THE IMPORTANCE OF LOCAL SEO FOR ANY BUSINESS

And you may wonder … What is LOCAL SEO and how does it influence my walk-ins in Retail Stores ?

If you have a Retail Store, and you want to know some tips to increase the visibility of your business and therefore increase your sales it is very important your visibility on the search results pages (SERPs), such as in the Google search engine, which is the “internet” gateway for your business in the XXI century.

LOCAL SEO is a branch of SEO positioning that focuses on optimizing your website in order to be found in organic and natural local search results.

What is LOCAL SEO for?

As we mentioned in the previous introduction, users and future local clients trust the internet to find information about the products or services they need, so now you understand when we tell you that this is very important, and it is time to take it seriously, to achieve greater visibility in those search results.

To understand it easily, a local search achieve some search terms (which would be the keywords that define your business), such as all these terms:

• Plumbers near me
• Toy shops near me
• Hairdressers in (+ city name)
• Italian restaurants in (+ city name)

Local SEO is a strategic process that tries to highlight the optimization efforts of local brick-and-mortar businesses, means, the activity a company has in offline mode, that is, with the use of your physical store, as the ONLY protagonist of its commercial offer, to promote and sell its products or services to the final customer.

Those who can benefit the most from LOCAL SEO are specially the following market sectors:

Freelance and SMEs: local SEO if you do it right, will help your business appear in the first Google searches for that location. Thus, the better positioned your business is, the greater the probability that your potential customers will contact you requesting information about your products or services. What this translates into leads oportunities! 

Restaurants: these types of businesses benefit a lot from local SEO due to the immediacy and continuous updating of their customers’ reviews and photos on social networks. And local address information on search results pages (SERPs).

Specialized Medical Services: in this case, most people do not want to travel very far from their houses, to visit a doctor for a common consultation. So the location is the main reason.

In some cases, the time factor is fundamental:

24 hours Service Companies, Plumbers, etc.: when someone needs an immediate service because an appliance has broken down at home, or there has been a breakdown in their home, they always look for the closest location to their home simply because of the urgency involved. 

Agencies, Notaries, Printers, etc.: most people always want to find these places quickly and easily, as this involves being able to bring their fulfillment papers as soon as possible.

🌟 THE ADVANTAGES OF LOCAL SEO 🌟

The following statistics show and speak from themselves, the importance of local search for companies and its advantages:

#1. In the last two years, comparable “near me” searches have increased more than 150%. 

#2. 71% of people search for the location of a business to confirm its existence before going to visit it for the first time. 

#3. 1 in 3 searches via smartphone were conducted just before arriving at the physical store. 

#4. 60% of the adult population conducts searches for local services or product information via their smartphones and/or tablets.

#5. 18% of local mobile searches lead to a sale within one day. 

#6. In the last two years, mobile searches for “product reviews” increased by more than 35%.

#7. 1 in 4 customers define themselves as ROPO: they get information online and buy in-store. 

#8. 60% of smartphone users have contacted a company directly via search results (f.e.: direct “click and call” button).

Source: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and-mobile/local-search-mobile-search-micro-moments/

What is the Company Card Profile and how does it influence my LOCAL SEO?

The Company Card Profile is made through the Google My Business (GMB) platform. 

This card includes relevant information about your business. With some data, like for instance, your postal address, opening hours, photos, reviews and customer recommendations, etc … It also offers direct options, such as access buttons to your website, how to get to your business registered in the geographical coordinates of the map, or even the direct call button.

John Mueller: l is the visible face of the Google company in the SEO Community.

“When you set up GMB, it automatically assigns you a location. That makes it a little easier”.

Therefore, don’t you think you should have this information in the most updated and careful way to be able to attract any user?

 

For Google all these little details count, and really 100%. Specially, that all the information of our Card is well optimized, the reviews and scores of our customers (which we know are not always completely reliable, but for Google, who is the one who will show us more or less on the internet to improve dour LOCAL SEO and therefore, show us or not in their search engines).