Top 3 Reasons Why Local SEO Services are SO Important

Local SEO sounds pretty self-explanatory. Most people naturally shop and buy locally. In fact, 86% of people jump on a search engine to look for local services. Unfortunately, local SEO is often overlooked. That’s why we have put together an informative bit with the top reasons why local SEO services are so important.

Reason #1: Local Searches = Local Sales

If you have a business in the heart of London, but that is not included in your keywords chances are you are missing out on excellent local customers. The best way to sell is by targeting your audience and the first part of that is the location.

Claim your business listing – So many people miss this vital step but local SEO services know this is one of the first things to do. It’s easy too. Simply go to Google and claim your business (Google My Business). Add all the important info you need your customers to see like hours of operation, telephone numbers, your addresses, and reviews.
Location pages on your site – search engine bots crawl sites so they can provide the best matches. By making sure each of your pages contains your location your audience will find you faster and easier.
Reputation is huge when it comes to ranking, so make sure you have local listings on Yelp and Citysearch. Great reviews are the easiest way to “sell” your business to others.

Reason #2: Optimizing Your Content

Local SEO services know that content is one of the most important elements of all SEO. This is why they use what’s called on-page SEO. Here are some of the techniques that go into making content that is optimized on EVERY page:

Keywords – this is usually the first thing people think of when they hear SEO and for good reason. Using the right keywords will guarantee that you attract your targeted market and rank well on SERPs. Local SEO services will assist you in only choosing relevant keywords that drive and convert traffic in your area
Loading time – 46% of people say waiting for a site to load pushes them away. Doing an in-depth SEO audit will highlight all of these issues on each of your pages. Loading times can be affected by images and videos that are not compressed, bad hosting, and plugins. If your page takes longer than 3 seconds chances are you have lost a customer.
100% responsive – Your site has to be mobile-friendly. Google has a great free tool called, you guessed it, mobile-friendly tool. If your site isn’t responsive people will run to one that is.

Reason #3: Analyze This

Analytics is by far one of the most important ways to understand how your site is doing. You can analyze and test everything from your content, UX, rankings, various A/B tests and more. Here are a few tips for how to use analysis and what to expect from a local SEO service as well.

Check out your competition- you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You can easily look at your competitors and see how your site holds up. This gives you great ideas as to keywords they are using, content length and topics, and more.
Backlinks – knowing who to work with that will link back to your website is a huge advantage.
Sitemap – any good local SEO service will submit your sitemap for an overall understanding of what needs work. This is usually done on the Google Search Console and provides excellent analysis on every page that is missing or updates that are not showing up, and more.

Bonus Tip:

Local forums and sharing your business and story on local social media groups are a great way to get out there. Quora and Facebook are both excellent places to increase your audience and provide information.

Takeaway

Getting local SEO services set up is a must and doesn’t have to be difficult. With a little bit of research, you can find a great group of SEO experts that understand the importance of Local SEO. Local searches add up to tons of local sales. Why try to attract people out of the area when there are so many customers looking for you next door. Once they arrive at your business site, make sure it is totally optimized, mobile-friendly with fast-loading pages and great content. Lastly, use analytics constantly to “grade” your site and make improvements. Check out your competition and up your game.