Given how saturated our online spaces are with random and generalized content, you’ll need to bolster your local SEO efforts to better reach your customers.
Engaging and building communities is the holy grail that every brand wants to achieve online these days—and for a few good reasons.
- Conversions improve.Your locality is one of the easiest markets to penetrate. That’s because your business is more accessible to them and more so if you optimize for local search. This ease with which they can find and access your business removes friction with conversions — be it visits or purchases.
- Turn one-time buyers to loyal customers. The more you serve your locality, the more loyalty you build. One-time customers or even window-shoppers can easily become your loyal patrons or advocates as you continue to satisfy their needs. With the advantage of accessibility, you can achieve this in no time.
- Builds your credibility and brand equity. As you get more loyal customers and advocates, you build up your reputation as a brand. This effect is a compounding result of continually pleasing your loyal customers and their resulting referrals of your brand to their peers.
- Establishes you as a local authority. Finally, building your credibility subsequently establishes you as a local authority. Even just showing up as the top result on local searches achieves this for you. But you can build on top of that even more when you successfully meet the needs of customers.
Truthfully, those reasons are just the tip of the iceberg. The considerable weight of local SEO’s benefits for businesses makes it one of the most popular services for digital marketing agencies today. Similarly, many are scurrying to learn how to create content for local search results as a low barrier to entry approach.
From blogs to service pages that are targeted down to a regional level, more brands are doubling down on their local SEO efforts for overall business success.
We’re here to help you with that. In this blog, we’ll give you practical advice on how to start creating local search-optimized content for your brand. Follow the tips below, and you’ll soon enjoy the benefits of a more engaged local community.
What are Local Search Results?
Creating effective localized content requires an understanding of what local search results are and how they work.
Local search results are listings that appear in search engines, targeting queries with a specific geographic component. For example, to cater to a search on “best roofing service in Los Angeles,” search engines prioritize businesses located within that specified region. These can also be leveraged to target proximity-based searches (eg. “near me” searches).
Results can appear in various formats, like the local pack or map pack. This format features three highlighted business listings at the top of the page alongside a map pinpointing their locations. Below is an example that illustrates what this search result format looks like.
Local search results can also be integrated into standard organic search listings, showcasing nearby businesses that match the search criteria. But while this type of content helps boost your local visibility, it usually entails outreach and digital PR to get mentions from curated listings.
Why Should Local Search Results Matter to You?
Appearing in the local search results for your region is critical to boosting your presence in the community. Since local search users are often ready to make a purchase or visit a store, appearing in local search results directly influences your sales.
Think of it this way: Would your neighbors drive for an hour to get the same quality of coffee they can get at a café just down the street? Not if they know about that little café. Here are some other reasons local SEO efforts are worth your consideration:
- Gain an edge against local competitors. Optimizing for local SEO significantly increases your visibility and helps you outshine your competitors. With a robust local SEO strategy, you enhance your digital presence and establish yourself as a local authority.
- Engage more relevant leads. Location-specific leads are often ready to purchase, making your business a convenient choice. Targeting geographically relevant customers drives higher engagement and improves conversion rates.
- Customers trust local search results more. Users trust local search results to provide accurate and relevant information, enhancing your business’s credibility. Prominent placement in local searches, accompanied by customer reviews and ratings, builds trust and influences consumer decisions.
Related Reading: For An OB/GYN Practice, Local SEO Works Best
Ultimately, local SEO levels a highly competitive search landscape. By tapping into this strategy and engaging your closest customers, you can go against more prominent brands effectively. With it, you turn what you thought was a disadvantage into a powerful tool for surpassing your biggest competitors.
Now, let’s talk about how you can rank better in local search through content.
Go Local: Tips for Creating Content for Local Search Results
Creating local search-optimized content involves more than mentioning a location. More than anything, it’s about the local context. This means that, as much as possible, you must integrate local relevance into your content to improve visibility and engagement.
Below are our best tips for doing so.
1. Incorporate Local Keywords Strategically
Identify and use keywords that reflect local search queries. These keywords can include the name of your city or neighborhood, landmarks, news topics, and region-specific services.
Let’s pretend that you’re a gutter replacement company in Portland. Incorporating local context in service pages can involve anchoring your brand’s services to the region’s climatic needs. As an example:
“In Portland, where rain constantly batters homes, gutter replacement services are vital to ensuring that your properties are protected from damaging weather conditions. With our localized specialties, residents and business owners in ”
Strive to be as specific as possible. Other ways to inject local context into your content is by citing developments in your locality, or even using mentioning local culture staples.
2. Feature Local Events and Stories
Connect with your local audience by incorporating mentions of regional events, news, and stories in your content. Apart from creating local relevance and engaging your community, you also establish yourself as a local authority in this way. Plus, events and developments aren’t just limited to general topics — you can also talk about your own community-related developments.
You can do this by creating blogs. Let’s say you are a brand of pet supplies; you can talk about community play dates between pets and how you specifically contributed to or participated in it. This not only shows that you are interested in the developments in your community but also that you are the brand to turn to whenever there are events like this.
Ultimately, this level of engagement is what you’re trying to accomplish, instead of limiting it to showing up on search results.
3. Optimize for ‘Near Me’ Search Queries
With the rise of mobile search, ‘near me’ queries have become extremely popular. To take advantage of this development, you must ensure that your location signals are complete.
Specifically, you can ensure that your content addresses these queries by including phrases like “near me,” “close by,” or “near [Location].” This information is important to service pages, in particular. In these pages, make sure to include these cues in headers and close to your calls to action.
You must also ensure that the details in your Google My Business profile are complete, accurate, and up-to-date. Doing so will improve your rankings for “near me” search results and improves follow-through with action from customers, thereby improving your conversions.
4. Use Local Business Schema Markup
Implement schema markup to help search engines understand the local relevance of your website’s content. These markups are chunks of code implemented in the backend of your website to help Google’s crawlers understand specific parts of your content better.
There are various types of markup codes and they each serve a different purpose. It can even go as specific as signaling your type of business (eg. ice cream shop, or pet supply store). You can check schema.org to find the appropriate markups to use in your content.
For practicality’s sake, you don’t need to worry about going so specific at the start. Oftentimes, implementing simple markup language that highlight addresses, phone numbers, and business hours can already do wonders for improving your local search rankings.
5. Encourage and Showcase Local Reviews
Reviews are a cornerstone of local SEO. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise considering that a lot of SEO involves improving the search experience for users.
Basically, the more good reviews you have, the more Google prioritizes your pages on local search results. Whenever possible, encourage your most loyal customers to leave positive reviews on your website and popular platforms like Google My Business and Yelp.
Apart from Google or Yelp, you can also feature these reviews on your website. These are especially helpful in home pages and specific service pages. Doing so provides you the further benefit of improving your conversions on your website as social proof is an impactful method of easing friction and removing doubts about your products and services.
Moreover, it will also help boost your credibility and authority among the local community, further compounding your positive results.
Final Thoughts
Local SEO strategies provide the ideal balance between heightened visibility and ensuring the quality of your leads. While vying for placements in the broader search landscape has merits, the playing field is far too saturated and often too volatile, making scaling strategies challenging for small businesses.
To best maximize your efforts and investments, local SEO is an effective solution you can consider, given its benefits in boosting visibility and connecting you with relevant leads. The best part is that implementing it is straightforward enough to scale independently.
However, digital marketing agencies like The Ad Firm can use their expertise to create tailored local SEO solutions for your business. Should you need help, feel free to contact us; we’d gladly help you get started on going local.
