Local SEO – Search Engine Optimization – Strategies are not like your usual SEO techniques. While your typical SEO strategies target a large, often global audience, local SEO (SEO) caters to a much smaller audience, often narrowing down to the likes of a city, town or state’s geographic boundaries.
Through local SEO, it is possible to target audiences from a specific geographic area, which helps businesses rank for local search terms, get into local business listings on Google, and effectively include local backlinks.
Focusing on local SEO is important for local businesses for many reasons.
First, businesses can increase their visibility in local search results and drive more website traffic and sales. Local SEO helps build trust and credibility with local customers by providing accurate and up-to-date information about their business through optimized website content. Finally, being more friendly to locals can help businesses outpace their local competition.
Considering how important local SEO is to such businesses, it should be done right. For that, you should bring in experts who are well-educated in local search engine optimization. But before you do that, here are a few things you should consider.
What kind of services they offer and their approach
Local SEO companies offer a variety of services to help your business improve its local online presence, attract more local customers, and increase revenue. Some of the services you should offer include:
- Local keyword researchA local keyword research agency will help you work out the most relevant and high-traffic keywords for your business in your area.
- Optimization on the pageThis includes optimizing your website’s content to improve its relevance and search engine ranking locally.
- Google Business Update: The agency will make your Google Business listing stand out in Google local search results. In most cases, a direct search for your business will highlight your business profile at the top of the results.
- Local link buildingLocal link building helps you get links from other high-quality local websites to improve your website’s authority and search engine rankings.
- Quotation constructionThis helps build accurate and consistent business listings across various online directories to improve your local visibility.
- Reputation managementReputation management allows you to monitor and manage your online reputation through strategies such as online reviews and social media monitoring and management.
What do other people say about them?
We will explain this with an example.
Charleston, South Carolina is home to many landscaping companies, and when you google for such services near Charleston, it will show you many options. However, for small businesses, ranking on this list is difficult. That’s why American Artists Landscaping, Inc. to a Charleston SEO company called Mr. Marketing and has been working with them for two years.
Thanks to the agency’s Charleston-based local SEO services, the company has now grown from a small business to a six-figure local business in less than a year. That’s the power of local SEO. It can help you grow, get local, and become one of the best in your area from scratch.
As this SEO agency has helped American Artists Landscaping, Inc. succeed in their business, the company has not only good things to say about the agency.
Likewise, you need to go through Google reviews and other review sites to see how good an SEO agency is before working with them. Since your focus is on local search engine optimization, always look for local clients they’ve helped.
Get an idea of their past clients and their success stories
An SEO company is only as good as its clients’ success stories. While reviews can help you learn about the company’s work, looking at these success stories or case studies can help you understand how they do and run things. It’s also a good way to check if they have business experience from your industry.
How they’ve helped their clients, what client SEO problems they’ve solved, how they’ve impacted local SEO rankings, what strategies they’ve developed, what their approach is to various on-page and technical SEO problems, etc. Watch as you learn more. With these things you can better understand yourself what the SEO agency’s game plan might be with your case.
Talk to them to see if their vision matches your expectations
By now, you already know a lot of things that a local SEO company can do to help its clients. Now is the time to talk to them and see if their vision matches your expectations. Here the agency will highlight your problems and how they want to solve them. If you think their plans and strategies go hand in hand with your brand and can help you achieve your goals, by all means make a deal with them and get to work.
Once all of this is done, you’ll be working with a local SEO agency that not only knows what they’re doing, but also delivers the success you see in your local market.
