Savvy business persons are more than familiar with the power of search engine optimization, the marketing tactic by which websites manipulate page features to influence higher rankings in search engines. But fewer fully understand the value of local search. The fact is, for most small businesses, local search engine optimization - or SEO - can be a deeply practical and useful tool. The good news is that this branch of SEO allows you to better target your audience and obtain more customers in your own backyard, where they’re most likely to want your services. The not-so-good news is that this powerful branch of SEO changes often, as search engines struggle to keep shifty businesses from gaming the system. This means everything from requiring more steps to verify a business to introducing new ways to specify geography. Unlocking the benefits of local SEO means understanding how it’s changing and how your business can fit in.
What is Local SEO?
Naturally, the first step to unlocking local SEO is getting a baseline understanding of what local search really means. With standard SEO, companies focus on gaining search visibility for general terms that will appeal to a broad audience, regardless of location. Local search, however, is centered on trying to gain search visibility for terms that appeal specifically to internet users in a particular location. Naturally, a search for “cookies” would have more search volume and potentially yield more website traffic than a search for “cookies in Philadelphia.” However, the latter is more specific and likely to draw a smaller, but better qualified, audience. Therein lies the benefit of local search engine optimization: It helps smaller or more regionalized businesses gain traction with the audiences most likely to be responsive.
How Local Search Is Changing
Search engines have recognized a set of ways that local businesses can specify where they are and be prioritized when ‘net users do location-specific searches. These include gaining citations at legitimate local review sites and creating a verified Google+ profile.
These have long been the cornerstones of local search. However, as users are growing more sophisticated, so too are search engines, which are changing the way they evaluate local search engine optimization signals to return more relevant results for users based not only on location, but on whether they are using a mobile device, and more.
The explosion of smartphones means that people are doing more on-the-go searches and those are overwhelmingly local. How many times have you used your own phone to find a pizza parlor or a dry cleaners close to where you are? This has increased the need to return the most accurate results: Nobody looking for a cab in Newark wants to be gamed by a company in Omaha. This ups the pressure on search engines, which are now:
- Requiring more stringent verification of location: Google requires you to use a specialized PIN sent through the mail to verify a location.
- Altering algorithms to respond to voice search: Voice search is a hallmark of mobile search and increasingly, of local search. Search engines have responded by creating algorithms that can better parse the meaning of voice search queries, which are typically longer and less keyword-centric.
- Enriching map results: Search engines like Google have begun adding more features to map results, including reviews, designed to make it easier for users to choose the right listing. This creates better results, but also incentivizes businesses to get good service reviews.
All of these changes work to better confirm where a business is, limit the ability of rogue sites to trick users and ensure that search engines continue to be indispensable internet tools.
What This Means For Your Site
All of these changes have transformed the search landscape for businesses depending on geographically specific audiences. The search engine optimization changes have pros as well as cons. For instance, stricter ways of verifying location have reduced competition from national websites - a clear benefit to smaller, local business websites. But these changes have also meant small businesses need to get more serious about local search, optimizing their sites and listings to take advantage of the growing suite of local search tools at your disposal. Some of the things locally-oriented sites need to do include:
- Ensuring your website is mobile-friendly
- Investing in a web listing audit to ensure all citations have consistent Name, Address and Phone Number
- Regularly encouraging customers to make online reviews
Some of these steps are things you should already be doing and can find out by reviewing these local seo checklists. But as local search becomes more sophisticated, it will become more important than ever to make sure you are doing them consistently.
Local search has truly evolved to become a more up-to-the-minute tool for users. It benefits customers but also businesses - but only if they know how to play the game. Review these tips and connect with a search engine optimization expert to learn more about how you can make local search work for you.