Local SEO: Benefits And Importance

Shruti Tomar           27 March 2023

As a local business owner, one may feel there’s little to no point in devoting time and money to optimize your Google existence when you’re up against giants like Walmart and Amazon for top-tier rankings. While this may be true when it comes to the main organic listings but it does not hold water for local search. Whether you have a physical bricks-and-mortar business location or cater to a particular geographical area, local SEO allows you to connect better with people in your neighbourhood, town, or city. That’s important given that 81% of patrons now turn to Google to evaluate local businesses.

• Benefits of Local SEO

Implementing local SEO strategies mean that searches become highly targeted for your business. Local searches are searching for a particular business or location, meaning that if employed correctly, your business could be in a better position to promote the products or services that your business is offering.

Local SEO is inexpensive compared with traditional advertising methods. The cost of placing an advertisement in a local paper or radio station can cost hundreds, even thousands. In comparison, many local SEO techniques are free to use and implement, leaving you more money to spend on other SEO strategies, should you want to.

Local searches are generally looking for information on local businesses, so having information readily available (your name, address and contact details) on your website and through specified, trusted directories will help your business strategy and promote sales.

•Benefits of local SEO are:

• Better online visibility: Local SEO activity, such as citation and link building, increases your online visibility. That makes your business more easily discoverable by new customers.

• More in-store foot traffic: Greater local visibility brings more foot falls to your bricks-and-mortar location.

•Tap into local shopping boom: Post COVID, more than half of consumers now prefer to shop locally and support local businesses or smaller brands. Local SEO puts you in contention for those new business opportunities.

• Targeted web traffic:Optimizing your site for local search delivers more targeted traffic to your website which can lead to more leads, subscriptions, sign-ups, and thus, sales.

• More calls: Google Business Profile (previously known as Google My Business) optimization can lead to enhanced Google Maps visibility. This can lead to more calls and more in-person visits.

• Thought leadership: Content marketing can help you establish a thought leadership position and be seen as an expert in your field.

• Enhanced trust levels: Reputation management builds trust in your business.

• More sales: Consumers are known to use online reviews to help with decision-making when choosing a local business.

• Improved conversion rate:Website optimization can bolster your conversion rate, increasing contact form submissions, phone calls, email subscriptions, or sales.

• More competitive:Local SEO also makes you more competitive as it encourages you to study what your rivals are doing well and what tactics are working for them to then ingrate into your own approach.

• Why Local SEO is Important

Imagine you’re a bridal boutique in South Delhi. A bride-to-be actively looking for ‘bridal boutique, South Delhi’ is your ideal customer. However, the organic search results are populated by big-name brands such as directory sites, top 10 lists, and blogs. This makes it hard to compete and difficult to imagine a route for the bride to find her way to your store.

Local SEO helps your business stand out – even if you don’t have a website – and helps drive more traffic to your premises through online leads.

Since these leads are from people who are specifically searching for products or services that your business offers, they are also likely to give you a high conversion rate.

Searches with local intent are on the rise – with 4 in 5 consumers now using search engines to find local information, and search result information sending a massive 70% of consumers to a physical store.

Local SEO also helps drive people’s decisions in favour of your business. The more information they have about your business before they visit, the more trustworthy you are in their eyes.