Local SEO is an effective online marketing strategy to promote local businesses online. It helps businesses promote their product and services to potential local customers at the exact time the search is being performed online. This is achieved through a variety of methods, some of which differ from standard organic SEO practices.
Local SEO vs Standard Organic SEO
Local SEO has a geographical component whilst standard organic SEO does not necessarily have. This SEO approach is the practise of building signals of relevance around a specific location such as name, address and phone number (NAP). Search engines such as Google, take NAP data in account when geo-targeted searches are performed, and this will in turn play a role in how websites appear in the local search engine results pages (SERPs) as a local listing.
Standard organic SEO is a marketing practice typically revolves around a website. Websites are not limited to business and can have a boarder purpose that is external to providing goods and services. This SEO approach can be influenced by location but isn’t necessarily attached to a brick and mortar business.
In standard organic SEO search engines such as Google, prioritises relevance and critically analyses website content to ensure that relevancy. However, for local SEO in addition to prioritising relevance, search engines seek out trusted locations.
An element of SEO that improves rankings and increases traffics are links and they are important in both local SEO and standard organic SEO. However, with respect to local SEO, links are not always considered links in a tradition sense and citations play a pivotal role in this SEO approach. Local citations are recommended to contain at the very least NAPs or the name, address and phone number.
For example, Yelp is a source of local citation for a business.
Search engines such as Google increase the relevance and serves as validation the existence of a business in a specific geographic location.
Furthermore, the position in the search engine results page (SERP) vary from local SEO and standard organic SEO. The objective for standard organic SEO is to improve search visibility by ranking higher. While search engine, such as Google distinctively displays websites in a unique snippet on SERPs. This SERP display is dentified as a local listing and provides online users with more details such as business name, a valid physical address, phone number, along with other business-related details such as opening hours, social profiles and many more.
For example, McDonald in the local listing displays the physical address, phone number and opening hours.
4 Industries that benefit most from local SEO
Now that we understand the difference between local SEO and standard organic SEO here are 4 industries that would benefit most from local SEO.
1. Medical practices
Medical practices include dentists, doctors, psychologist and many more. These medical services typically contain a high degree of urgency and quality. Therefore, online users seeking medical services place great importance on the reputation and convenience of a medical practice centre.
By successfully implementing local SEO, medical practitioners can provide online users with more relevant details about their medical centre such as location, opening hours, services etc.
This can significantly improve lead quality, online reputation, build valuable relationships, and provide better insight surrounding the users who are seeking out your services.
Local SEO develops a localised online presence that is likely to appeal to potential patients in a local market as more than 50% of patients perform local searchers to identify a suitable health care practitioner in their area.
In turn, this may also boost the confidence of a potential patient in your medical centre. By ranking high in SERPs this pays dividends when it comes to instilling greater level of confidence among potential patients.
2. Trade services
Business in the trade service typically include home repair, electricians, plumbers, builders, renovators and many more. People in need of repairs or renovations of any kind will search locally for the closest businesses, which is why these businesses should target customers in their service areas with local SEO.
Search engines such as Google provides businesses the opportunity to make appointments. Business in the trade industry can partner up with any of Google’s supported scheduling providers. By successfully implementing a local SEO plan and a scheduling system, trade businesses can appear higher in the SERPs, in an already highly competitive industry, as well as efficiently convert leads into customers.
Here are a few examples of Google’s supported scheduling providers,
3. Restaurants
Restaurants are also capable of taking advantage of local SEO to greatly improve their business. In addition to third-party platforms such as TripAdvisor and Zomato, all of which create awareness for restaurants, online users may also be searching restaurants in their local area. Local SEO can provide more visibility in yet another highly competitive industry.
Restaurants online presence will essentially represent the first point of customer service. By implementing a local SEO strategy for your restaurant online users are provided with an abundance of relevant information about your restaurant.
Furthermore, reviews and testimonials play a pivotal component in its success. Reviews can work to a restaurant’s advantage and increase traffic both online and offline. Search engines such as Google can display ratings that influence user experiences and further entice them to make a conversion down the marketing funnel in forms of reservations and take away orders.
4. Property
Property or real estate related searches have a natural fit for local SEO. The real estate industry gets a lot of online attention from people seeking new homes, apartments and all other sorts of property types. Local SEO is extremely beneficial because the real estate business relies heavily on specific locations, suburbs, cities and region. Due to this hyperlocal nature, local SEO provides real estate related businesses the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by generating relevant content that addresses specific search terms.
Local SEO for the real estate industry helps connect property shoppers at different points of the purchasing cycle, from as early as conducting general research on a city through to identifying a specific home in a specific neighbourhood. By implementing an effective local SEO strategy, realtors can conduct precise targeting, better optimisation on leads and improve conversion rates.
In summary, it is highly recommended that you implement a Google My Business Listing as it is free and can make a significant difference to your business.
