Local SEO Services

Local SEO services are essential to all small and medium businesses that are genuinely interested in getting more customers and sales through local organic traffic. In fact, local SEO services are not optional for brick-and-mortar businesses these days especially if you cannot do it yourself.
Unfortunately, many business owners don’t understand how powerful this is and would rather spend money on paid advertisements which may not yield many results.
Let me tell you a secret if your business is not well optimized for local SEO, your paid ads campaigns will perform less than a business optimized for local SEO.

Local SEO involves optimizing your business for local search results on Google. There are several digital agencies and freelancers that offer local SEO services to help your brand gain more reach through local search results on Google. They may offer a part of local SEO services or all-in-one local SEO services. Most digital agencies like Omer Hina offer all-in-one local SEO services to help businesses optimize their brands for local search results on Google.
Thousands of searches are performed on the internet for products and services on Google. If your business is not well optimized for local SEO through local SEO services, then your business might not be found and you will lose on potential customers that are looking for you.
Optimizing your business for local search results on Google will not only secure your place on the internet as a reputable brand but also gets more visibility for your business on Google. That in turn means more traffic, leads, and conversions for your business. These metrics mean more sales and customers for your brand.

DEFINITION

Local SEO (search engine optimization) is a branch of digital marketing under SEO that focuses on optimizing businesses for local search results on Google. Think of it as optimizing a business for certain keyword(s) and physical location(s).
I think you get the gist of why your business can not do without local SEO. But what does it entail?
Let’s take a look at the breakdown of the makeup of local SEO.

 

COMPONENTS OF LOCAL SEO

There are several building blocks of local SEO and for ease of understanding, I have broken down these components into 9 parts. If you are looking to hire someone for local SEO services, or you are looking to do it for your company, you should at least be conversant with these 9 parts. They include:
1. Google My Business (GMB) optimization
2. Testimonials and Reviews
3. Social media marketing
4. Keyword optimization for voice search
5. Content marketing
6. Website optimization
7. Local citations
8. High-quality backlinks
9. Brand reputation building and marketing

 

 

1. GOOGLE MY BUSINESS (GMB OPTIMIZATION)

Google My Business or GMB for short is an awesome feature by Google rolled out to list local businesses with physical locations that integrate with Google Maps. It is the first initiative you should take to optimize your business for local search results on Google. Even if you are hiring someone else that offers local SEO services, focus your first step on GMB.
First of all, check Google whether your business has a GMB listing. You can find out by searching your business name and location. If the query returns without your business, it means your business is not listed on GMB. You will have to create a GMB listing for your business.
If you find out your business is already listed, then all you need to do is to claim it. Claiming a GMB listing is simple and free. Just click on the link that says Own Business? Claim Now.
After you have claimed your listing, the next step is to ensure that all your business details are correct. Add your business hours, add images that portray what you do, and respond to reviews. That pretty much sums up optimizing your GMB listing.

 

 

2. TESTIMONIALS AND REVIEWS

The next step is to get more reviews for your business. Let me tell you something very important that I have discovered. Even if your marketing sucks, good reviews can help you get up to 250% more conversions per month.
The reason behind this is people reading the reviews see themselves in the people leaving the testimonials. They see them as people who had similar problems that they are having now and they see how you have helped these people.
Never joke with positive reviews.

Ask for them whenever you can. It takes less than 10 minutes to leave a heartfelt review. Reach out to old customers and ask them for reviews.

Reviews are more effective if they are less than 3 months old. Their relevance dials down with time.

 

3. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Social media marketing is important for all business types. Not only are they platforms to connect with potential customers and retain connections with existing customers, but also help businesses rank for local search results on Google.

Social media marketing for local businesses entails both paid and organic marketing tactics to improve brands image. The more social signals a brand has, the more it will likely rank on local search results on Google.
However, it should be noted that social media marketing alone doesn’t help a brand’s rank. If you don’t know how to do social media marketing, you should learn or hire someone to do it for you.

 

 

4. KEYWORD OPTIMIZATION FOR VOICE SEARCH

Thanks to voice assistant on your mobile phone, many searches are done without having to type in the search query on your mobile device. You can make a search by simply asking your voice assistant.
You should work on optimizing your keywords for voice search. Think of what someone who is looking for your business would ask. These are usually longtail keywords. For example, “roofer in Oro Valley, Tucson” or “hotels near Disneyland”

The search query that includes near me may not be ideal for you to target for example “dance instructor near me”
Statistics have shown that more searches are coming from mobile devices when compared to desktop.

 

 

5. CONTENT MARKETING

Content is KING.
You may or may not have heard this statement before. It is a fact in digital marketing. To get ahead of your competitors, you need content marketing. That means blogging, getting content out on social media, and creating videos on YouTube.

You should also focus your content marketing efforts on ranking organically for keywords in your niche and your business’s physical location.
If you are confident in your writing skills and content optimization for SEO, then you should create your content. If not, then I recommend hiring someone to write for you. It can come as one of the packages of local SEO services or you can buy it independently.

 

 

6. WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION

Build a website they said, customers will come.
That is far from the truth. Having a website doesn’t mean you automatically get traffic. The first step is to optimize your website for traffic and conversion. When it comes to website optimization, there are a few things you should never take for granted:

• Your website must be mobile-friendly. Google loves a mobile-friendly website, and I think you know what that means. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, then you need to revamp your website. Take the mobile-friendly test here by Google.
• Your website must be secure and have SSL encryption to protect your visitors’ data. Any website without an SSL certificate gets flagged by Google for being a security risk.
• Your website must load fast. Google likes websites that load fast. If your website loads slow, people will leave your website ASAP. Get someone to optimize your website’s speed, now. You can check your website’s speed here.

 

 

7. LOCAL CITATIONS

Local citations are backlinks to your business listing. This type of backlink focuses on 3 aspects; your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) as the primary data needed. You can also include information like your business website, social media accounts, and email.
Local citations help your brand rank higher for local search results on Google.
To get local citations for your business, you simply needed to list your business on relevant business directories in your state and country.
For example Yelp, Yellowpage, Angieslist, Craigslist, BBB, etc.

 

8. HIGH-QUALITY BACKLINKS

High-quality backlinks for your business are different from local citations for your business. While local citations focus on sharing your business information on business directories, backlinking is having a website link back to your website in their content, usually in a blog post.
In backlinking strategy, only a word or a phrase is used as an anchor text to link back to your business website.

 

 

9. BRAND REPUTATION BUILDING AND MARKETING

Reputation building involves getting positive reviews for your brand. Yes, I have mentioned how important it is in the previous point. But this point focuses on getting new positive reviews and marketing your reviews to retain existing customers and get new ones.
Did you know that you can use reviews as content for your brand? You can market your reviews on your website and your social media accounts.
I got my hands on a propriety software that was newly launched that shows off your 5-star reviews on your website like a boss. I definitely recommend giving it a try!

 

 

HOW TO GET LOCAL SEO SERVICES

Like I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of digital agencies out there that offer local SEO services to business owners. You can hire one to help you with your local SEO optimization.
A good digital agency will give you an audit report of your brand on the internet and give you details on what will be done monthly to optimize your business for local SEO.
Or you can work with us today and get 20% off our normal local SEO services rates. We can help you rank on Google for local search results and you can test drive that propriety software that Livestream your 5-star reviews for 14-days free.

CONCLUSION

In summary, we have covered what local SEO is all about and what local SEO services entail. We also discussed the building blocks of local SEO optimization and how you can get local SEO services for your brand to help you rank locally on Google search results.
Let me know which local SEO component you would like to get started with first for your business. Also, comment down below if you are interested in that cool propriety software.