Advantages of Local SEO for Small Businesses

Advantages of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) have been long established and one cannot simply ignore building a successful online business without a great SEO strategy. However, still many businesses – especially the small ones haven’t fully made use of SEO techniques in order to get more business and better presence on the web. On top of that, local SEO has further made it easier for online businesses to maximize their revenues and it sure has its advantages. So, what’s local SEO and what are its advantages?

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO helps you to get ranked for those keywords that are related to your geographical location. This means if someone from your city searches for the goods or services that you and many others are selling online – you will appear on the top and will have higher chances of converting those leads into sales as compared to those small businesses who don’t have a local SEO strategy or their strategy is not quite effective.

Advantages of Local SEO

Now, let’s look at some of the SEO advantages to your business:

• Locals Prefer Local Stores – While online sites like Amazon and Ebay deliver goods at the doorsteps of consumers, many locals still prefer local stores. Therefore, if your site has taken top rankings for the products you sell in regards to local keywords then it would certainly boost traffic, which means sales and higher revenues.

• Increased High Quality Leads – If the locals are searching for products that are available in their area that means there are quite high chances that they won’t just visit your site but actually buy your products. This gives you an edge as most of the leads easily convert into sales. Additionally, many people search for stuff online and then visit the same store in their neighborhood to buy it physically because some people are still unsure about buying things online.

• Build-up Your Online Reputation – Your local SEO strategy would help you to build-up a positive online reputation that would result in long-term relationship with your customers, higher flow of traffic, automatically filtered high quality leads and so on. This would give people a signal that this website (or business) is of high quality and most of its customers are satisfied so they should buy from here. Therefore, in order to achieve high rankings for local keywords and online marketing success, local SEO is something that cannot be neglected in any way.

Let’s Have a Look at Numbers

According to recent studies it has been found that around 61% of people who do local searches end up purchasing the products, 82% of local searches lead to people visiting the stores physically or making follow-up calls and eventually purchasing. Around 76% people conduct local searches first, then look at the organic results and then move on to paid listings. NPD Group said that around 57% internet users select products online and then buy offline. So, there you have it the numbers also support the advantages you will get with your local SEO strategy. Therefore, take advantage before your competition beats you.