Local SEO Guide For Businesses New To Digital Marketing

If you’ve just arrived on the digital marketing scene, then odds are that you just moved your business online or are an online start up that just began. If you’ve spoken to any of your peers, you must have heard the word(s) SEO or Search Engine Optimization thrown around a lot.
Many business owners know that SEO is important, but not many can tell why it is so important. See, as information platforms become increasingly digitized, your customers don’t go to your TV Ads or Newspaper Ads for information. Search engines are the new yellow pages and the hubs of information on businesses. If you want to be noticed, these are the places where you should go to advertise now.

The Problem

Once we understand the importance of search engines in the digital business environment, a major
problem becomes apparent. This problem is resolved through the use of Search Engine Optimization.
The thing is; Search engines give you billions of hits when you look for something.
So if you’re a fashion retailer, looking up fashion retailers will get you more hits for fashion retailers than
you can count. Those retailers that show up on top of the list are the ones most likely to get the greatest
number of hits on their websites. As the number of people going to their websites increases, their sales
potentials will also keep rising.
The problem for everyone then becomes: “How do I make sure that I stand out among everyone else
who’s doing the same things as me?” This is the problem that SEO resolves for you.
Search engine rankings are not completely random. When a user looks for a certain business or any
other content on the internet, the search engine lists websites most relevant to the search words. So,
search engine rankings become dependent on the relevance of the content you’re producing.
An effective SEO strategy will always have your website show up as the most relevant to your potential
customer’s searches. If you localize the problem, where your competition isn’t the entire internet but
only those people who work near you; then you can understand how local SEO works and why it’s
important.

If you can create enough relevant connections in your content between your business and your
locations, then your local client base can find you much easily. So for a local SEO strategy, you need to
make sure you stand out from everyone else offering the same services in the same regions as yours.

The Potential Of Local SEO

In terms of your long term business plans, growth plans are usually geared towards establishing a strong
foothold within local market before you begin to expand. Using this strategy lets businesses lean on
their existing business prospects to catapult themselves into other markets. This expansion takes place
across geographical areas and with each successive phase in your expansion, you move to a broader
service area.
For this reason, your SEO strategies must take into account factors contributing to the relevance of your
online platforms as your service areas expand. As a business that has just made an entrance into online
marketing, you stand to benefit from many advantages of local SEO.
Here are some statistics to help you understand the potential of local SEO in helping your business grow:

• 50% of all internet users making a search for local businesses on their mobiles visited the
  business within a day.
• 46% of all searches on Google are for local businesses.
• 78% of all mobile searches lead to offline purchases
• $72.02 billion were spent on local SEO across the United States.
• 60% of all Americans use smartphones and tablets to make local product and information
  searches.

These statistics make clear the far reaching marketing potential of local SEO for any online business
especially small business. Since a large number of your customers are already making local search
queries, breaking into their information streams gives you the best chance of improving your
organizational prospects and profitability.

Creating A Local SEO Strategy

Now that we understand how SEO works and how important the exercise is for businesses, here are
some ways in which you can improve your local SEO rankings. Implementing these techniques will help
you rise out of the crowd to improve your sales levels to no end.
When it comes to local SEO, it’s also imperative that you make consistent references to your
geographical location. It helps local internet users pick out your place out of the many other
international service providers. The idea is to build links across the internet that direct users to your
website. A local SEO exercise can potentially have the entire internet serving as your sales funnel.

Knowing Your Tools

SEO is implemented across an entire range of digital marketing tools. SEO keywords have to be
embedded in every piece of content that you generate as part of your marketing strategies. Typical
Digital Marketing tools include:

• Content marketing including blogs, articles, press releases that are posted across various online
  platforms and your own websites.
• Website content which includes information that your users can view when they visit your
  websites.
• Social media marketing across social media platforms to present your business to potential and
  existing clients as well as a promotional tool for the business itself.
• Google advertisements and testimonials to inform your clientele and improve your credibility.

Contextualizing Your Strategy

Since SEO revolves around improving the relevance of your websites/online platforms with respect to
consumer search patterns, you need to situate your business within the context of these search trends.
This process will involve creating consumer profiles and determining how client behavior translates into
the way they conduct their searches.

Having this information with you will help you in determining what phrases or keywords to include in
your content to make your business pop out. It will also help identify the places where your content will
be exposed to the largest number of potential clients.

Developing A Strategy

In the beginning, when SEO was new; SEO practices usually involved loading entire websites with
relevant keywords to improve rankings. Now however, Search Engines require a certain degree of
subtlety when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. For this reason, marketers have expanded the
potential places where you can place your keywords, to evenly optimize them across multiple channels
instead of concentrating them in one place.

1. Website Content

Your website is the first place where you begin implementing SEO keywords. Having content
that contains relevant keywords will potentially place your online business platforms in direct
contact with your online customer.

2. Content Marketing

This is where a major chunk of your keyword concentration will be focused. Through the
creation of content relevant to your services and your location you can direct droves of people
to websites.

3. Google Advertisements

Google displays the top 3 most relevant businesses and services on any searches that user
conduct. Incorporating keywords in Ads that you place on Google will significantly improve
exposure.

Implementation

Once you have all the content in place and your website loaded with the relevant keywords, you will
notice a significant increase in the number of visitors coming to your website. At this stage your goal
ought to be to identify any kinks you have to work out in your strategy. Keep on reconsidering,
reevaluating and creating new content to keep your users engaged. For as long as you keep ahead of the
curve, your online marketing strategies will keep giving dividends for a long time.

Author Bio Cassie Beasley, the author of this article, is a Local SEO expert and Digital Marketer at the digital marketing company Searchberg . She specializes in Small business SEO services ; Link building and
Small Business Marketing Strategy.