If you own a small business, it’s important to invest in your local marketing. Your local customers are your own community members. They make up a large portion of your direct target audience and are the main source of customers who will support you. So, to increase your brand awareness among local clients, you must invest in local SEO.
You may Like :
Best Affordable SEO for Small Businesses in Houston
How Does Marketing Affect You in 2021? – A Complete Guide
8 Reasons Why Video Marketing Is So Powerful in 2021
What Is SEO in Business?
SEO is the acronym for “Search Engine Optimization.” SEO improves your website’s visibility for relevant searches by your customers seeking your products and services. The better visibility your pages have in the search results, the more likely you are to attract your target audience’s attention to your business.
SEO boosts your website and social media presence by showing your business on the top of the relevant search page, ultimately, boosting the traffic and exposure to your business.
What Is Local SEO?
Local SEO is making your brand visible to local customers by optimizing search engines that are relevant to your local area. This increases the chances of your local audience becoming supporters and buyers.
How does Local SEO Work?
When a person searches for a product or service on a search engine, like Google or Yahoo, the best results show up on the top of that search.
SEO continues to advance by analyzing searches that are relevant to the customer’s search, especially within local areas. People typically search for businesses in their local area for convenience. Location, local culture words and areas are very important when boosting your visibility to the community that your business lives in.
Try this: Search for “Pizza Restaurants” on Google. IT will pull up a list of restaurants near your location and not from farther places.
Why is Local SEO Important for Small Businesses?
Search engines have become much more advanced as marketing thrives in the digital world. It’s important to use the relevant keywords that will attract your target audience. To find your local customers, incorporate local ranking factors in your SEO marketing strategy.
Google reported that since 2019, there has been a 900% increase in searches that included “near me” within the search.
Another report by Review Trackers shows that above 35% of Google searches have local intent.
This means that 35% of the searches done by the people in your area are looking for local products and services.
Local ranking factors are based on three things.
- Relevance
- Distance
- Prominence
- Relevance means how relevant your business profile is when compared to what your customers are searching for. Adding complete business details will help search engines analyze whether your services or products match the geographical searches, which increases local rankings.
- Distance. Google says that if users don’t specify their intended location in the search bar, they calculate the distance based on their findings for that location.
- Prominence means how well your brand is known to Google and among people. Backlinks and good reviews are also a way to increase your brand awareness and rankings.
Benefits of Local SEO for Small Business:
1) Increases Online Visibility
Over the last two years, the internet has gained a drastic amount of users daily. According to stats, 80% of American internet users made at least one online purchase.
The digital world allows people to search for and buy whatever they need at any given moment and time. It’s become a great convenience and continues to increase in demand every day. Your online visbility is essential to thrive.
Local SEO increases your online presence and is considered a customer-friendly business strategy.
Read Also : Best Social Media Training in Houston
2) Decreases Advertisement Costs
If your website rankings on search results are high, it would increase your organic growth and help you cut down on advertisement costs.
3) Helps Reach Your Target Audience
As said earlier, SEO is becoming more advanced each day. For small businesses, it’s easier to target local customers than it is to target the whole world.
People living in your city, town or area are most likely searching for services that are nearby and easily accessible.
6 Easy Small Business Marketing Strategies that work in Houston
4) Boosts Web Traffic
Increased traffic means greater chances of attracting customers to your services. Local SEO boosts web traffic and increases the possibilities of getting profitable sales.
5) Increases Customer Base
Local SEO increases the customer base by providing an easy-to-access platform to the audience.
Moreover, online content is easy to share, so if your potential customers get inspired by your services, they are likely to remember your offerings and spread the word about your business.
How To Improve Local SEO
1) Create Your Business Account Through Google:
If you create your business account through Google, it will let them store all your required business information, to increase your authority and prominence.
2) Work on Getting Reviews From Your Current Customers:
If your current customers are satisfied with your services, ask them to give you feedback.
Positive reviews attract and build trust among other customers. It also helps Google understand that your services are useful, so they increase local rankings in return.
3) Work on Mobile Optimization:
Smartphones made buying and finding anything online extremely convenient.
In 2017, research showed that more than 63% of users tend to visit websites from mobiles rather than desktops. Fast websites are also a crucial factor in increasing your local SEO. Our attention spans have shortened drastically as our convenience to everything has increased. Websites that take longer than 3 seconds to load tend to lower your SEO ranking.
4) High-Quality Backlinks:
Backlinking means other websites will link your page on their website. Getting high-quality backlinks from relevant websites improves local SEO.
5) Add Your Business to Google Maps
Adding your business to Google Maps helps your customers with their buying decision by visibly showing your location and measurement of distance when they seek GPS direction.
6) Keyword Optimization:
You should know what your audience is searching for then incorporate those keywords in your content. In this way, your content will have the solutions for local search queries and search engines will rank your website.
Why small businesses need local SEO
Verdict:
Local SEO helps your customers find you more easily and increases your online presence among potential buyers.
SEO can be a complex process as it takes time to develop, execute and evaluate its success. It is best to hire a professional marketing and SEO expert and consultant, such as Jha Allen LLC, for any additional help with these strategies.
Jha Allen LLC is a highly respected and known marketing consultant from the Houston area. She and her team have helped many businesses build a strong brand and online presence. As a Houston resident, she knows what to do to make your business stand out. Get in touch with Jha today!