Around half the searches made on Google are local searches; people searching for goods or services “near me” or in a particular location.
That’s a lot of searches and a lot of people – I can help you be seen by them.
Local SEO is about presenting your website and business to Google in such a way that it shows your details to people searching locally for your products or services. If it is done well then your business is displayed prominently above your competitors and you get the lion’s share of new business enquiries.
The great thing about local SEO is that we’ve all seen it in action. Whenever we search for a local plumber (“plumber near me”) or a maths tutor (“maths tutor in Reading”) or a bicycle repair (“bicycle repair near Westerham”) then we see the results tailored to our location.
We can see it with Google’s Map Pack:
We can see it in the organic results:
We can see it with Google My Business:
How is local SEO achieved?
According to Google the 3 cornerstones of local SEO are:
- Relevance – letting Google and Bing know that what you offer or do is relevant to the person searching
- Distance/Location – showing Google and Bing how close you are to the location in the search
- Prominence – proving to Google and Bing you are well-known in the offline world
Whilst that’s straightforward enough and makes sense, excelling in those areas is a bit more complicated and involves working on the following areas:
Google My Business and Bing Places For Business Profiles
These are both very important. Some studies show that Google’s My Business profile is the single biggest factor for local search ranking.
Optimising the GMB profile and Bing’s equivalent is vital for local SEO and has an enormous influence on where your site ranks and how it is presented.
Local link building
As with regular SEO, links from other websites to your own is very important for local SEO. Google treats these as a type of endorsement.
Getting links on the right websites can really boost a website’s ranking in local as well as national searches.
Local citations
Citations are “mentions” on other websites that help Google and Bing recognise you exist in the offline world. They also help reinforce your location.
A sprinkling of very good quality citations in amongst other regular citations is a good and realistic mix and shows your prominence.
On-page optimisation
Optimising the structure and content on your website – “on-page” optimisation – helps Google understand what you do and how relevant your site is for searches.
This covers a lot: page titles, H1s, URLs, content, keyword density, internal linking, image alt tags, image filenames … and a lot more.
PageSpeed optimisation
PageSpeed is Google-speak for how quickly a page loads on a desktop and a mobile; it measures and scores both separately.
With more people searching on mobiles Google has made PageSpeed much more important. And why not? A quick and responsive site is going to be more helpful than a slow one.
Keyword analysis
It’s possible to get any website to rank 1st for at least one search term. It’s easy. It’s no use if nobody actually searches for that term though!
Identifying whether people search for “piano transportation”, “piano removals” or “piano movers” can make all the difference to the number of enquiries you get (it’s 20, 1,200 and 2,500 respectively, by the way).
Competitor analysis
Looking at what the competition does, especially if they are above you in the results, is a good way of learning from their mistakes and getting an insight into what Google wants.
If you do what the competition does right only better, then it follows that Google and Bing will prefer you over them and list your site above theirs in the search results.
What do I do?
I take care of all the above. I draw on my 20+ years of experience to get you higher in search results for keywords that potential customers will be using to find your products or services.
Not all businesses want or need me to do everything on the list above, so I have different packages. One will suit you.
Get in touch for a chat, to find out more on what I do and how I can work with you.
Essential
- Google My Business Profile
- Bing Places For Business Profile
- Yelp Profile
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics
- Local Citations
- Initial On-Page Optimisation
- Website Monitoring
- No minimum contract
Standard
- Essential package PLUS
- Website Hosting
- Email Hosting
- Backups
- SSL
- PageSpeed Optimisation
- Website Security
- GDPR Setup
- No minimum contract
Premium
- Standard package PLUS
- Website Maintenance
- Website Updates
- Keyword Research
- Competitor Research
- Schema Markup
- Local Link Building
- Full On-Page Optimisation
- No minimum contract