Local SEO: How to promote your business in regional SERPs

The success of regional business promotion largely depends on local SEO. Knowing the trends and optimization principles associated with local search is becoming a marketing priority today, both for eCommerce and offline companies. About what mechanisms work in local SEO and how to optimize the site for local issuance – we tell in our material.

What is Local SEO

This is a search engine optimization strategy that helps to achieve high positions in the search results for  geo-dependent queries – where the city, district or just the user’s location is specified. On average, half of what people search for in search engines is local queries. For example, in Google their share is 46% of the total number of all hits.

Local SEO includes not only queries indicating the region or specifying the area, but also wording containing “near me”, “nearest”, etc. When users turn to Google with information of this nature, the  top results are local companies. 

The result from local SEO justifies all the effort. Optimization for a local audience allows you to increase low-frequency traffic, bring conversions to a whole new level and successfully compete with giant brands that have monopolized global search.

To improve your local business, you may hire the professional local SEO agency in India which can optimize your business profile and can provide you quality leads and sales with the help of local SEO.

Impact on SEO

The fact that the presence of a business in the directory is an additional ranking factor for a site in google is beyond doubt. An organization that has passed verification has a credibility from the search engine and, other things being equal, is better ranked in the search results than a site not added to the directory.

After registering, the business also receives an effective tool for working with user reviews. Together with the rating, they are displayed on the maps, in the main issue and the organization’s profile in the directory. In both Google, reviews are undoubtedly an important ranking factor. This fact is not called into question by optimizers, and is constantly confirmed in practice.

Integration with Google My Business

Google also has its own directory of organizations – this is the  Google My Business (GMB) application. Registration in it allows the system to manage the display of information about the company in Google services – mainly on maps and in search results. An organization card in GMB is the thing that you definitely need to have if your business works offline and is tied to a specific region. Catalog integration is also available for e-commerce, but for this the company must have a physical office or point of sale.

The top positions in search results (especially for commercial queries) are densely occupied by contextual advertising and aggregator sites, but Google has provided a mechanism through which companies can be effectively displayed in local search – this is a block with results from GMB. It bypasses organic search results and generates traffic for relevant queries well.

Ranking factors in Google wizards. Optimization schemes

The presence of a verified card does not guarantee that by default it will be included in the GMB results block. As in global search, ranking factors work here. First of all, this is  relevance – how the card corresponds to the essence of the user request. Organizations with a high internal  rating and positive  reviews have priority in ranking . Location plays an important role – Google takes into account the  location of the user, and offers a selection of closer organizations.

Registration in local catalogs and publications in local media

In addition to registering in the directories of Google, for local business promotion, it is important to be present in local services – directories, city directories, thematic aggregators. Registration on such resources does not require extra efforts, but it provides additional free traffic and provides more points of interaction with the audience. For SEO, the benefits of this strategy are also obvious – it is a channel for obtaining relevant backlinks and a way to increase brand queries.

The promotion of local online and offline business is effectively facilitated by mentions in the regional media. But a more powerful content strategy is to create viral newsbreaks. The main value of working with regional media is not so much in getting traffic and not even in backlinks, but in the fact that publications on such sites fuel user interest in the brand and increase the frequency of personalized queries, which are an important signal for search engines.

Internal site optimization for local delivery

Focusing on external activity in the Google My Business application and the development  of crowd marketing strategies , you should not forget about those errors and shortcomings within the site that can interfere with promotion in local search.

Instead of a conclusion

Working with local search is important for any business tied to a region. It is worth considering regional search for companies engaged in both e-commerce and offline customer service. The basis of local promotion is activity in the Google My Business services. For eCommerce, an additional area of ​​work is the internal optimization of the site for the requirements of Local SEO.