Local SEO Overview

Local customers are searching for your business’ products and services online all the time, but are you being found? Is your business on the first page of Google or the second? The formula for successful local SEO and a great local search rank on Google includes a host of tactics like business listings, attaining customer reviews, great content, internal and external links, and of course the location of where the searcher is searching from or proximity.

Even the best brands need some help navigating how to tackle these local SEO tactics and strategies. With the right local SEO strategies in place, you can build citations, boost your ranking, and effectively manage your business’ online presence, so you can attract more customers in your door to ramp your growth.

Some Local SEO Data:

72% of consumers who did a local search on a smartphone visited a store within 5 miles
Source: Google

30% of mobile searches are related to a location
Source: Google

28% of searches for something nearby result in a purchase
Source: Google

Is Local SEO easier?

One thing that local SEO has as an advantage is that you typically have less competition (than national SEO for example). It simply will be easier for your business to rank higher in Boston, than to rank nationally for your top keyword phrases. Still, as long as your local competition is more than 20-30 other businesses you might not get page one results by doing nothing. In Boston, for example, a lot of businesses will benefit from ranking for “your company name Boston” or “Boston your company name” to get faster results.

Often competition for these local terms is less and there is a fair chance that it is also less strong, which will give you an advantage of ranking your business website quicker for those local say Boston terms, than national ones. At the same time, you can work on building up your website for the long haul with some national SEO ranking tactics, but just remember that it will take much much longer and will require a tremendous amount of effort to reach page one for bigger head terms. This is why we highly recommend that local and regional businesses focus on local SEO tactics to improve their local search rank in Google. It just makes more sense strategically and from a budget standpoint too. To illustrate how competitive ranking nationally for certain keyword phrases is, let’s look at some sample keyword search data which shows monthly search volume. We will compare data from Boston & for the whole of the United States for terms “local seo services”.

Local SEO Keyword Research Example for Boston Location:

Search Term Data for “Local SEO Services” United States: