When you create a website for your business, allow yourself to ask yourself a question: why invest in a global SEO strategy when your customers are located in a specific geographical area ?
It’s a mistake many entrepreneurs and marketers make. They focus on a very broad audience and have no clear target audience. However, their target customers are right there, nearby . This wastes money and resources.
Why focus on a few people when I could have visitors from all over the world?
Local SEO is useful for those entrepreneurs who own a physical location or work only in a specific area .
The mistake many marketers and professionals make is thinking that it’s better to attract a wider audience to their site to improve its insights.
However, what matters is not clicks on site pages, but conversion rates . Companies need customers, not impressions.
Consumers are conducting ” near me ” searches on Google more than ever. When they need a hairdresser, they search for ” hairdresser in Padua ” or in their town of residence. They open Google Maps and look for hairdressers in the area.
According to a Conductor study, local and organic searches combined account for 33% of total digital traffic across seven industries. If a business doesn’t leverage local SEO, it risks going unnoticed and failing to attract the right audience. However, with a local SEO strategy, you can improve your website’s visibility in local search results . This means people in your geographic area will see your website in search results when they search for information about local products or services.
Also, keep in mind that competition can be very different depending on your geographic location. You may have fewer local competitors than global ones , which means you can achieve better results more efficiently .
I also sell online. why should I focus on local?
61% of shoppers prefer to visit local businesses that have both physical locations and online websites. This is a fact not to be overlooked when launching a website for your business.
While selling online may seem like a solution to reaching customers around the world, focusing on local SEO can help you reach local customers who may not be able to find your online store or who prefer to purchase products and services from local businesses.
Additionally, local customers are more likely to make repeat purchases and become regulars . Investing in local SEO can therefore help build a loyal customer base and increase the chances of customer loyalty.
Also remember that a good Local SEO strategy can help increase your online and offline store’s visibility in local search results, such as Google Maps . This can lead to increased traffic to your website and physical locations, increasing sales opportunities.
But how do you implement a local SEO strategy? Let’s look at the tools and tactics we have at our disposal.
1. Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business)
If you’ve never heard of this tool, you’re missing out. It’s a free Google tool that lets you create a business profile and appear in local searches.
Google Business Profile (which can be simply called ” Business Profile “) is really easy to use and doesn’t require any special requirements. The important thing is to have all the information about your business’s physical location and follow the process to verify your business listing on Google. But let’s take it one step at a time.
Google Business Profile is the king of local SEO tools . Signing up for a Google Business Profile allows businesses to appear in local search results by creating a business listing (the one you see on the right side of the screen when you search for a business or professional) as well as a location on Google Maps .
You can register for free, fill out all the information about your company, such as opening hours, address, contact details, photos and product catalog, and even start advertising with Google ADS .
Customers searching for business information often use Google Business Profile to obtain information such as the address, phone number, customer reviews, and store photos. An accurate and detailed presence on this tool can increase customer trust and the likelihood of attracting new customers . Not to mention, it helps prevent unnecessary phone calls to your business to obtain small details, which they can then find on Google.
Google Business Profile allows businesses to update customers with information such as opening hours, special offers, and announcements , as well as publish posts and updates and collect customer reviews . And this is one of its most obvious advantages: when searching for a business that can solve our needs, we always look at what other users who have tried it think.
This is the famous “bandwagon effect”: if one person does something and is satisfied, we can expect others to do the same. Google Business Profile allows you to collect reviews from past customers and convince new ones to try your services , increasing your earning potential.
In short, it’s an excellent tool both from an SEO perspective and from a user perspective, who can find everything they want to know about the company in one place.
2. Use local keywords
Here’s an on-site strategy you can use to improve your local SEO, a simple trick that requires a little research: include location-specific keywords in your SEO strategy . For example, if you’re a restaurant in Milan, be sure to include keywords like ” restaurant in Milan ,” ” best restaurant in Milan ,” etc.
Some examples of keywords related to the local keyword “Ristorante Milano”.
This allows you to take advantage of so-called long-tail keywords , which tend to identify only specific groups of users, with characteristics that bring them very close to your company, in this case geographical location.
Including local keywords involves both the content you create for your site, as we’ll see shortly, and the meta title and meta description . The latter is the short description that appears under the page title in search results. Including your location can help improve your business’s visibility in local searches.
3. Create localized content
Create content that resonates with your target audience. For example, you can talk about local events, news, and attractions in your city . This applies to your blog content as well as landing pages, sales pages, and newsletters.
You should try to create synergy between the area you operate in and the content you publish online. For blog posts and website pages, I recommend creating local links to websites and resources in your geographic area . For example, if you’re a bicycle shop in Rome, you could link to the Touring Club Italiano website or a website that provides information on cycling routes in your area.
4. Take advantage of social networks
To improve your local positioning, you can’t ignore social media . To ensure people find you when performing local searches, make sure you create social media profiles on all the most popular platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Complete all fields relating to your address, opening hours, contact information, and business description. This way, search engines will have more information to use when indexing your business .
Keep in mind a key aspect of user behavior on social media today: more and more people are searching for places to go, amusement parks, experiences, and sites of interest on social media rather than on Google . In fact, you may have noticed that TikTok, but also Instagram, are full of videos in which content creators show off their day trips or reviews of restaurants they’ve tried .
TikTok in particular is becoming a veritable search engine for young people. If you take a look at the search bar, you’ll notice that, like on Google, for every letter you type, a suggestion comes up based on the most popular searches.
Our advice is to take care of the SEO of your content by including text in videos and captions containing the most important keywords. For example, if you own a bar in Milan, you could create videos on the topic of ” the best affordable aperitifs in Milan ” or ” where to have an aperitif in Milan? “
When a user searches for these keywords in the search bar, they find your content and, therefore, your profile.
What about older social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram? Posting on social media can help promote your business and raise awareness among local audiences. Using local hashtags and geotagging in your photos can help improve your business’s visibility .
Additionally, getting positive reviews on Google Business Profile, Facebook, and other social media can increase your business’s visibility on search engines and improve your local SEO rankings.
5. Don’t underestimate whatsApp business
WhatsApp Business can be used to improve local SEO, even though many business owners aren’t even aware of its existence . To be clear, it’s an extension of the common messaging app that everyone, or almost everyone, uses today.
WhatsApp Business provides access to a number of very useful features for business owners, such as the ability to include a physical address of the headquarters , useful contact details, a catalog, brand information and much more.
Use WhatsApp Business for your business: First, make sure to include your business address on your profile so potential customers can easily find it and your location appears in local searches. Respond quickly to customer messages with automatic text messages or by providing key business information.
Use WhatsApp Business to send promotions and special offers to local customers . This not only helps keep your business top of mind, but also drives traffic to your business and improves your local search ranking.
Finally, don’t forget to send links to your Google Business Profile to encourage your customers to leave positive feedback on your account .
6. Rely on citations and backlinks
We’re not talking about poetry or nonfiction. By citations here, we mean the times your business is mentioned online . You’ll immediately think of link building activities , and you’re right. But how can you put this strategy into practice to improve your local SEO?
Take advantage of apps like Yelp, Bing, Google, Trip Advisor, and other comparison sites for businesses in a specific industry. This is an excellent link building and local SEO strategy, as these sites not only attract huge numbers of users every day, but also let Google know that your site is being cited on numerous platforms and is therefore high-quality.
This improves the ranking of your business website. However, it’s important to verify that all the information about your business on these sites is truthful and not managed by malicious people. Furthermore, these apps and platforms are excellent review aggregators, as we’ve mentioned, which are vital for your business growth.
But that’s not all: another strategy is to obtain “dofollow” links from publications and sites in your geographic area, even better if they have an appropriate “anchor text”: this would improve your positioning, especially on Google, which would understand from its algorithm that your business is located in the same location as those citing you.
Of course, this last one is certainly a complex task. But you can ask for our support ; we’ll be happy to help!
So, does local SEO work?
Yes. Improving a website’s local SEO is a significant challenge for any local business or company. There are several strategies that can be used to increase your company’s online visibility, including creating high-quality localized content , generating positive reviews, optimizing your website pages for local keywords, actively participating on local social media, and using Google Business Profile to provide accurate and relevant information about your business’s location.
Remember that developing global SEO strategies is more expensive and doesn’t always deliver the desired results. With a combination of well-designed local SEO strategies and careful management of your company’s online background information, any business can increase its online visibility and attract more customers to its service area by targeting the right audience and investing the right amount of money and resources.
SEO & GEO specialist.
