Local SEO

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

What is local SEO?

Local SEO is concerned with smaller local businesses, and their efforts to rank well in local search queries. General SEO principles apply to local SEO also. However, there are additional steps that small community businesses can take in order to rank for web users in their area.

Local SEO allows local businesses to promote their services to customers in their area at exactly the time they’re looking for their type of business. It removes the guesswork from local marketing. So, for example, instead of doing leaflet drops or putting an ad in a local paper - which may or may not be seen by someone interested in your service - your site can appear for people in your area who are searching for products or services that you are selling.

NAP consistency

NAP is an acronym for:

• Name
• Address
• Phone

NAP consistency means your business’s name, address, and phone number are consistently listed the same way across the web.

As local results will be served based on a web user’s location and IP address, it is crucial that a business establishes its physical address. This can be done through NAP.

You need to ensure that you have your full NAP across your whole website. Furthermore, you must use the exact same details or format when you mention your address on other websites.

Local optimized content

It’s also important for the content of your website to be localized.

The idea in a localization content strategy is to identify what content segments are unique to each geographical area and highlight those at a state, city, or even micro local level by building dedicated pages for each of these audiences.

Some variables that may differ by location and, as a result, warrant individual pages include:

• Shipping rates
• Warranty information
• Repair locations
• Dealer locations

By building bespoke pages that cover all of the above information for customers in each of your target locations, you will improve localized rankings.