Local Search Marketing & Local SEO

Optimising for local search increases the visibility of your business for local based search queries and in the local snack pack (map) listings that appear on the first page of search results. If you have a local business that serves local customers, you need geographically-relevant traffic to your site through specifically local targeting allowing you to reach your target customer demographic in your market.
APPEAR AT THE TOP OF MAP RANKINGS
Our aim is to ensure the pages of your website rank higher in search engines such as Google and Bing when your potential customers in your local area are searching for the products or services that you serve your locality with.
The listings here are an example of the local snack pack (map) results. Any local business wants to be highly visible in these results when they are triggered and our local SEO programme focuses on a strategies that achieve just that. Our agency ensures that the correct location based signals are being sent to Google that could include rich snippet integration and on-page local optimisation, inbound links, social signals, reviews and citation building.
Why is Local SEO Important?
- The local snack pack appears in the top-spot of 93% of searches.
- 97% of consumers search for local businesses online.
- 50% of local searches (via mobile) lead to store visits within 1 day.
- 18% of local searches (via mobile) lead to a sale within 1 day.
- 88% of shoppers trust online reviews.
- 72% of consumers say positive reviews makes them trust a local business more.
Being found in your local area is more important than ever with the continued rise of mobile/tablet searches and competition. Ensuring you have a mobile friendly website is as vitally important to provide potential customers with a pleasant user experience once they have found you for local searches.

What Can You Expect From Our Local SEO Programme?

We ensure your business is listed at Google My Business and Bing Places so it can appear in local listings (map results) returned by these search engines.
We populate your listings with relevant data, optimise them for performance and also manage them on an ongoing basis to ensure they’re working well for your business and generating enquiries.

We source business listings with various sources across the web which are known as local citations. We know of hundreds of worthwhile places to list your business and we’ll also scan the web for existing listings and clean up any details of your business. This process is also known as ‘citation building’ or ‘NAP citation building’.

We will optimise your website for local search and recommend ways that will aid your business listing(s) performance in local searches.
We will also search and identify other offsite opportunities that will strengthen your website for local orientated search queries (usually in the form of links from local relevant sources and anchor text distribution).
Want to discuss a Local SEO project with us?
LEARNING CENTRE
What is Local SEO?
Local search / local SEO (also known as local search engine optimisation or local search marketing) is the process of making your business more visible when your potential customers in your local area are searching for the product/service you provide. Local search can consist of search queries containing a locality (like your town or city) and/or detecting the location of your IP address thus serving the searcher, more relevant results in closer proximity. Optimising for these types of search ensures your business can be found in local map results ahead of your competition.
How DOes Local SEO Work?
Search engines like Google use a variety or sources and information to try and serve the best results (business listings) to the searcher. This differs somewhat from traditional SEO where you aim to rank web pages in the natural (organic) listings.
The main criteria initially is proximity. Which businesses are nearby to the searcher or the locality used in their search query? And then of those businesses, which are trustworthy and credible? Is your business what you say it is, in the location you’ve said it is, provides the service that you’ve said it does?
Google and Bing collate information from around the web, from various authoritative sources to build a profile of your business which the local algorithm then scores taking all the the above factors into consideration.
And of course, for any possibility of ranking in map listings, you have to list your business on Google My Business and Bing Places for Business.
Who Needs Local SEO?
Businesses who would benefit from local SEO are those that serve customers in a specific locality. The typical audience are people that are searching for your product or service nearby them. We’ve listed some example industries and professions below who are the kind of businesses that should be optimising for local search.
Automotive: Car Body Shops, Mechanics
Health & Medical: Clinics, Dentists, Doctor Surgeries, Fitness Centres, Gyms, Health Centres, Pharmacies
Hospitality: Bars, Bed & Breakfasts, Guest Houses, Hotels, Pubs, Restaurants
Other Services: Estate Agents, Solicitors, Travel Agents, Lawyers, Removals
Personal Services: Barbers, Hair Salons, Nail Salons, Spas
Pet Services: Catteries, Dog Grooming, Dog Walking, Kennels, Pet Sitting, Veterinary Services
Retail: Bakeries, Convenience Stores, Shops
Tradesman: Builders, Carpenters, Electricians, Joiners, Painter & Decorators, Plumbers
FAQ
We’ve put together a selection of commonly asked questions relating to buying local SEO services and our provision of the service.
Please note: Our local SEO leaning centre and FAQs on local SEO is frequently updated. Page last updated on 14th August 2020.