Increased Online Presence
Numerous local SEO-related initiatives will not only help you increase your exposure in local search results but also your overall online visibility.
For instance, citation building is a key component of local SEO work. This involves increasing the amount of directory listings, social media profiles, and online review sites that list your business name, physical address (preferably with zip code), and phone number.
You’ll be doing this in as many distinct locations as you can, which makes it simpler for your company to be discovered by the appropriate people—those looking for a business like yours in their neighborhood—at the appropriate moment. If you own a B&B in Upstate New York, for instance, a TripAdvisor NAP can make it easier for potential guests to locate you and book a room.
Increased Shop Foot Traffic
Whether you run a cafe, dry cleaning, or hardware store, increased local visibility can help to increase foot traffic to your brick-and-mortar facility. If you’ve made significant investments in specialized machinery, created an avant-garde environment, or have a physical location because your products are best experienced there, increasing the number of visitors can help you generate talk about your establishment and boost sales.
Benefit from the boom in local commerce
The shopping patterns of consumers have seen significant shift in recent years. One of the most significant is that shoppers now give local companies a higher priority when choosing which products to buy.
According to research, people are choosing smaller, independent enterprises over larger, more well-known brands or experiences they may have previously preferred.
56% of customers claim to actively seek out locally sourced goods and donate their business to local businesses on purpose.
Additionally, 76% of consumers say they intend to do more local shopping in the upcoming year, which suggests that there is a chance for smaller, independent firms to grow their customer base. One of the main advantages of local SEO is that it places you in front of nearby customers at the precise moment when they require your goods or services. This will enable you to completely capitalize on the change in consumer behavior and expand your business.
Targeted Website Traffic
Every minute you waste as a small business dealing with leads who aren’t qualified or clients who aren’t likely to make a purchase or schedule a service is money lost.
Local SEO may assist weed out ineffective visitors and eliminate time-wasters that hinder the smooth operation of your company by making sure that only local searchers can find it.
This can be a big benefit since 59% of search users use Google to research a purchase they intend to make in-store. This lets you concentrate your efforts on the clients who are most likely to convert.
More Maps users are calling and stopping by.
Your Google Business Profile can be optimized to increase its visibility on Google Maps. Since Google Maps was created expressly to assist users in finding local services and organizing their itineraries, this could result in an increase in calls and in-person visits.
Any Google Business Profile optimization you carry out will immediately boost your Maps presence, improving your number of calls and in-person visits. Google Maps is generated using information that Google gathers from Business Profiles.
Establish a Thought Leadership Position
In order to develop prominence and relevance, two of the key pillars of local SEO rankings, content marketing and link building are essential. The same activity can assist you in developing a reputation as a thought leader and subject-matter authority in your industry.
Speaking about your hometown or local area and involving your neighborhood should come naturally when you engage in local content marketing. This not only strengthens your position as an authority figure, but it may also strengthen the bonds between your company and its clients, foster brand loyalty, and boost consumer engagement.
You’re also more likely to get backlinks from other nearby businesses when you take the time to make locally relevant, evergreen resources. These backlinks, whether coming from a regional resource like your local newspaper or an industry-specific website (like your neighborhood chamber of commerce), can all increase your authority and credibility and help establish you as a subject-matter expert.
Increased Levels of Trust
It’s no secret that reviews play a crucial role in local search rankings and are the foundation of successful local SEO. More reviews will increase your exposure in local search, which will benefit your reputation management approach.
Reviews are also crucial for fostering consumer trust, which is a crucial quality that comes before any company transaction.
According to research, more consumers than ever before read internet reviews on a regular basis, with half of them saying they trust them as much as personal recommendations.
A combination of increased visibility and highly regarded, recent evaluations can boost both local pack prominence and levels of customer confidence.
More Sales
When choosing a local business, customers consult online reviews as a decision-making tool. More than once every week, nearly one in eight people look up local businesses online.
As a result of your reputation management efforts, you will be able to provide them with genuine recommendations for your company from their peers, which is a potent advantage and emphasizes the significance of local SEO.
Better Conversion Rates
What are the advantages of local SEO, is a common question. It’s simple to concentrate attention on what’s happening on Google and other platforms, but it may also directly influence how your website is structured and functions.
Conversion rate optimization is aided by website optimization work done for local SEO, such as adding new locally-focused optimization, revising the text on landing pages, and enhancing page load times (CRO). From that point on, you ought to observe an increase in the quantity of conversions your website produces, such as an increase in the quantity of contact form submissions, phone calls, email subscriptions, or sales.
The Competitiveness of Your Business Increases
Benchmarking rivals and figuring out what they’re doing better than you is a crucial component of creating and fine-tuning your local SEO plan.
Your company will be much more competitive if it can spot these areas for improvement and implement what it has learned without having to go through the trial-and-error process to come up with a winning strategy. For instance, reading through client feedback could help you learn what aspects of their service are valued by customers so you can adopt a similar strategy for your own company.