In this blog, we’ll look into the reason for any business to do Local SEO and why it is important for certain kinds of businesses.
For many physical stores and businesses, listing high in local searches is important. Imagine you have a dental clinic. You would obviously want to list high in searches like “Dental clinic near me”, “Best dentist in my area” etc.
By incorporating local SEO strategies, you can optimize your listing to rank high on such searches. Majority of these searches happen on Google and the results are shown from Google Maps listing. An example is shown below:
Who should focus on Local SEO?
Local SEO matters to all those businesses who have customers walking into a physical location. So, all physical stores, hospitals, clinics, gym, restaurants, educational institutions etc. need a solid Local SEO strategy.
Then who doesn’t need it? Well, any business that runs a business primarily online doesn’t need an extensive Local SEO effort. An example of that would be say e-commerce firms like Amazon or Flipkart, fully digital edtech companies like Byju’s or White Hat Jr. etc.
Most companies still need some Local SEO
Most businesses however need some kind of Local SEO. Let take B2B companies. At first, it may seem local SEO isn’t that important for them. After all they are catering to more businesses than retail customers. But this is not correct. In fact, it can be highly beneficial for them and may bring a higher ROI than a highly competitive B2C market.
Take for eg. one of our clients who runs a fencing services company. They would want to list for searches like “Fencing services in Mumbai”, “Softnet fencing in Chennai” etc. A good Local SEO strategy has made them list high on Google maps searches. This ensured they show up on localized searches by businesses. That leads to more hot leads calling them and hence higher revenues on conversion.
Local SEO is not just Google Maps
Although listing high on Google Maps is important, there are many other aspects of a Local SEO strategy that can help a business.
For eg. A good local SEO strategy also includes listing on local directories and other local search platforms relevant to the business. Why is this important? Well, Google looks at different signals before deciding how relevant is the business for the user. One of them is the listing on Local directories. But it is not just blind listing on these local directories. Anyone could do that. So, Google has a more nuanced approach towards it. One way is to look at something called as a NAP profile of a business.
We will cover this in detail in other blogs. The key takeaway here for now, a solid Local SEO strategy goes beyond Google Maps.
Google My Business
A question may arise that, how does one list their business on Google Maps? Well, it is pretty straight forward. Google has a service called Google My Business. It has a simple interface to help list your business on Maps. It also allows you to claim an existing listing if it is a duplicate entry of your business. They have simple, straight-forward way to verify you run the business.
It typically take about 2-3 weeks for verifying a Google Maps listing in India.
Conclusion
In most cases, businesses need some kind of Local SEO strategy. In some cases, Local SEO will form the most important part of overall SEO strategy.
In any case, you should have a detailed discussion with your SEO agency on how important is the Local SEO in your case and how the agency plans to implement it.
If there is only one thing to take away from this article, it is that – Never ignore Local SEO!
– Practics.in team
At Practics.in, we pride ourselves on being great at what we do, i.e. SEO and Content Mktg. We understand search engines and content well enough to help businesses get the most out of their online presence. We can help you rank high on relevant searches by your potential customers.
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