As a small business owner acquiring new customers for your business is pretty consistently a top priority and local SEO is the most effective strategy to do.
Local SEO is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for local businesses. Local SEO is the process of optimizing your website and your online presence so that when people searching for the products or services that you offer can find you. It is designed to get your business listed on Google Maps via Google My Business platform.
We all know that the world searches on Google and Local SEO contains the power to turn those searchers into your regular customers. 72% of consumers who conduct a local search usually visit a local store within an 8-kilometer radius. Most users highly recommend a brand after having a positive mobile experience, therefore your website needs to be mobile-friendly so that when visitors come to your website, they are easily able to navigate and find whatever information or product they are looking for. Local SEO ensures that consumers searching for your products or services are able to find you. If you are not showing up in Google search results and your competitors are, you are just losing on a lot of customers to your competitors.
In comparison to ads, Local SEO has a much better ROI than ads as 85% of the people click on the organic results present on the SERPs in comparison to 15% who click on advertisements. Local SEO provides highly directed traffic; it also provides a better conversion rate when you compare it to ads. A recent study says that 76% of mobile searchers visit a business within a day of searching, and 28% of people end up buying.
The next essential block in Local SEO is reviews. Reviews build trust and credibility and form an essential part of local SEO. A significant part of the audience today read reviews and business responses before they decide to purchase a product or acquire any service, so make sure to get a 5-star review from your customers who regularly purchase from you.
The only reason for doing Local SEO is to target the people in the area where your local business is established and the reason why you should consider this is that in the last two years there has been a 500% increase in mobile searches with “near me” term in it. By doing Local SEO, you are only making it easier for your customers to interact with your business and parallelly growing it.