What is local SEO?
Local SEO refers to optimising your site so that it appears in local search results. When people make a query that search engines like Google consider “local,” they will show some local results. This can also happen when users add a location to the search term, or the term itself specifies a location. If you own a local business, you would certainly like to be featured in these results!
How does local SEO work?
If you’re optimising for local searches, you should focus on letting the search engine know, through all kinds of signals, that your business is located in a certain area and you want to be found by customers there. Today it is easiest to optimise if you have a correct address in the region/city. This allows you to create targeted local pages to help people find the store location on your website.
One of the most important things on your website is the proper branding of your business, which will help you make it clear to the search engine that you have a local business and what is the area you serve. This may sound quite technical, but luckily, we’ll take care of it with local SEO completely. You will only need to add some details about your business and it will appear in the correct schema markup. Besides technically optimising your website for local searches, writing for a local audience on your website is also a great idea.
What is the difference with SEO in general?
You can see local SEO as a subsection of SEO. While SEO is focused on getting your website pages to rank higher for searches without a local component, local SEO aims to rank higher in specific areas, such as cities and regions. A local audience often performs these searches. Only through the search, the search engine can understand to some extent whether the searcher is looking for a local “solution” to their problem. These searches are especially important for small businesses because they primarily provide services or products to a local audience. If you want to rank for these local searches, it’s worth investing in local SEO that is more focused on local ranking factors.
