Establishing and developing a business in the 21st century comes with a lot of efficiency and complexity at the same time. In this technologically forward epoch, setting up a business infrastructure at a certain location, putting up banners, and distributing pamphlets are just not enough. A strong social media presence and online campaigns are key factors to grow a business in 2021.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a very important tool that is highly useful to draw customer traffic to your business website and/or social media accounts that are actively marketing and promoting your business.
There are many types and levels of SEOs that service a huge number of businesses, ranging from start-ups to multinational corporations. Local SEO is one such SEO tool that plays a specific role for a specific customer base and region and it is highly impactful for a certain kind of niche and levels of businesses.
Local Search Engine Optimization
Local search engine optimization is a specific type of SEO where the sole purpose is to direct web traffic of certain local regions towards the business site or account.
Any searches requesting services and/or products from the local region will direct that user towards these business sites. This is a very effective tool to capture the local area’s customer base. This also helps to announce the business’s product and/or service availability to that area’s potential customers.
Recent research calculated that 46% of all Google searches are related to local product and/or service queries and 88% of such queries have led to a positive outcome like a phone call or email inquiry to that particular business and even a physical show up to the intended business location within 48 hours.
Google is not the only search engine that can provide such positive results. The same is also effective for other search engines like Microsoft Edge, Bing, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera.
Many small businesses and start-ups that specifically target the local area for their in-flow customers will make a huge benefit from using this SEO tool. This will give the much-added advantage that is necessary for a business to grow.
There are many factors that search engine giants like Google take into account to improve local search results. Two of the most important factors are the business sites’ ranking signal and the searcher’s active location.
Other key factors that contribute to these are link signals, personalization, citation signals, social signals, and many more.
Keywords
Certain keywords are necessary for better optimization results. Local colloquial terms are very popular in certain regions and they tend to influence that area’s search vocabulary.
Certain words like “near me”, “around me”, and “in [area name]” are found to be widely used by many users. Researching such local SEO keywords and injecting them into their respective business sites, advertising emails and social media posts actively drive the algorithm to push these online properties to the users in need.
Nabil Ansari SEO Expert recommends using SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, and Ahrefs for keyword research. You don’t have to use all of them, but using just one of them is more than enough to get you all the keywords you are looking for. But having Ahrefs and SEMrush is the best combination.
It all depends on what kind of budget you are working with.
GMB Optimization
Google My Business is a free tool that has very high usefulness in optimizing search results. This plays a key role in managing a business’s presence and it boosts the Google ranking factor when we claim our business into its list.
This tool makes key business information easily accessible to the public on Google search and Google Maps. Other features like directing high traffic to the intended business site, building customer goodwill, and ascertaining feedback. These play a major role in solidifying trust and expanding business boundaries.
Feedback Management
Feedback is crucial for the improvement of a business but its importance is not restricted to this. Proper feedback and an online rating system cater to SEO algorithms.
Google prefers to push traffic to business websites that have a proper rating and review system and there are many active participants with positive reviews and ratings for certain products and/or services of a certain business.
This develops trust with both customers and Google or other SEO agencies. There should be active and positive feedback on that particular business website, along with other social media platforms like Facebook for algorithms to push that particular website and its contents. This is a very important factor that plays a major role in driving large volumes of web traffic.
On-Site Optimization
Apart from off-site optimization, few on-site optimizations require attention. These include building internal links, checking content quality, and using title tags. The more popular tags and keywords we utilize, the better the optimization.
Link Channeling
This is another optimizing process where links are created and channelized to other websites. This is a simple method but the execution is quite tricky. Channelizing these internal links to other websites will direct traffic from that site to this.
Google analyzes this factor to be quite reliable and positive. It in turn boosts its algorithm to push your website and other business information to more people.
Guidelines For Large Enterprises
There are few important guidelines if your business is a rather larger enterprise with or without several branches and/or franchises in multiple locations. They are the following:
- Separate websites, review pages, and social media pages and/or accounts are recommended for businesses with multiple branches, franchises in multiple locations.
- Creating separate optimizations for each location is advisable.
- Every page should have separate priorities and link channelings should be carried out accordingly.
Finally, all these are the basics of Local SEOs. Small businesses and start-ups can kick start their business by using such useful tools and methods. Large enterprises will benefit a lot from these opportunities and executing the right way will bring significant positive changes.
Local SEO agencies also provide such SEO services but they will charge a separate fee. Taking their assistance is a completely personal choice. In terms of some larger companies and multinational corporations, SEO agencies play a huge role in marketing their services because of the sheer scale of business that they are running.