Localised Search.

In this post COVID world, SEO has to be considered essential to business in the same way that accountancy is. You can optimise your website yourself if you have the time and ability or sub it out. One thing is for sure, if you want to compete in today’s market, you have to be seen when potential customers are looking.

Almost all customers now start their buying journey with an internet search nowadays.

According to research by Moz, as reported by Forbes, the first page of Google captures 71% of clicks.

What is Localised Search?

Localised search means using a search engine to search for products, services and events that are relevant to the searcher’s location, as opposed to a general Internet search.

This is important because if you are a local business, you cannot compete nationally with the larger companies and nor would you want to. You want customers who are local to you so that you can serve them.

In terms of marketing, it means optimising your website so that it ranks high on local search results. These are the results that are specific to the city, town or county that you serve. If you have a business that serves customers in your area, you need to ensure that they can find you easily through local search engines. The basis of localised search means that if someone searches for “plumbers near me” or “kitchen design town name” your business will show up in the results if your website ranks for it, but there are also clever technical things happening behind the scenes that mean the user does not always need to specify the location. The search engine, mostly Google but there are others, also uses the keywords used to determine search intent, and browser history to determine whether it should show local results.

2. Localised search is the first instinct for your customers when they are ready to buy.

Google does it’s best to understand search intent. When it detects a search term that it thinks indicates readiness to buy, it serves up the map pack. Most customers have a natural instinct to buy from someone local so they add town names or ‘near me’ to their search term. Studies show that they would rather click on the local map pack listings than the ads above them.

3. The rules of  SEO and best practices are always changing.

The way the search world evolves, mostly at the discretion of Google, requires constant monitoring to stay ahead of the competition and in the map pack.

Being proactive and monitoring for major algorithm changes is always going to benefit the brands doing so.

Google makes thousands of algorithm changes a year. Fall too far behind, and it will be extremely difficult to come back. SEO monitoring helps to ensure that is avoided.

4. Understanding SEO gives you better insight into your business.

When you proactively design your website around SEO and then attract customers based on that, you get to understand their behaviour and what they respond to.

Use of the incredible analytics available to you from Google shows you who your customers are and where they come from. Once you see what they respond to you can deliver more of that and effectively spend more time on what works and less time on what doesn’t. 

6. Once You’ve Optimised Your Website for Localised Search, it’s the Gift that Keeps on Giving.

Spending time or money on SEO is an investment that continues to pay back for work done. Unlike paid advertisements, optimising your website for localised search remains forever. It needs monitoring as rankings change but as long as you keep an eye out for competitors or spammers with fake listings, once you’re in the map pack, you should be able to stay there.

7. Results of Your SEO Efforts are Measurable.

Google has amazing free facilities for you to see exactly what results your SEO efforts bring you. Depending on how in-depth you want your analytics to be, you can track your audience, their location, clicks on a page, how long and where they visit on your website and even how long they scroll a page or a video if you want to. Read more about how Google Analytics can help you grow your business.

You’ve all heard the quote from John Wanamaker:

‘Half the money I spent on advertising was wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half.’

This saying no longer rings true when everything on the internet is measurable. When you pay for ads, if you get the timing or message wrong, you’ve blown your money. With SEO, you build a foundation that keeps on growing and giving you results. That’s not to say that Google Ads and other PPC efforts are a waste of time. They are not. As part of a search engine marketing campaign, SEO and PPC work well together. Find out more about getting started with Google Ads.

9. Localised search results have a better click-through rate from potential customers who live in your area.

Recent research shows that more customers searching on the internet are becoming blind to the Ads at the top and are more likely to click on the search results that are accompanied by the Google Map. The biggest ranking factor is proximity so it is likely that people clicking through to your website will live close to your work area. This gives you more chance to convert them to customers and saves money in travel time and costs.

10. Appearing at the Top of Google Gives You Instant Authority with Your Customer.

Rightly or wrongly, if you appear on the front page of Google, customers judge you to be better than those who do not appear. Customers are looking for the ‘know, like and trust factors and being on the front page gives you a great head start.

It’s not possible for small businesses to rank on the first page against the national companies and the SEO professionals who build websites purely to rank for lead generation but you can be on page 1 if you optimise for localised search. This gives the customer the feeling of trust – that you must be good if you’re on the front page.

Audit before making changes.

If you are going to attempt to improve your SEO by yourself, start with our free website analysis report which will give you an overview of what to work on. It will also show you what your meta titles and descriptions are. Let us know that you are working on it yourself and we’ll keep you in the system and run a new report a month after you’ve made the changes. No charge. We’ll even tell you what you need to do. Our customers are those who don’t have time to optimise their websites themselves but we’re passionate about helping local businesses, so are happy to help. You may also be interested in reading our article about DIY SEO.