Local SEO’s are important
In the digital age, search engines have become a fundamental tool for all consumers, since it is from them that they find contents, products and services that they are looking for. Because of that, the implementation of SEO strategies are fundamental for the success of a brand, online and offline. One of the strategies that is highlighted in this scene is local SEO.
SEO and Local SEO
The term SEO (Search Engine Optimization), takes into account all the strategies that can be used with the goal of improving a website’s positioning in a search engine.
Google is the most used search engine, with over a 90% market share, so it’s natural that SEO specialists focus on understanding the process used by this company to determine the relevance of each website, and it makes it possible to present the results in an orderly manner. To explain this complex process in a fairly way, you need to understand what’s Google Index. Google is continuously looking for pages all over the internet and when it finds a new URL, either if it is new or previously identified, this page is rendered, visited, and all of its contents are analyzed (from the text to the visual contents). After this, the algorithm tries to understand the contents of the page so they can add it to Google Index, which works as a huge database inside Google’s servers. Google itself explains in a simplified way how this system works.
This means that, when a search is conducted inside this search engine, algorithms created by Google search inside this index (and not all of the internet, in a real-time search), so that it can rapidly create a list of websites that correspond to the search that was done. To determine the order of results, there are multiple factors taking into account, from its contents to the speed of loading the webpage and mobile optimization, among others.
It is the understanding in all of these computational phenomena that will establish parameters that are needed to work actively in a way that a website’s content communicates
with Google’s algorithms and signal their relevance. That way, optimizing a website’s SEO is to optimize the right elements in the best way possible for a digital footprint.
At this time, the importance of these measures is widely recognized, in their direct and indirect forms, as a huge slice of the organizations has been working to facilitate their encounter with the target through searches conducted at Google. It is important to note that the success of these measures depends on a continuous job in a medium to long term, not having a miraculous way to bring immediate and effective results that takes the page rapidly to the top of the first page of results in google for more generic searches.
Local SEO can be seen as a subcategory of SEO. By attributing a bigger importance to proximity and regional factors, the way it works will be necessarily different, which also means it has to be worked around differently. Let’s understand why local SEO strategies are important:
Let’s understand why local SEO strategies are important:
70%
Local SEO: the facts and their importance
almost 50%
of all searches in Google are considered local
almost 80%
of local search in smartphones convert into sales
88%
of local business search in smartphones result in a call or visit within 24h
“Near me” searches
increase considerably each year, and half of them led to a store visit
If a company or brand doesn’t show up
in the front pages of results, the consumer won’t even consider it
Data from GO-Gulf
Nowadays, any business has to have a digital presence, and the data mentioned above proves the importance of investing in local SEO and to generate traffic into local businesses. After all, the offline success of a company depends evermore on their online presence.This doesn't mean that a small shop has to necessarily invest in e-commerce and start to sell online, but it needs to be on the digital world so that it can be found by their target audience through internet – even if that target audience is exclusively a small local community. The same principle applies to builders, electricians, plumbers and any other worker that provides services and goes into their customers' houses. In all of these cases every digital strategy adopted is always possible and recommendable to optimise into their local SEO.
Another relevant aspect is the quality of traffic generated by local searches. Google's focus is presenting relevant results whilst taking into account the proximity and intention of users making the probability of a search result turn into a high volume of sales. This happens because the users receive information about brands and local companies at the exact moment that they are searching for one product or service. That means it targets consumers in a decisive moment of their purchase journey.
In that way, geographical limitations of the local searches makes it that there is less competition, allowing us to have more results from a small investment in SEO – This is also considered one of the best marketing solutions with a cost/benefit ratio. Google's algorithm favours small and medium businesses instead of the big digital giants such as Amazon, ending up balancing the competitive scale.
It’s time to pay attention to your local SEO for your business.