What Is Local SEO? (A Guide for Small Businesses)
– What's up, you absolute beauts? Tim from Exposure Ninja here. In this video we're gonna be
looking at what local SEO is, why it's important if
you're a local business, and what to do about it, how to get yourself ranking
on those Google Maps. Stay tuned. (upbeat music) So what is local SEO? Well, basically it's SEO
for local businesses. It's designed to get you listed on that all-important Google Map Pack. So why do you need to bother? Well, if you're a local business, or your business shows
up for local searches, then that map is gonna be right at the top of the search results. So if you're only relying
on organic visibility and you're not targeting
that local visibility, you could be missing out
on clicks and traffics. So it's a really good idea to get visibility in any local searches that your business is relevant for.
Maybe you're targeting a phrase like local accounts in Nottingham or digital marketing agency near me. By the way you don't actually need a digital marketing agency near you. We're completely remote. Being able to touch someone face-to-face has absolutely no bearing on the quality of the digital marketing work. But you can imagine, right, when someone is searching
for an emergency locksmith, they're looking for a trusted
local company near to them, not someone who's a 150 miles away who would take six hours to reach them. So what are the ranking
factors of local SEO and how can you evilly manipulate them so that your website is ranking top when people search for local terms? Well, the number one
ranking factor is location. Location is really important. Obviously if somebody is searching for emergency locksmith near me, they don't wanna be seeing
that business 150 miles away. And if they do see a business that's outside of their location, then it's gonna be because that business is really strong in other ranking factors. Location is super important. Proximity of your business
or your registered address to the searcher's location is one of the primary ranking
factors for local SEO.
Ranking factor number two is citations. Citations are instances
of your business's name, address, and phone number, or NAP. Now Google is looking to see that a business's listing in the Maps is actually registered there. So it's looking for lots of citations of your business's name, address, and phone number around the internet. Those are kind of votes of
confidence in your business. It stands to reason that a business which is talked about or mentioned in lots of different places is a reliable choice because they're being talked about and mentioned in a lot of places. Reviews are also a really
important factor with local SEO. We used to see back in the day that you get an average
star rating on Google once you got more than five reviews. Now I bet that you're one
of those unique people that look at reviews
before you make a purchase, and your customers are exactly the same.
So people wanna see that your
business has good reviews and that you've been reviewed well. It doesn't always have
to be 100% positive. Our studies show actually that people are looking for negative reviews in order to believe the average
review score for a business. But it is important that you do have a good number of reviews. And the final ranking factor is links, so backlinks to your site. Now these are important to increase the visibility of your site
in the search generally, but they also help with local SEO as well. So those are the ranking factors. How do you take all of this information and actually improve your
business's visibility? Well, the first thing to do is
to go to google.com/business and register your Google My Business page if you haven't already.
Your Google My Business page is the first place that Google will look for details about your
business and its location. It's also a great place
to get reviews as well because it's the first
reviews that people will see. It'll be the reviews
that are actually showing in that Local Pack search results. The next thing to do is increase the number of reviews that you have. Now this isn't always easy because it's not the
easiest thing in the world to get reviews on Google My Business. It's a consistent
complaint that people have. I've sent out 100 emails asking for review and I had one review. Well, then you've just gotta
send another 100 I'm afraid.
There's no easy way to get around it. But the good news is that your competitors are having exactly the same problem. Our suggestion is that
you have automated emails that go out requesting
that people leave a review and giving them instructions
on how to do so. So just go to Google, search
for your business name, and then click on Write a Review. And if you do this multiple
times for each person until they actually leave a review, then you're gonna start
picking up some reviews. You can also have your sales
or your customer success team mention that, hey, if you've
really enjoyed the service, feel free to leave us a review on Google.
It really makes a
difference to our business. The next thing that you can do is increase the number of
citations that your business has. So get listed in lots of good
quality business directories. And you can find the good quality ones by typing in to Google
business directories. If they're good quality, they're gonna show up in the
search results typically. But if they're absolute
junks, spam, trash, then they're not gonna rank
so don't bother with them. The next thing to do is
optimise your website with the sort of location information that's important to you. So really good idea to mention where your business is
located on your website, and also mention the areas that you serve. So if for example you're based in London but you also serve the
Southeast of England, then what you might wanna
do is include some mentions of the different towns and cities that you've worked in before, you could even include some testimonials or case studies from those areas with mention of the people and which town they were based in.
All of this is gonna
help Google to understand where your business is
located and where you serve. You could also have an
areas you serve page which lists all of the different
areas that you work in, because this is important for Google, but it's also really
important for people as well, particularly if you're a business that goes out to your customers, they need to know that
you come out to them before they're gonna get in contact. What they're not gonna do is spend time going
through your sales process if they don't even know if you serve them.
So make sure that information
is clearly displayed on every single page of your website. And the final thing that
you can do is use Schema. Now Schema is kind of
hidden text on your site which basically tells Google information about your business. If you're on WordPress, there are loads of
plugins that you can use to implement Schema on your site. If you're a local business, just go to Google and type in local business Schema plugin, that's S-C-H-E-M-A, and you're gonna find a whole bunch of different stuff there. Most of it is pretty much the same so go for the one which
seems the easiest to instal. So to recap, local SEO is
search engine optimization for local businesses specifically designed to rank in the Map Pack. All local businesses should
really be targeting local SEO, and even if you're not a business that's reliant on location, often people searching
for a service near them are going to see local results, so it makes sense to
optimise your business to show in those local results because it's just extra
visibility for local traffic which is more likely to convert anyway.
Ranking factors for local
SEO include location. It's really difficult to get ranked in a location that you're not based in. Reviews and ratings, citations, links, and content on your website. The most important things that you can do to improve your local SEO is make sure that your Google My
Business page is registered, make sure you got lots
of juicy reviews on there and that you've got a
follow-up process in place to get more reviews, also make sure that you've got as many citations as possible in good quality directories, make sure that you got links
coming through to your site, and also make sure that you mention your target locations on
your website copy as well. So I hope you found this video useful and you smash your local organic rankings. Don't forget to click
the Like button below, and click Subscribe and
the little bell icon to be notified when we post more videos. And if you want some help
with your local visibility, then you can go to exposureninja.com and request a free
digital marketing review.
What will happen in this review is we'll put together a 15-minute video showing you how to improve
your local visibility and get more leads and
sales from local clients. It's a completely free service. There's no obligation to use
our digital marketing services although of course if we
think that we can help, we will let you know. And it's genuinely awesome. So go to exposureninja.com/review to request your free review video today. Until the next one, see you soon..
