You no doubt have some understanding of the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It’s a fundamental part of business management in the digital age, and those companies that fail to embrace the notion of building a strong SEO strategy are doomed to fall behind the competition. However, one of the elements of SEO that many businesses overlook is ensuring that they have a strong local SEO strategy, and that can be a mistake for a few reasons. Local SEO can transform your business and improve your conversion rates in proven ways, so it’s essential for your business that you understand what it is and how it works.

What is Local SEO?

If your business is based around a brick and mortar location, such as a retail outlet, restaurant, or office block, then you’re going to want to attract local customers. Local SEO is about making yourself easy to find for those customers close to you geographically, and there’s a good reason why you should focus on that. Customers are increasingly using their phones and devices to find local businesses, and when 46% of all Google searches are based locally, and 78% of local Google searches result in an offline purchase, then you know that you should be taking advantage of that potential.

Local SEO Strategies

There are a number of ways to boost your local SEO impact, and one of the quickest is registration. There are a number of platforms where you can register your business details, and from Yelp, Foursquare, Google My Business listings, and Bing Places for Business, the ones that you choose to register with will be reflective of your industry sector. Registering your business online will give your local SEO a significant boost, and will make it much easier for those local customers to find you when they need you.

The results

Those business directories are the main reason why searches result in so many local businesses appearing on the front page of any online search. Just using local directories can give you an incredible possibility for conversion rates, with some analyses showing that by focusing on local SEO it’s possible to obtain a conversion rate of up to 50%! That’s certainly not something to be ignored. As mobile phone use continues to grow, and mobile searches continue to be a part of daily life, it’s obviously essential that you don’t ignore the possibilities of local SEO strategies.

The importance of reviews

Those reviews that customers leave on your website, social media, Yelp, and Google, all play a factor when it comes to your local SEO. When we depend on online services, those reviews can make the difference between looking further into a company or moving onto the next one, and whether you’re a florist or a baker, those customers will want to know more about your business before they spend. Just as word of mouth used to be the best way to grow a business in the old days, that has now transformed into the online review, and having plenty of positive reviews will go a long way to getting your business noticed locally.

Search Engine Optimization has never been more important for business survival, and the savvy business owner will attack the issue on a number of fronts. However, if you focus on basic SEO strategies and forget the importance of localized SEO, then you will end up losing the local clients that could be the foundation of your bottom line.