If you own and operate a local business, you absolutely need a Local SEO strategy for your (hopefully) already mobile responsive and optimized website.

Why you need to optimize your website for local Internet users.

Each and every day (or every hour) hundreds or hundreds of thousands of potential customers are searching online for products that you sell and services that you provide.

Actually, to properly put this into perspective I should edit that last sentence to read:

“…for products and services you and your competitors provide.”

Which one of you is converting these search queries into conversions and repeat customers?

I’d put my bet on the company that has claimed and optimized their Google Local/Google Places for business listing.

Any business that does this should end up reaping the financial benefits (read ROI) of one of the key advantages to Local SEO – The Local Search Listings on page one of a given search query.

These listings have proven to help businesses convert local Internet users into paying customers due to it’s position and presentation. Keep reading to learn more this.

Local SEO is an extremely important strategy for your website and search marketing particularly if your business specializes in local products and services.

How VPDM Would Optimize Your Site For Local Search

1. Keyword Research based on local search patterns. We’ll identify the keywords and phrases (short-tail, long-tail, and related) that local customers will be using when searching for your products and services. We’d also analyze your competition’s website optimization to ensure your website is one step ahead especially with mobile search.

2. Optimize your Google My Business Page. Or Pages if you have multiple locations. We’d also optimize your Google+ Business Page. Local search and Google+ still work well together.

3. Optimize promotional landing pages on your website based on your most profitable keywords and phrases. Unique landing pages are useful especially to users because they can easily find what they were searching for on your website. If your website is difficult to navigate and consume users will “bounce” off your site back to their SERP and continue their search.

4. Submit new website page links to Google and Bing via each search engine’s webmaster tools. This ensures that your new pages have been submitted and that the search engines are able to index those new pages.

5. Submit your website to local search directories and review sites like Yelp. This process can generate some quality backlinks, which is always beneficial for SEO.

6. Regularly monitor and manage your website metrics and analytics along with ongoing keyword research.

So What Is Local SEO?

Up until recently, in order for a user to get local search listings for whatever they may be searching for, they’d need to type the geographic location along with the product or service they’re searching for. For example, “SEO consultants in Niagara Falls”, “website optimization company in St. Catharines”, or “burritos in Hamilton”.

In recent years, major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo have regularly tweaked their algorithms to deliver better, more relevant search results for users searching with local intent.

Users can now just search for a product or service and Google’s Local SEO algorithm will serve up the most relevant local results for that user.

If they are searching on a mobile device, the search results will be even more specific to their current geographical location. More than half of Internet searches are for products and services that are provided locally.

Are you starting to see why local SEO should be a key strategy for your SEO?

With the proliferation of mobile devices like tablets and Smartphone’s, business that are able to attract these local customers will see a huge return on their local SEO investment.

Why Local SEO is a Priority

To illustrate further how and why local SEO needs to be a priority for your business, consider this typical course of action:

• A local buyer here or reasonably close to your city searches for products or services that you provide.
• Since your website is optimized very well, including for local search, the local buyer is easily able to find your website in their search results.
• Your site is full of relevant information on the products and services they were searching for and that makes it easy for the local user to see that you offer what they were looking for.
• If they make a decision to contact you they will email, call or drop by your local business and you can close the sale.

The beautiful thing about local search is that these types of searches are made by qualified and targeted potential customers.

These people are already in the market for your services as they are searching for what you offer.

This makes them more likely to make a purchase and hopefully become a return customer.

The best thing about Local Search for businesses is that the local search results that get delivered on a local query are at the top of the page in the “Big 7” local listings shown on a local map on the right side of the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Check this out: do a search for “pizza [enteryourcity]” and see what happens. Try it first with your city name and then without. Either way the user gets decent results and businesses that are listed here, benefit from the business.

Here’s what I saw when I searched for “pizza niagara falls ontario”.

You want your business to be optimized and appear in the Big 7 local listings like this don’t you?

When you’re ready to boost your local search rankings and take advantage of potential mobile customers please reach out and contact us for a free consultation.