The internet has grown into an enormous phenomenon filled with billions of websites. Competing in such a field is daunting, especially for small business owners attempting to promote their local businesses. There is, however, different ways through which such companies can stand out and connect to their consumers through local SEO.

Local SEO assists service-based and brick and motor businesses to be found through search, even while competing with national and large brands that boast of massive online following.

What is Local Search Engine Optimisation?

SEO refers to the techniques, strategies, and tactics that digital marketers use to ensure their businesses appear organically when a user queries for particular keywords that are often related to the business’ services or products.

For instance, a hair salon would want its brand to show up organically when an internet user queries the keyword “hair salon” on his search engine. A plumbing firm would hope that its brand shows up on the search engine result pages immediately a user searches for the keyword “plumber.”

Firms want to be on the first page of result pages when a user searches for a keyword related to their services, products, or brand. SEO helps businesses achieve this.

What is the Difference Between Local SEO and SEO?

Companies that can offer their products or services to anyone anywhere, such as insurance firms and online software vendors, want users all over the world to find them through search. SEO in all is to optimize for the keywords or search terms locally, nationwide or international.

Local SEO is a subset of SEO. Local SEO refers to the techniques, strategies, and tactics that digital marketers apply to ensure that their sites show up when local users key in particular keywords. Local service-based and brick and motor businesses do not need users from all over the globe to find them. They only need traffic from local users. Local SEO strategies assist such firms in achieving this.

For instance, a hair salon in Melbourne does not need someone in Sydney to find the brand after inputting the keyword “hair salon.” Most likely, that searcher will not become a customer. The hair salon, therefore, will use local SEO to make sure that people in Melbourne can find them.

How Local SEO Works

Local SEO applies similar rules to general SEO. For instance, of the three categories that drive local search engine optimisation, two of them are also applied in general SEO.

1. Prominence: Search engines hope to display results from well-known publications and brands. Prominence will help them to determine which sites are trustworthy and popular. For this reason, sites with high online authority will enjoy high search rankings.

2. Relevance: Search engines hope to display relevant results that match what the searcher wishes to find. Relevance assists the search engines to match search phrases and results.

Both prominence and relevance are applied in general SEO.

Generally, search engines hope to display results from prominent and relevant websites that are related to the search phrases keyed. For local SEO, however, search engines will consider one more factor: proximity.

3. Proximity: Search engines wish to present results that the user can use. For this reason, they prioritize results that are close to the user if the search is closely related to a local requirement. Proximity is the distance between the location of the firm presented in the search results page and the searcher.

Things to consider for Local SEO

Ensure Your Site is Mobile Friendly

Mobile-friendly sites are responsive that automatically reposition their layout so that the content remains easy to read on different screen sizes. It is imperative to note that search engines give better rankings to responsive websites.

Mobile-friendliness remains a crucial ranking factor as numerous searches are conducted through mobile devices. Google has also rolled out mobile-first indexing.

Poor mobile experiences will cripple your SEO endeavors and drive away traffic. Get this aspect right from the start by running tests before publishing your website.

Ensure that your site works well enough by using the mobile-friendly test application on Google. Enter your URL, and the application will report back with any issues that might exist on your site’s mobile version.

Ensure Optimal Site Speed & Usability:

Users hope to have a good experience while scrolling a site. They hope that it looks good and appropriate on their screen, and they also hope that it loads quickly enough. That is why search engines will consider page load speeds to be a crucial ranking factor.

Search engines give high rankings to sites that can load fast enough.

Fast loading sites:

Offer better user experience

Make your website easy to crawl. This helps the search engines to understand your content quickly.

Increase conversions and reduce bounce rates. This informs search engines that your site is useful to users and engaging.

Google assists developers to check their site’s speed. Consider using the PageSpeed Insights (https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/) application to measure your site’s speed.

The tool will display loading scores for the desktop and mobile versions of your website immediately you enter your website’s URL. The application will also offer tips for what you can change to fasten your site.

To improve the speed of your website:

• Reduce image sizes.
• Enable browser caching
• Use file compression to minimize the size of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files.
• Reduce redirects.

Get Backlinks for your Website

Backlinks are vital since they connect sites, show intricate relationships between different information, and assist search engines in deciding which content is useful and valuable.

Search engines will conclude that your site is valuable once you have quality links pointing to your website. Therefore, you should come up with a plan to build backlinks to your site.

Consider the following ideas:

• Approach authoritative bloggers to review your site
• Send press releases to news sites
• Guest blog for other sites
• Share links with other businesses
• Create good content and ask other websites to link back to it as a resource.
• List the business in local directories

Verve Innovation pride in many years of experience and a mix of SEO experts who consistently deliver excellent results. Our services include Local SEO, SEO, Pay Per Click, eCommerce Website Design, link building, email and social media marketing, and conversion rate optimisation. Contact us via 1300 683 783 to find out how we can be of help.