is searching from and above any organic results. The aim of local SEO is to rank higher than other local businesses and get into what is also commonly referred to as the ‘Golden 3’ map results for any local searches. One thing to note. Depending on what search is being conducted Google may display ads above the local map pack too! The map pack results can command up to 33% of the clicks for a search enquiry according to this study. Whilst the organic results get around 40%. The ultimate objective for local SEO is to rank higher in the map pack. Any optimisation can also have a direct positive effect on your normal listing in the organic results (as shown in the image above). A key takeaway. Local SEO is almost always cheaper than your normal SEO and traditional marketing efforts. Brief History of local SEO. In the late 90’s SEO used to be much simpler. There wasn’t any difference at all (if any) between normal SEO and local SEO. It wasn’t until much later when Google launched its local business centre offering and then subsequent algorithm changes from 2005 onwards, that a stronger focus and emphasis was given to localised search results. One major update was the merging of Google maps data with its local business centre (LBC) product. Search engines, specifically Google concentrated on improving local results by: using a site’s ranking signals and the searcher's locale. to place and position them accordingly in local map results. The search engine would then display the most relevant local result to searchers in their vicinity. Then in 2014, the Pigeon update landed. This was the biggest update to affect local SEO in over a decade. Since then LBC has also undergone many changes. Form the map listings being cut from 7 listings to 3 and being rebranded a few times from LBC to Google Places. Then subsequently to the current Google MyBusiness. As mobile usage grows around the world so will the way the search engines algorithms work to display the most relevant results on a local level. Predominantly mobile searches are by users who want instant results. They need to find a business locally where they can buy a product or service they need. Thus, the search intent behind local searches is high. Around 56% according to stats resulting in higher click-through rates (CTR). 3: Who benefits most from local SEO? Without a doubt, local bricks and mortar business benefit the most. The high CTR rates and search intent means more customers for those listings in the top 3 local pack. But what specific bricks and mortar businesses benefit the most? Restaurants and Local Takeaways. These types of businesses will benefit the most. Searchers want good quality food places where they can go and enjoy a good meal or even order food from if it’s a takeaway. Being able to view the contact details of the business and read reviews will allow them to quickly decide if it’s a place they want to be eating from. Electricians, Gas Engineers & Plumbers These types of businesses are perfect for local search results. Think about it for a moment. When a person has an emergency as their boiler has broken, pipes are leaking or electric problems they are not very likely to pop down to their local DIY store. They want to get their problem fixed ASAP as it’s an emergency. Instead, they will pop over to a search engine and search for gas engineer near me or plumber near me. The results displayed will provide a quick and easy way to contact the business closest to them. Whilst still allowing the searcher to read reviews and information to make sure they are the most suitable for them. Law Firms. These types of business also benefit hugely. Customers often want to get free advice or book free consultations before they instruct a lawyer. Many lawyers provide a free 30 min consultation before being instructed. This gives not only the customer an opportunity to determine if they can help but also the business in question. The customer may need a more specialist service other than what they can provide. From a search perspective. Having the business listed in the top 3 local results will mean potential customers can also quickly contact you. This is especially advantageous for a business. Google will replace the business number with a button allowing it to be quickly dialled from a mobile phone without inputting the numbers. There are numerous other brick and mortar businesses that can benefit from local SEO like pest control services, HVAC specialists, Taxi services, Childminders & creches, Mobile mechanics to name a few. Businesses that aren’t normally suited to local SEO are those that offer online services, ecommerce shops and generally those that don’t want to share their contact details online. 4: What influences Local SEO. According to a study by Moz, the proximity of a business to a searcher is the no1 local-pack SEO ranking factor. The closer the searcher is to a local business the higher the probability that local business will be displayed within the local pack. It will then be competing for the top 3 positions with other businesses of a similar nature in that same locality. Local SEO isn’t that different from organic SEO. It’s still important to have a good link profile. To target the right keywords and making sure your content is relevant. But, the biggest influencing factor is having a properly optimised Google MyBusiness page. It’s not good enough to just have a Google MyBusiness listing. That simply won’t cut it. We go into detail below on how to properly optimise your MyBusiness listing. Second is link signals, which is not surprising. After all, it is the number 1 factor influencing organic search positions according to the stats for organic SEO, so it’s bound to be high on the list for local SEO too. However, the type of link building is slightly different to those that you would be building for an organic SEO campaign (but those types will still have a positive influence!). Then you have your on-page optimisation. Which basically means having your name, number and phone (NAP) on key pages of your site. Having content that’s not only relevant to organic search but also local searches is also important. Using your local keywords in titles and content pieces will provide even more relevance. Those are the basics that need to be covered if you want a fighting chance to get into the local map pack. Especially the top 3. Now that we have covered the ‘boring’ parts of our guide to local SEO let’s get cracking and optimise your properties to leverage Local SEO. 5: Optimise your GMB (Google My Business Listing) Your Google My Business listing is the foundation required for your local SEO efforts. It’s the most important one to create. Followed by Bing and Apple maps (we will cover those later on) which still play an important part for local SEO. As we discussed earlier. It’s the no1 ranking factor when it comes to getting into the local map results and generating new customers for your business. It's not difficult or overly complicated to set up Google My business. But it still does trip up many people due to the constant changes Google makes to its GMB platform. TIP: You will need a Google account to create your GMB listing. If you don’t have a Google account then it’s the perfect opportunity to create it using your domain email for that extra professional touch. Try and stay away from creating one with @gmail, @yahoo, @hotmail etc. Step 1 – Create/Claim you're My business. If you haven’t already, create/claim you're my business page here: https://business.google.com/create and follow the steps below. Google will ask you for your business name. After you enter it...

Why Firefox 3 is the Best

5 Open Source Programs For Web Designers

Skip links