Local SEO can help you find customers looking for your product or service near you. Studies show that the modern consumer almost always looks up a product or business on Google, and uses Google to find local businesses (in searches like “restaurants near me.”) An Local SEO expert can get you clients by making su5re that your business is at the top of those search results. Read on to learn more about Local SEO and how it works.
What Is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of using certain keywords and phrases to “catch” in search engine algorithms, such as Google. This can bump your website or content to the top of a search engine results page (or SERP.) When looking for businesses or products, most people do not look beyond the first 2-5 results, so having your result be closer to the top can help gain considerable traffic to your website.
Local SEO is a type of SEO strategy that benefits businesses with a physical location or a business that services a specific area. This can be accomplished in many ways, such as adding specific keywords to your businesses, as well as a geographic area and map. Read on to learn more about how Local SEO works and how it can benefit your business.
How Did Google Come About?
Google quickly dominated the search engine world. At first it used the same approach as all other search engines– matching the words and phrases in the search bar to those of websites. Google added to this by using links between sites to determine which websites were authoritative and trustworthy. Nowadays, Google uses hundreds of factors to determine the SERPs, including previous searches of the digital user as well as a user’s “digital footprint.”
How Does Google Create Its Results Now?
Every time you type a search into Google, it is not doing a live search of the entire internet. Instead, Google searches a stored copy of all the sites that it has discovered, called the Google Index. The index is created using thousands of small programs called “spiders” (because they crawl the web– get it?) These spider programs each start on a single page, following the links on that page to check the validity of content. Each spider program does this over and over, storing the information it finds in Google’s index. Thousands of these spiders constantly work to ensure that the index is as up-to-date as possible.
How Does Google Rank Serps?
The processes that Google uses to rank sites are called algorithms. When a Google search is launched, algorithms cross-reference the index and return a list of websites chosen and ranked based on relevance and popularity.
Using SEO can improve your website’s prominence, relevancy and link popularity within Google by making sure the right aspects of your site are optimized, allowing your site to appear higher on SERPs.
What Is Local SEO, And How Is It Different?
Google quickly learned that people searching for businesses and services needed results in their immediate area. So they included something called a proximity factor, which allows Google to take your location into account when searching for a “local keyword.” This is why you can search for a florist shop in one area and get local recommendations– the proximity factor takes your computer’s physical location into account.
With the growth of mobile internet access, local SEO has become incredibly important for all businesses offering local products and services.
What Factors Improve Local SEO?
Local SEO is impacted by many website factors, similar to Google’s traditional search algorithm. It is important to have a strong local landing page for your business–including multiple pages if you have multiple business locations. There are also the considerations of including your business name, as well as address and phone number, to optimize title tags, meta descriptions and other tools used by Google’s algorithms. Other SEO tools, like link building and content creation, can also help improve local SEO.
Why Choose Sterling & Pope For Your Local SEO?
Whether it be local SEO marketing techniques or Social Media Marketing Strategies, Sterling & Pope has everything you need to make your Dallas, Texas, business thrive. Sterling & Pope specializes in making their clients stand out in the digital world by collaborating with a team of highly experienced and trained professionals. Using cutting-edge digital technology, Sterling & Pope will craft an innovative plan with tangible results. Check out our website, and see how the professionals at Sterling & Pope can help improve your business.
