For local business owners, it might feel like there’s little need to invest time and money in optimising your Google presence, considering you’re up against giants like Amazon and Nike for top-tier rankings. However, while this might be true for main organic listings, it’s not necessarily the case for local search.
Whether you have a physical store or serve a distinct geographical location, local SEO can effectively let you interact with prospects and customers in your town, city, and neighbourhood. When done correctly, local SEO can help you appear more prominently in search results featuring the Local Pack, the Local Finder, Google Maps, and other localised organic search results.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is part of SEO aimed at improving the visibility of local businesses in local search engine results. These results that usually appear in local search results are usually in response to “near me” searches, meaning that the search user is looking for something in the location or the search engine has picked geographical constraints related to the search.
To perform SEO for your Galway business, you will need to perform a series of actions aimed at raising your local search visibility. Some of the best practices include:
- Claiming and optimising your Google My Business Profile
- Website optimisation
- Reputation management
- Local link building
- Adapting to Google Search changes
- Fighting spam
- Building citations
- Geotagging images
Moreover, it’s still best to do all of the things you have been doing for traditional SEO. you want to have a website that is as technically sound as possible, with other SEO best practices in place.
How SEO Can Help Local Galway Businesses
Currently, nearly half of all Google searches are local searches. In fact, when someone does a typical search on Google, Google will likely show local businesses in the results. The following are some of the ways SEO can be helpful for local businesses.
- Higher online visibility
Most of the activities involved with local SEO will help improve the visibility of your business in the local search results, and also help you build better online visibility.
For instance, building citations entails building mentions of your business name, its physical address, social media profiles, phone numbers, and online review platforms. This is done on as many different platforms as possible. This makes it easier for people interested in your product or service in Galway to find your business.
Keep in mind that most users will likely opt for brands Google ranks higher in the search results. This is important for small businesses as it means that they can reach their goals faster and outdo their competition.
- More calls and traffic to your store
Achieving higher local visibility means that you will get more foot traffic to your physical Galway store, whether it’s a food truck in Galway, a restaurant, a hardware store, or a dry cleaner business. If your products are best experienced in person, it can be helpful to have a growing number of people stopping by, as this can help create a buzz about your business and make more sales.
It’s also worth pointing out that local SEO will improve your conversion rates, as it helps bring more relevant traffic that is already interested in your product. For this reason, your opportunity for making more sales increases, and therefore gets you a better conversion rate.
- Leverages local shopping
In recent years, there has been a widespread shift in consumer buying habits. One of the more notable trends is that consumers are increasingly prioritising local shops and businesses when making purchase decisions.
According to recent research, consumers are not thinking smaller, and are prioritising local, small, and independent businesses instead of the larger, brand-name experiences or offering they may have been choosing previously.
One of the main benefits of local SEO is that it places your business in front of local consumers that are looking for the exact services or products you offer. As such, this could enable you to make the most out of this shift in consumer behaviour to expand your business.
- Highly targeted traffic
For small businesses, each minute spent handling unqualified leads or prospects who don’t end up making a purchase or hiring your services is money lost. Local SEO optimisation can help reduce irrelevant traffic and time saps that might be preventing your business from operating efficiently, making sure your business is only visible to users in your local area.
- Establishes you as an expert in your niche
Performing link-building and content marketing is necessary to establish relevance and prominence, which are the main pillars of SEO rankings. The same activity can help with cultivating a reputation as a thought leader in your field.
Local content marketing will naturally see you talking about your neighbourhood or city and getting involved in your local community. This will not only help to grow your authority and expert vice, but also get clients closer to your business, build brand loyalty, stronger links, and increase engagement.
In Closing
As you can see, local SEO can have enormous benefits, especially for small businesses. And while the results won’t be immediate, once you get one of the higher-ranking positions, you will stay there for long enough to enjoy increased conversions and higher brand awareness. Of course, you will need to maintain your SEO efforts to stay on track, but this is a relatively small investment compared to the benefits you’re getting.
