Local SEO – what you need to know

Local positioning is crucial for smaller companies that operate on a regional rather than national level. While national SEO focuses more on ranking in search results nationwide, local SEO prioritizes appearing in the SERPs in a specific location. This strategy involves promoting the brand, products and services among local, potential customers.

Bakery, hairdressing salon, grocery store or car repair shop — customers of each of these companies are looking for a service that will be performed reliably (and willingly also cheaply), enjoys good opinions and, above all, is located nearby.

Currently, approximately 46% of all Google searches are local

So if your company doesn't appear in the results list when someone in your location performs a search, it's a missed opportunity to reach your customer.

Do you want to be one step ahead of the competition? Here are six tips that will help you improve your company's visibility in local search

Keywords and phrases for local SEO

If you run a local business, you definitely want to be displayed in Google for terms such as:

• Kawiarnia Katowice
• Plumber Bemowo
• Pizzeria Gdynia, telephone, etc.

To match keywords to such queries, it is worth using the SiL (Service in Location) method. Based on this, you can easily create a word list. For example, if you run a local restaurant, you can go in the following direction: pizza in Krakow, sushi in Warsaw, burgers in Gdynia. Having a list of valuable keywords that will help in local search, you can start optimization work, so that your website starts showing up for such queries.

Optimize your website

Regardless of the business model, every local website should be error-free, mobile-friendly (RWD), well-organized and properly optimized. The vast majority of Google searches are conducted using mobile devices. Moreover, according to research conducted by HubSpot Marketing Statistics, as many as 61% of people who look for services on smartphones are willing to contact a given company if it has a website tailored to phones.

Google gives priority to sites that work well on mobile phones. So if your website doesn't have a good mobile version, you can lose a lot in terms of local SEO. Therefore, you should make sure that your website is responsive and loads quickly on any device. You can use Google's free mobile-friendly testing tool to check how your website currently performs on computers and smartphones. If you run a business in different locations, make sure you have separate pages (or at least subpages) for each location. It may look like this:

• domena.pl/warszawa
• domena.pl/uslugi/krakow
• domena.pl/lokalizcje/gdansk

All such subpages should contain NAP data, contact details, opening hours and, of course, the keywords and phrases we talked about in the first point.

Contact subpage

When it comes to local search, it is also worth ensuring that your website has a separate "contact" subpage. It should contain information about the full name of the company, addresses of all locations and a clearly visible and, above all, clickable telephone number, thanks to which a person viewing the website on a smartphone will be able to make a call with one tap of their finger. It is also a good idea to include your name, address and phone number in the footer of your entire website.

Register your company on Google My Business

According to Google, over a billion people use Google Maps every month

Creating a Google My Business profile takes five minutes and is one of the easiest things you can do to ensure your business is visible in local search results. When configuring the profile, you must indicate the company address, and then Google sends a card containing a PIN code to the indicated address, which is used to verify the correctness of the data. After verification, your company should be included on Google Maps within a few days. Thanks to this, it will be displayed to users searching for a given service in your location. However, it is important that when setting up your Google My Business profile, you provide all the information that Google asks for, including the categoriescompanies, services, products and opening hours. The more information you provide to Google, the more likely it is that your business will appear at the top of local search results. After correctly completing the profile, your company will begin to appear on Google Maps in local searches, e.g. here results for "Orthodontist Łódź":

 

Related platforms operate similarly, but are less popular in Poland: Bing Places and Apple Maps. And we also have Yelp, but its popularity in Poland has not yet come.

Use social media

Google My Business is not the only platform for publishing and sharing content. It is also worth taking advantage of the possibilities of social media. The basis, of course, is Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Here, it is also worth taking care of a fanpage or another company profile that will allow you to present your business and indicate its location. However, there are many more niche, industry and local portals that are worth considering. You can't reach a large number of users with less popular platforms, but that's the point. In such places you can publish posts that will meet with a higher level of engagement from the recipients, which is difficult to achieve in the most popular social media.

Verify data consistency (NAP business cards)

It is very important to be consistent when placing your company name, address or telephone number everywhere on the Internet. These are the so-called NAP (Name, Address, Phone) business cards, which basically consist of placing contact details for your company in various places on the Internet. However, regardless of whether you publish information about your company on a website, in an industry directory, or on social media, – these data should always be provided in the same way (the same data in the same format). This is extremely important for local SEO because if the search engine algorithm regularly encounters conflicting contact information about your company, it may question its authenticity. There is no doubt that this has negative consequences for the company's visibility in search results.

Get opinions and reviews

“Well-written, positive reviews can improve a company's visibility and increase the chances that a customer will decide to visit it.” Source: Google My Business Help

The above quote is a valuable tip that suggests that Google treats opinions as one of the most important ranking factors. Therefore, it is very important to encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews about your product or service. Your customers can leave a review using Google My Business. Just generate a direct link to the website and ask them to write a few sentences.

The opinions and reviews you receive not only affect your position in local search results, but will also help you get little stars next to your company name in Google. Thanks to them, you will stand out from the competition and inspire trust among potential customers.

The value of local SEO

You don't have to compete with the whole world. Be in the right place at the right time, combine this with excellent customer service, and your local business will have a great chance of success. Appropriate local optimization will make you stand out at the right moment when customers are ready to buy. The above tips should have a positive impact on your website's visibility in local search results, but they are only a fraction of what local SEO does.