How Important is Local SEO?
Here at Monster Creative, one of the mantras of modern marketing is personalisation. All your activities to position and promote your brand need to be super-conscious of the need to treat your customers as individuals.
Which means that wide-reaching and generic Search Engine Optimisation is unlikely to be sufficient. You need SEO that drills down on your target audiences. For most organisations, that means thinking “local”.
Location, location, location
The unfathomable number of people using their mobile devices to search on Google each day, are often looking for immediate information they can use for their specific location.
For example, where a local shop is and its opening times, or a link to their doctor’s telephone number they can click on to dial. Alternatively, it could be “what’s on” ideas for the weekend in their neighbourhood.
This means that savvy organisations need to be sure that their SEO is creating an unmissable local search presence.
Building local SEO campaigns
It starts by making sure your profile on Google’s “My Business” is up to date and clear. It’s a free, vital gateway for local SEO. https://searchenginewatch.com/category/local/
There’s important marketing mileage to be gained in attracting favourable reviews online. These can be either testimonies on your own website or high rankings on external sites such as TripAdvisor. If these mention your address or rank you according to your location then this too is a powerful local SEO tool.
The ideal is to incorporate local ranking factors like your name, address and phone number (known as NAP). https://moz.com/blog/category/local-seo
You also need a local based content strategy to underpin your SEO campaign, including dynamic web content that refers to your geographical area in a fluid and seamless way.
Creating backlinks from relevant third party websites (that focus on your location) further enhances your SEO. For example, making sure you’re listed in digital directories of local services.
Long term and the end game
Local SEO is not a “quick fix”. It involves long term strategies, potentially including both generic and paid for activities.
One important strand is making sure you become an authority in your field or area of operation. This encourages local digital news outlets or relevant business groups to regularly approach you for comments or refer to you in their content.
You need searchers with “intent” to buy your products and services, to have instant access to your business profile, with one click or when using voice search, for example.
This involves volume data to inform your keyword research. Also, an analysis of competitor strengths and weaknesses. When it comes to competitors, who do you think they are and who does Google think they are?
It’s clear to see that local SEO is not something done in isolation. To be measurably effective it needs to be part of a structured and sustained campaign. Which means it needs support from other expert services offered by Monster Creative. Call us to discuss a “personal” approach in detail.
