5 Reasons Why Every Local Business Needs Local SEO

By Sarah Giometti | SEO

Oct 29

Most businesses have a general idea about the value of SEO in today’s internet-focused marketplace, but far too few businesses are leveraging local SEO for even better results. Local SEO is focused on optimizing traffic for a specific city, state, neighborhood, county, or location unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on improving your global organic rankings. While both are important, your local market often has a much larger impact on your bottom line.

If you’re a business that serves a local market, SEO should be a part of your online marketing strategy. On top of that, search engine optimization integrates with social media marketing and content marketing. All of these are strategies we use here at Provaro Marketing to help our local businesses find more customers. Local SEO is a stand-alone technique, but the power of the formula is when it can be integrated into your whole marketing plan. The results are growth.

Today, we’re looking at five key reasons why every local business needs to focus on local SEO and make it a part of their online marketing strategy.

 

  1. Local searches grow in volume every year. Customers make approximately 5 billion local searches (searches that include a city name or other location designation) every month, and the percentage of total searches that are local searches increases every year. By optimizing locally, you improve your chances of a click.
  2. Search engine results pages give local results priority, even when it’s not a local search. If you’ve searched for a type of business lately, you might have noticed a box at the top of the page on Google that gives local results on a map. This comes up whether a search is local or not. By improving your local SEO, your chances of a top-page ranking improve, even in a crowded market.
  3. Local SEO helps you improve conversion. When someone searches for local results, they are likely more motivated to purchase since they are looking for a local business. This gives you more targeted reach and viewers who are more likely to convert. In fact, around 87% of people who search for a type of local business call or visit one within the next 24 hours, which gives local SEO sixteen to twenty times better return on investment than traditional SEO.
  4. Local SEO helps you perform better in mobile traffic. Mobile searches now outnumber desktop searches, and local SEO is crucial to pulling in that traffic. After all, most mobile searches are local searches, specifically for businesses near consumers ready to buy now. Unless you have effective local SEO, you miss out on the fastest growing segment of search results.
  5. Local SEO connects customers to reviews, which improves your credibility. When someone pulls up local results, they have immediate access to customer reviews and other social proof for your business. By leveraging local SEO, you give customers extra incentive to come to your location or convert right away.

 

If you want to gain traction in your search rankings, you need to invest in local SEO today. Not sure how to get started? At Provaro Marketing, we have local Sonoma County SEO experts who are available to help you get started now. Talk to our Santa Rosa SEO experts to begin.

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