Local SEO – search engine optimization – strategies are not like your usual SEO techniques. Whereas your usual SEO strategies target a large, often global audience, local SEO caters to a much smaller crowd, often reduced to the likes of the geographical boundaries of a town, city, or state.
Through local SEO, it’s possible to target an audience from a specific geographical location, which helps businesses rank for local search terms, make it to local business listings on Google, and incorporate local backlinks efficiently.
Focusing on local SEO is important for local businesses for several reasons.
Firstly, businesses can increase their visibility in local search results resulting in more website traffic and sales. Local SEO can also help build trust and credibility with potential local customers by providing accurate and up-to-date information about their business through optimized website content. Finally, it can help businesses outsmart their local competition by becoming more approachable to the locals.
Given how important local SEO is for such businesses, it must be done properly. For that, you have to bring in experts well-versed in local search engine optimization. Before you do that, however, here are a few things you must consider.
What Services They Offer and What Their Approach Is
Local SEO companies offer a range of services that can help your business improve its local online presence, appeal to more local customers, and increase revenue. Some of the services they should offer should include the following.
- Local Keyword Research: Through local keyword research, the agency can help you work out the most relevant and high-traffic keywords for your business in your local area.
- On-page Optimization: This involves optimizing your website’s content improve its relevance and search engine rankings locally.
- Google Business Optimization: The agency will optimize your Google Business listing to ensure it appears prominently in Google’s local search results. In most cases, a direct search for your business will highlight your business profile right at the top of the results.
- Local Link Building: Local link building can help you acquire links from other high-quality local websites to improve your website’s authority and search engine rankings.
- Citation Building: This helps build accurate and consistent business listings across various online directories to improve your local visibility.
- Reputation Management: Reputation management makes it possible to monitor and manage your online reputation through strategies like online reviews and social media oversight and management.
What are Other People Saying About Them
We’ll explain this with an example.
Charleston, South Carolina, is home to several landscaping companies, and when you Google for such services near Charleston, it will show you a ton of options. However, for smaller businesses, ranking in this list is difficult. That’s why American Artists Landscaping, Inc. turned to a Charleston SEO Company known as Mr. Marketing and has been working with them for two years now.
Thanks to the Charleston-based local SEO services provided by the agency, the company has now grown from a small business to a six-figure local business in under a year. That’s the power of local SEO. It can help you grow, get discovered by the locals, and become one of the best in your area from scratch.
As this SEO agency helped American Artists Landscaping, Inc. with their business successfully, the company had nothing but good things to say about the agency.
Similarly, you need to go through Google Reviews and other review sites to see how good the SEO agency is before working with them. Always look for local clients the agencies helped because your focus is on localized search engine optimization.
Get an Idea About Their Previous Clients and Success Stories
An SEO company is only as good as its clients’ success stories. While reviews can help you know about the company’s work, looking into these success stories or case studies can help you understand how they operate and run things. It’s also a good way to check if they have experience with a business from your industry.
Check how they helped their clients, what client SEO problems they solved, how they impacted the local SEO rankings afterward, what kind of strategies they deployed, what is their approach to different on-page and technical SEO problems, etc. The more you familiarize yourself with these things, the better you can understand what the SEO agency’s game plan might be with your case.
Converse with Them to See If Their Vision Matches Your Expectations
By now, you’re already aware of a lot of things the local SEO company does to help its clients. Now it’s time to talk to them and see if their vision matches your expectations. Here, the agency will mostly highlight your problems and how they tend to solve them. If you think their plans and strategies will go with your brand and can help you achieve your targets, by all means, strike a deal with them and get to work.
Once all this is done, you’ll be working with a local SEO agency that not only knows what it’s doing but can also get you the success you’re eyeing in the local market.
