What is local SEO?

Pretty much what it says on the tin, local SEO marketing is the process of supporting a brand to better appear within local search specifically. It harnesses both content and technical best practices on-site, as well as taking action off-site, to bolster visibility within search and maps.

Local search is one to take very seriously; according to On the Map, 98% of customers use the internet to find information about a local business. Previous statistics have stipulated that around 50% of all Google searches are made with local intent. So, if you weren’t considering local SEO within your marketing strategy before – you definitely should be now. 

You will need local SEO either if you operate a business with physical stores, or if you offer an in-person service to your customers (think Cleaners, Electricians, and so on). Another way of thinking about it is if you think your customers may search for ‘[brand]’ + ‘near me’, or ‘[service]’ + ‘near me’ keywords, you’re going to need local SEO.

Customers who are making these types of searches are demonstrating high intent for your brand/product/service; they are likely going to convert either that day, or in the near future.

What are the benefits of local SEO for small businesses?

If you’re a small local business, you may not have the safety net of customers knowing to search for your brand when they need your service. This means you’re more reliant on discovery search instead: when customers don’t search for a specific brand, simply the service in the location they need. This means if you’re a local law firm, plumber, financial advisor, builder, and beyond, you need to ensure you’re being presented to customers at the right time.

How does local SEO work?

In the same way as it does for content and technical SEO, Google will use it’s algorithm to decide which businesses are presented to customers in local search. This time though, we’re also bringing Google Maps into the mix.

How do I build a local SEO strategy?

You will need to split your strategy into two parts:

1. Off-site local SEO strategy
2. On-site local SEO strategy

Off-site local SEO

Local SEO and Google Business Profiles

The first place to start is to create a Google Business Profile (GBP) for your business. Within your profile you can manage key information such as your business name, it’s address, and it’s phone number. Other information includes opening hours, photos, a business description, and key features of your store (where applicable).  

When you have multiple different locations/service areas, you will need to ensure that you have each location set up within your account. This will enable you to communicate effectively with your customers when they search for relevant ‘near me’ queries in search. The ideal scenario is that a customer will get all the information they need to visit your store/call you then and there.

In order to increase your chances of appearing for non-branded queries, it’s important to provide as much information as possible within your GBP. If it hasn’t already been done; carry out a keyword research to understand some of the following in relation to your business:

• How much are customers searching for your brand locally?
• How much are customers searching for queries that relate to your products/services locally? Think ‘near me’ or ‘location’ specific queries.
• What are your most searched-for locations?

This is going to help you to understand the current search climate for your physical offerings. You should then transform this into your listings – use the business description, labels, and Google Posts to further target these keywords and appear within unbranded local search.

Some best practices to keep in mind (more can be found here: Guidelines for presenting your business in Google)

• Your business’s name should simply be the name of the business as it is in real life – do not include local identifiers in this field (as you will be inputting the address anyway)
• Use your business description to provide an overview of your business, your offerings, and anything else that you think will be useful for your customer at this stage.
• Use a small number of categories to accurately describe your business and help customers find you.

How important are reviews on my Google Business Profile?

In recent years, Google has been really pushing the value of reviews to the forefront (queue the #DearLocal ads that ran post-Covid with celebrities walking around their local neighbourhoods: Anthony Joshua x Google). The aim is to incentivise customers to leave reviews when they have visited somewhere, but equally, value is given to businesses that actually reply. Stock replies are not acceptable in the eyes of Google – we want to see tailored responses to all reviews (inclusive of less favourable reviews).

Interesting fact: if your average review rating is below 4 stars, you are much less likely to appear in search when customers use the keyword ‘best’.

Finally, to bridge the gap between the off-site and on-site, your Google Business Profile presents an opportunity to link back to your website. I’ll talk more about this in the next section, but something that’s worth keeping in mind here, is that you’ll want to make sure you’re using UTM parameters on the URLs you include. Why? Because if you don’t, any traffic that comes to the site via GBP will be attributed to Direct traffic rather than Organic in Analytics.

Off-site local bonus: Google Posts

Something else that you can take advantage of within GBP is Google Posts; think of them as an opportunity to further market campaigns that you’re running, in-store offers, and so on. They’re presented to customers on local listings, and can link to relevant landing pages on your site with a variety of CTAs; such as a sale/offer page.

Note: this section has primarily focused on presence within Google search, but it’s worth keeping in mind that there are other directories that serve local information (Facebook, Bing, Yahoo). As businesses grow, this can be a lot of information to manage and be consistent with across the board, which is where management solutions such as Yext come in.

On-site local SEO

Before I launch into on-site local SEO, it’s worth mentioning at this point, that you shouldn’t always expect a customer who views your local listings to actually click through to your site. The reasoning behind this is fairly intuitive; if you’re searching to find something immediately in your vicinity, you are likely simply looking for directions/to check a business is open. This will especially be the case for direct searches – those which reference a business and a specific location. For more generic searches though, a customer may be more likely to visit your site as they are gathering information.

As I mentioned just above, your GBP listings should also link to a relevant landing page on your site. Given how much Google values linking, this is a great opportunity for you to create further understanding in search engines of your business. Your local landing pages (LLPs) should reinforce your GBP listings; house all of your key information, as well as any other content that will be of value to the customer who is considering your business. Your keyword research should help inform this content, as well as guide on the FAQs that could be covered. These pages also present a great opportunity for you to direct your customer on to explore product ranges, enquire, etc.

Tesco is an example of LLPs done right, for example: Wembley Extra

If you’re a one-location business, and therefore have no need for dedicated local landing pages, you could just link to your homepage instead.

Furthermore, given that the majority of local searches are carried out on mobile devices, it’s even more (if that was even possible?) important for your website to be mobile friendly, and fast. If you want to maximise the experience a potential customer has with you before they’ve even visited your store/used your service, this is the way to do it.

So, some best practices now for your on-site local SEO strategy:

• Create only one LLP per location – duplicate pages will be penalised by Google (in the same way that any other type of duplication would be).
• Avoid thin-content on your LLPs; not only will you be penalised by search engines, you wouldn’t be taking advantage of a great opportunity to provide rich information to your customer at the right moment.
• Follow all typical content/technical best practices; ensure you have metadata, titles, that your pages are being correctly indexed, and that they’re loading to the best of their ability.

And finally… How long does local SEO take?

As you must go through a verification process when creating listings for your stores, you should allow at least 2 weeks for this to be complete (to be on the safe side). If you have a new store launching, some prior planning would be wise. Similarly, as is always the case when creating new content on-site, you shouldn’t expect instantaneous rankings for your target keywords. You can, though, speed things up by requesting indexing in GSC, and following content/technical best practices. As always, monitor performance, and keep testing, learning, optimising, to keep pushing yourself higher up in organic search.