Are you looking to gain more customers?
People often begin their businesses and have to undergo the learning curve of how to gain clients and keep themselves afloat. After all, business has never been so competitive. Individual shop owners must contend with local competition as well as big names, such as Amazon.
If you really want to stand out, you need to use local SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization and is the process by which people get their businesses to the top of search engine results. It often falls under a business’s digital marketing strategy.
But what are the benefits of SEO?
Let’s go into the top 10 benefits below!
1. Rank Well with Local SEO
When many people begin businesses, they start with starry eyes, hoping the sky’s the limit. And it is, in a way.
Yet, launching a business straight into international success isn’t common. Instead, it’s more common for businesses to need to start smaller, growing locally before they grow internationally.
That doesn’t mean you can’t grow a successful business right away, though. What’s the key?
Ranking well in local search engine inquiries through local SEO.
Search engines prioritize the results they show a user by the user’s location. This limits your competition to only those services providing in your area and increases the likelihood that you will appear at the top of the results. In turn, this increases the number of people who will see your search engine listing, visit your website, and use your service.
2. Increase Web Traffic
Put frankly, the higher up you rank in someone’s search engine inquiry results, the more likely they are to click on your website link. As mentioned above, you’ll only have to compete locally for these spots when you use local SEO.
That means a higher percentage of the people in your area will see the services you offer and click through to your website. Once they’re on your website, you have the opportunity to convert them into customers.
3. Compete with Local Businesses
For many types of companies, their fiercest competition might not be across the world but rather right next door.
This is especially true for companies that offer in-person services. An automobile shop, for instance, isn’t competing with all of the auto shops in the world. They’re just competing with other shops their customers can buy from in person.
As a result, it’s essential to be able to compete with your local competition. Local SEO services can help you do that.
4. Boost the Local Economy
Now, this isn’t something everyone thinks of right away, but it still remains massively important.
Using local SEO not only helps people see your business. It also encourages them to buy from a business in their area. Buying locally is a great way to boost your city or region’s local economy.
So, if you’re a business owner who wants to use your marketing techniques to both gain customers and support your area, take advantage of local SEO benefits!
5. Partner with Other Local Businesses
Do you want to take supporting local business to the next level?
If so, consider using local SEO. Local SEO helps other businesses learn of your company. This can help the two of you forge relationships that ultimately better your sales and help you network.
6. Take Advantage of Out of Town Business
You might be wondering how localized SEO can help you gain out of town business. After all, if you want to expand, you’ll need to build your reputation and further establish your brand beyond the borders of your city.
Before the internet, this was much harder to do. Now, though, people often travel with smartphones in their pocket, fully equipped with search engine capabilities.
Those search engine algorithms also use the current location of the phone to determine which businesses to list first. So, even if a car from Tallahassee, Florida, breaks down near Tampa Bay, the owner of the vehicle will get Tampa Bay auto shops listed first when they look them up on their smartphone.
If you own an auto shop in Tampa Bay and have used local SEO, you may appear as one of the first results.
Local SEO, then, gives you an excellent opportunity for you to gain new business, even from people out of town.
7. Save Money
Do you want to get people to visit your website and purchase your products and services without bleeding your wallet dry?
If so, you should try using local SEO.
Investing money to campaign to people all across the world can be costly. You might need to use spend time coming up with strategic ideas as well, taking away from the time you spend fulfilling client orders.
Yet, many platforms offer local business listings for free, such as Google My Business. You can set yourself up there and start getting more customers for a fraction of the price.
8. Expand in More Areas
But what if you don’t want to just use SEO to rank better in multiple locations?
Local SEO is still an excellent option. After all, instead of foregoing SEO completely and risking losing your local rankings, you can optimize your website to perform well in each of those different areas. This increases the likelihood that you will be able to gain customers in all of your locations.
9. Get More Sales
And here’s the point that sums up the ultimate goal of most online marketing strategies: local SEO gets you more sales.
In fact, it actually increases your mobile sales by quite a bit. When you rank well in a mobile device user’s search engine query, the person who made the query is more likely to buy from you. Research shows that 80% of web traffic coming from mobile devices converts into sales for a company.
That’s an opportunity you shouldn’t let slip by.
Want More Digital Marketing Help?
So, why use local SEO?
Business owners often find local SEO benefits their company greatly.
It helps them boost the local visibility of their website. It also assists them with ranking well locally, competing with other businesses, forming partnerships with other companies, getting more sales, boosting the local economy, expanding in more areas, increasing web traffic, taking advantage of out of town business, and saving money.
Want more digital marketing help? Contact us today!