Search engine optimization, or SEO, is vital if you want customers to be able to find your website. Most companies looking to use the Internet for their business have an SEO strategy that they use for improving their page ranks and getting potential customers to visit their websites. There are a lot of different strategies for making SEO work for you, but one that’s frequently overlooked is a focus on local SEO.

What Is Local SEO?

Local SEO is an SEO strategy that focuses on local traffic. Any business that has a physical location and isn’t based solely on the Internet could benefit from local SEO. Local SEO will drive people who live near your business’ location to visit your website. SEO is important to driving traffic to your website, but if you have a physical location, your website isn’t the only place you want your customers to visit.

Benefits of Local SEO

There are a lot of benefits to focusing on local SEO if your company has a physical location. It helps drive better traffic to your site and can even get more people visiting your business in person. The only businesses that wouldn’t benefit from having a local SEO campaign are those that don’t have a physical location at all and are only online.

Increased Traffic to Your Business

If your local SEO strategy is successful, you’ll attract local customers to your physical location, not just your website. The purpose of a local SEO strategy isn’t only website traffic. It’s to get customers in the door at your business’ location. Your overall SEO strategy can focus on driving traffic to your website and your online store if you have one. Local SEO’s goal is to increase foot traffic.

Geographically Relevant Visitors

A local SEO strategy also has the benefit of sending better quality visitors your way. You don’t just want any kind of website traffic. If the people are clicking on your website but your content isn’t actually what they’re looking for, they’ll click off, increasing your bounce rate and decreasing your page rankings. Someone living in New York who is looking for a local dog groomer, for example, would not stay for long on the website of a company operating out of California.

Google’s Neural Matching

Google can use geolocation tagging to automatically match a user to their correct location. For example, if someone searches for coffee, Google will provide search results for coffee in their location rather than coffee in general. Users don’t necessarily have to specify their location when they search. Google is smart enough to figure that out for them.

Local SEO Strategies

In many ways, local SEO strategies are very similar to regular SEO strategies. Your website should be mobile-friendly, you should have regular content on your website and on social media feeds, and more. What you should do differently for local SEO is to focus on building a local reputation and ensuring that your business is included in local business listings. You should also make sure you have a Google My Business profile and specify your business’ location on your website’s About Us page. You should also include locally-relevant content on your website and social media.