If you are a small business that relies on your local community to survive, focusing on your local SEO can be an absolute game changer for you. The fact is, word of mouth and reputation will only get you so far; if you truly want to dominate in your local area and attract as many customers as you can through the doors, you’ll need to start working on your local SEO. Not convinced? Read on and we’ll tell you exactly how it can be so beneficial to you…
How local SEO can change your business
Improve your online presence
If your business isn’t turning up in the top 5 listings on a Google SERP page for your most relevant keywords, there’s a good chance that many people in your area don’t even know that you exist. Again, word of mouth only goes so far. If you want to be on everyone’s radar, local SEO can help you take the top spots of a SERP whenever someone is actively searching for the services or products that you provide.
More relevant customers
A large part of SEO is identifying and targeting the most relevant keywords. For example, if you sell motorbikes in Singapore, targeting “the best place to buy bikes in Singapore” is a little too broad as ‘bikes’ refers to both push bikes and motorbikes. However, by targeting “best motorbikes in Singapore” or “buy Yamaha motorcycles in Singapore”, the prospects who type those queries into Google and find your website will be far more relevant.
Rank higher for local search queries
In the same breath, by using local keywords (whether it be Singapore, or something more targeted such as Holland Village, Little India, Sentosa Island, or Marina Bay), you can avoid attracting website traffic from customers who aren’t even in your service area.
Specificity matters.
For example, for a small business in Singapore who is looking for a local digital marketing agency to work with, they might type in “SEO agency Singapore”. In this case, the intention is quite clearly to find and work with an SEO agency in that specific region.
Outshine the competition
You’d be amazed by how few businesses realise the true value and potential of local SEO. As such, if you go all in and invest in dominating the local search results pages, you can bypass the competition and pick up a lot more business.
Additionally, when you attract more positive reviews for your GMB profile and socials, not only will your local search results improve, but you’ll have a much easier time converting those customers because they can see that you are very clearly a reputable and reliable business.
It’s cheaper than paid advertising
Whether you are doing PPC, social media ads, or paying for your business to feature on billboards and in local newspapers, it can be quite expensive. Not only that, but the ROI is nowhere near as good as local SEO (the average ROI for local SEO over 3 years is 500%!)
Claiming your GMB profile is free, just as it is free to optimise it and add all of the relevant content, NAP citations, imagery, and reviews.
Of course, for the best results it’s almost certainly worth hiring a digital marketing agency to handle everything, however, if you would prefer to trial it in-house first, you can do much of your local SEO for free (in exchange for an intensive investment of time).
In any case, whether you decide to go it alone or hire the experts, when done well, local SEO can be transformative for small businesses. If you’ve been struggling to compete with your local competitors, we strongly advise strategizing a local SEO campaign and putting it into practice today!
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