Do You Really Need a Local SEO Company?
Is Local SEO Really Necessary?
Yes! With more consumers searching for local businesses online than ever before, local search engine optimization services are essential for your business to attract more customers organically through an online search.
The fact is, more than half of all traffic to local business websites comes from organic online searches, so it is crucial that your company shows up at the top of those search results in your local area.
This is where Searchbloom’s local SEO services help.
75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results. One of the key benefits of Local SEO is that you can get your business to rank on the first page of search results. Here’s how…
Our Local SEO Strategy
Delivering Results You Can See
The primary goal of local business SEO is to get prospective customers to your brand’s website in order to entice them to purchase your company’s products or services.
We accomplish this by executing the A.R.T of Local SEO:
How does a search engine know that you’re running a genuine business and provide value to customers and users? Inbound links are the key, which is how search engines determine the authority of your site. When other sites link to yours, it shows search engines that they value your content. Similar to an election, each link is like a ‘vote.’ However, the quality of the vote is just as integral as the quantity. These votes of confidence are particularly valuable when they come from influential, high-authority sites. Searchbloom exclusively focuses our outreach for link acquisition strategy on high authority sites to help your national SEO rankings.
Though search engines are the creation of humans, they are not powered by them (and they can’t read your mind either). It’s essential to make it crystal clear what your site and it’s pages are about and what services and products you’re offering. Optimizing a web page for relevancy makes it easier for a search engine to understand what your business is all about. If you can show search engines that your webpage is relevant, qualified, and an authority in your niche or industry, you’ll be rewarded with high rankings nationwide in the search engine results page (SERP’s).
Local SEO is not all about keywords and search engines. It’s also about making sure the foundation of your website is sound. For example, the structure of your site needs to be optimized to deliver a fantastic user experience with fast load times, mobile optimization, and secure user data. If you were a search engine, would you reward a webpage with top rankings if it was not responsive to mobile devices, had broken links, or took a long time to load? I think we would all agree that the answer is no. Because of this, optimizing your websites technology or ‘tech stack’ is crucial for Local SEO success.
How do you increase your site’s authority, improve your pages relevancy and also optimize your technology stack? Read on to learn more about how our local SEO services help you reach these goals.
2020 LEADING AGENCY
Our Local SEO Partners
Comprehensive Technical Site Optimization
One of the least understood factors of Local SEO is technology. While other aspects are also vital, if a website is not built well, and doesn’t have certain aspects included, it will struggle to improve in search rankings.
Google is constantly improving its ranking algorithm to show websites that users find valuable. Have you ever searched for something on Google and found a listing with aggregate reviews included?
This is done with code known as schema. Schema tells search engines who you are, where you are, and what products or services you offer.
Searchbloom will get you set up to utilize the Local Business schema in your coding. This highlights your NAP information to make it easy for search engines to find. The easier it is for search engines to catalog your website’s pages.
To ensure success for our local partner-clients, we conduct an in-depth technical SEO audit that highlights wins in a variety of areas on their website.
- Optimizing site speed
- Adding Structured Data
- Updating robots.txt
files - URL and Site Structure Optimization
- Fixing broken
elements - Compressing
images and code - Implementing
correct sitemaps - Mobile Optimization
- Cleaning code
- And much more!
Google My Business Listing Optimization
One of the most crucial factors in local SEO
Our services include optimizing your local Google business listings to ensure your business isn’t missing out on the chance to show up in Google Maps.
Even if your business isn’t on the first page of organic search results, adding your business to Google Maps can get you onto the first page of results in the Google Map section near the top of the first page.
Google Maps marketing is becoming more important than ever, as many customers prefer to click on results in the Map Pack rather than scroll down to the rest of the search results.
Searching within the map makes it easier for customers to find the businesses that are closest to their locations, without having to map each search result individually. This is especially true for those who are searching from a mobile device, like a smartphone or tablet.
Once we have claimed your Google My Business page, we will optimize your Google Business listing, including all relevant details about your business including your profile as well as your logo and banner images.
We will ensure that your Google My Business listing has the correct information and map marker placement.
Searchbloom provides local SEO services to help your business get noticed online. Our customized approach to local SEO services for your organization will bring in more customers with minimal extra effort on your part.
Leveraging Google My Business Posts & Reviews
For local businesses, getting featured in Google’s Map Pack at the top of local search results is essential.
Posting weekly on Google My Business is a local business best practice to increase your online visibility and we can help.
We will make it easy for you to receive and display your positive customer reviews on your Google My Business page with direct links and template emails.
Not so long ago, the yellow pages and phone books were an effective way for businesses to reach their customers. So what is today’s equivalent?
Local Business Citations
What they are and why they matter
Local citation building refers to the information search engines use to verify the relevance of your business in for local search.
Our local SEO service includes creating, auditing, and updating your listings to better target customers in your local area.
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Accurate
Our local SEO services ensure that all of your citations and business’s information is correct so that search engines can pinpoint your location and service areas. If anything is inaccurate, it can impact your business significantly!
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Consistent
We’ll update your company’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) so that it’s the same on all the sites Google uses to verify your local business information.
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Localized
If your business is in Los Angeles, you don’t want it showing up in search results for New York City. Likewise, customers in Los Angeles don’t want to see business listings from New York when they are searching for something local.
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Current
Keeping your local SEO citations current is essential to maximizing your results from local searches. This includes your hours, holiday accommodations, service areas and more.
- Eduardo Xavier, Owner/Master Tailor
On-Page Relevancy Optimization
High quality, relevant content is a critical aspect of local SEO
On-page relevancy is all about the quality of the content on your website and how closely linked it is to what your business does. However, building relevance is about much more than just incorporating geo-targeted keywords into your text; it also refers to your site’s meta tags, headers, images, and much more.
Your content needs to speak to your local audience and have relevance to your business.
For example, if you are in the pest control industry and there has been a recent surge in ant infestations in your area, you would want your content to incorporate that information.
This signals to search engines not just where your business is, but what it does as well. Not only that, but it provides value for your customers by providing them with the information they need.
Google also values comprehensiveness when it comes to content – which we always strive for. We want to make you are the go-to expert in your industry. It is our goal to build your brand and organic traffic volume for many years to come.
On-page relevancy also incorporates the code used to build your site and make it work. Meta titles, descriptions, and local keywords help search engines understand the content of your
site and rank it accordingly. That’s why it’scrucial that you don’t neglect these simple but powerful elements. We’ll help you optimize these areas for maximum results.
We’ll also get you set up to utilize the Local Business schema in your website’s coding. This helps highlight your NAP information – which makes it even easier for search engines to find.
When combined with high-quality, relevant content, this can boost your rankings significantly, and even help you rank well in Google Maps.
38 Reviews
Increasing Off-Page Authority
It is not just what’s on your website that counts.
How your site interacts with other authoritative sites impacts local SEO results in a big way, and on the internet just about everything is communicated through linking. That can be a tough hurdle for local businesses to jump.
Google has stated – repeatedly – that link signaling is one of the top three ranking factors for any website. The best local SEO companies take that message to heart, and we do.
In the past, acquiring links got a bad rap because so many organizations were abusing the practice to fool Google’s algorithm.
Quality is more important than quantity when it comes to links, which is why we execute outreach to acquire high-quality links for your site.
Our strategy does not involve buying low-quality links as black-hat SEO practitioners do.
Instead, we leverage our extensive network of relationships to help build links. That means our methods are both white-hat and sustainable, and you get all the benefit.
Searchbloom’s method involves outreach to key players in your industry, including local and national newspapers, magazines, trade journals, blogs, and other web publications to get them to link back to your website.
Our outreach approach should not be expected to deliver quick, overnight success, but rather will help position your business for long-term success.
We work tirelessly to acquire relevant, high-quality links from websites with high domain authority to link to your site in a natural, non-spammy way.
We will also help create high-quality, relevant content that other sites will naturally link to over time, ensuring your SEO stays strong for years to come.
Local SEO
Frequently Asked Questions
Local SEO is a way to target customers who are searching for local businesses through Google, Bing, and other search engines. It’s one of the most effective ways to reach customers online. Localized content on your website, customer testimonials, and other relevant information make it easier for the search engines to categorize your website so that it ranks as high as possible.
We echo a writer from Search Engine Journal – “it Depends“. Local SEO can take anywhere from three to six months to start seeing progress, although it can happen faster. Keep in mind that this when results start to show. As your Local SEO improves, you’ll see better results at 12 months and onward.
This question is asked often, and can be a difficult one to answer. There are so many variables to consider that pinning down a timeframe can be nearly impossible. If you have a fairly new site, that’s in a competitive market, it could be 8-12 months before you start to see results. On the other hand, if you are in a niche industry and your site is well established, you may see results within the first few months.
There are many things to consider when forecasting your SEO results:
- Staying inline and up-to-date. Google updates its algorithm over 500 times a year.
- Your online competition and the online marketing campaigns they may be running.
- Your time, resources, and budget.
- Market trends and competitiveness of your target keywords.
If you are looking for long term success with Local SEO, there aren’t any quick tricks that will provide sustainable results. It may take some time before you see the fruits of your labor, but if you are patient, strategic, and focused, Local SEO can be a successful endeavor.
If you want to do it yourself, there are some quick wins that can help you rank locally:
- Ensure that the content on your site is useful, precise, and relevant to the queries that you want to rank for.
- Optimize meta titles, descriptions, header tags, and content with target keywords.
- Make sure that your site design is mobile friendly, the pages load quickly, and the navigation is intuitive & easy to use.
- Utilize structured data and schema markup.
- Obtain reviews from clients & customers on various online entities, including Google My Business
- Acquire backlinks from relevant sites within your industry.
Between 80-90% of shoppers search for local businesses online, and 18% of those searches will result in a purchase on the same day. A further 78% are estimated to turn into an offline purchase at some point.
The numbers don’t lie. Local SEO services are a great way to ensure that people looking for local businesses find you before they find your competitor, which means more sales for you. If you thrive on people finding you locally, then local SEO is worth it.
A local citation for SEO is essentially your name, address, and phone number (abbreviated as NAP) listed across various sites and directories on the web. Google uses this information to help evaluate your business locale and rank it accordingly.
Creating a Google My Business listing will provide the opportunity to rank in Google Maps, but in order to rank well, you must optimize your listing. This will help improve your chances of being found for localized queries because your site will appear in the Map Pack found at the top of the Google search results page.
Every local SEO strategy is different. The best SEO’s work on a case-by-case basis with you, your goals, and your website to find out which strategies will create wins for your business.
For local organic rankings, the biggest ranking factors are as follows:
- Google My Business Optimization
- On-Page Optimizations
- Customer Reviews
- Local Citations
- Link Signals (backlinking)
