Local SEO Consulting - London | What It Is & Why You Need It

Local SEO

Local SEO is a massively underrated SEO activity that not many businesses focus on, mistakenly so. Local SEO is not just about search engines, it is much more than just the optimisation of a Google My Business listing. Any business with a physical location or that serves customers in a certain area needs Local SEO.

What is Local SEO?

It is the part of SEO that focuses on granting businesses and websites more organic visibility in their local areas. The practice of optimising a business for local searches is harder than what it looks like, and it follows different rules compared to the standard Google algorithm.

What is Local SEO important?

According to Ahrefs, over 40% of all Google searches are local and 50% of people who perform a local search on their phone go to a physical store within one day. So if you are not doing any local SEO right now, it is time to start considering the money you are leaving on the table.

Local Searches

Local searches are a type of query that imply the usage of location, directly or indirectly, in order to be addressed correctly – for example, “plumber near me” is an obvious one, having the near-me qualifier, but also “pizza delivery”, despite not having it.
Local searches show a different version of the SERP, highly dominated by what is called local pack, which is a list of Google My Business results that appear below a map of the place of interest.

Main areas of Local SEO

Search engines display local search results based on three factors: relevance, prominence and proximity. Realistically speaking, you can only look to optimise the first two.

If you want to read the list of local search ranking factors, Moz has a great page on it.

In order to impact relevance and prominence, these are the activities local SEOs would focus on:

Local keyword research: the practice of finding the most relevant keywords for your local business, listing key metrics for decision-making, such as search volume, seasonality of the keywords, keyword difficulty and so on.
On-Page optimisation:
based on the research done, it is the optimisation of the on-page elements of a site, with a strong local focus in mind (especially local landing pages).
Local content strategy:
based on the research done, it is the development of a content strategy with a local focus that plans what content should be produced, in what format, and when.
Google My Business optimisation:
the audit and optimization of a business’ GMB listing, with the objective to capitalise on all its functionalities and features (such as Google Posts).

Reviews, Backlinks and Citation audit:

analysis of the current value a local business is getting out of local reviews, backlinks and citations, and relative recommendations on how to boost them.

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