What Is Local SEO And Why Is It Important

Local Search marketing or “local SEO” as it is more popularly known, is a term that is quite familiar to business owners with a website nowadays. To understand local SEO, we have to understand the term SEO first. The term Search Engine Optimization or SEO is given to processes that make a website appear higher up in the list of results on a search engine. In search engines queries are put in which, when searched, provide a number of links as a search result. The most relevant results are displayed at the very beginning of the result page which have a comparatively increased probability of being clicked on. It is needless to mention that businesses that appear at the very beginning have a higher exposure.

What is local SEO? Who can use it?

Local SEO is a kind of SEO that has its own distinct characteristics. Local SEO is relevant for businesses that serve customers at a physical location who also have a website online. Local SEO is also for businesses that exclusively exist online but serve a particular area. For example establishments that serve local populace like bars, stores, restaurants, hospitals need local SEO for their websites.

Service professionals who have a website like plumbers, construction workers can also reap the benefits of local SEO. If you have a business that exists or caters to customers in India you need to hire the services of local SEO services in India in order to increase the exposure of the business.

Big businesses versus local businesses

In this day and age, when the giants of the retail world and online shopping have taken over the lion’s share of the market, at least online, there are only a few alternatives left for small and local business owners to still remain competitive in the market. One of the viable alternatives which local businesses can make use of is local SEO. If you Google for a product online, you’ll find that the likes of Amazon and Walmart dominate the result page when it comes to search rankings. But local SEOs prefer local businesses over the big businesses.

Thus, Local businesses using local SEOs are more likely to rank up in the search results and still stay competitive despite the competition offered by the big retailers. In simpler terms, Local businesses that have a website can use local SEO to make their website more visible to the local customers.

How Local SEOs work

Google displays local results based on three considerations.

1- Whether the result is relevant.

2- Prominence of your company, as in, the presence of your company’s name in relevant areas of the web.

3- How close is the result to user who is searching or “Proximity”?

Local SEOs help bring in customers who are from a specific area or location. To increase the number of customers from your locality visiting your store you can employ SEO strategies, so that whenever a resident of the locality which your establishment serves, googles for a product or service that you offer, your website appears in the very beginning of the search results. Most of the online traffic comes from Google. To succeed in this venture of local search engine optimization, you need to focus on Google’s SEO properties. Other search engines are relevant as well but they are not as impactful as Google.