Local SEO is a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that helps your business be more visible in local search results on Google.
Any business that has a physical location or serves a geographic area can benefit from local SEO. If you search Google for any important keywords related to your business and a map with 3 listings appears underneath it (also known as a map pack), then local SEO can help you grow your business.
When you type a search phrase into Google, it checks the pattern of various website signals, or ranking factors, such as how relevant your site is, to return a list of sites that match your search.
Most people don’t realize that Google isn’t doing a live search of the entire internet every time someone types something into the search bar. It’s actually searching a stored copy of all of the sites that Google has discovered. This copy is called the Google Index.
To form the index, Google uses small programs called “Spiders” to crawl the web. Each spider works the same way: It starts on a single page, then follows the links on that page, looking at content on the next pages, and so on.
As web content gets crawled, it’s stored in Google’s servers, and the index is built. The spiders work at a mind-blowing scale, constantly crawling trillions of pages at an incredibly fast pace. This ensures that the index is as up-to-date as possible and new sites and connections are discovered quickly.
Local SEO is a Different pattern
After analyzing the behavior of users during trillions of searches, Google figured out that people seeking certain types of businesses need results from their immediate area. That’s why Google’s local search algorithm includes a proximity factor, which is a fancy way of saying that Google takes your location into account when you search for a local keyword (a query with local intent). This happens even when the searcher doesn’t include a city name or “near me” in their search.
While the local map pack is displayed within the standard Google organic search listings, separate algorithms power the main Google search results for local rankings and the local map pack results. As a local business, you have the opportunity the appear within both the main organic search results and the local map pack at the same time.
If you’re new to marketing your business online, one of the main challenges is knowing what you should focus on to make your efforts as effective as possible.
Localized content and local link popularity are factors, just as it is in Google’s traditional search algorithm, so it’s important to build local landing pages for each of your locations especially if you’re a multiple location business-, where you should include not only your business name but also its details like address and phone as well as optimize their titles tags, meta descriptions, and follow SEO best practice. This should be taken into consideration as well in your content marketing and link building strategy.
Additionally, location-based factors like having a business listing in Google My Business, local citations from data aggregators, and review signals that should be published by your local customers are also taken into consideration in your local oriented seo rankings and as consequence you should also take them into consideration in your local SEO efforts.