The Importance of Local SEO for Your Business

Local SEO is one of the many tools within search engine optimization that allows for your business to access a wide range of people in a very short amount of time. There are many ways in which you can implement this tool so that your business can experience a substantial increase in clients.

Defining Local SEO

Before we go further, it is first crucial to understand what local SEO is and how it affects your business. Local SEO is the way in which you promote and advertise your business to the people that live in your geographical region. It is a fast way to connect with locals, and when used properly, will show who you are in a very small time frame.

Local SEO is becoming one of the main tools for businesses these days, and has even surpassed the importance of a website, which is no small feat. For example, a business can easily project their location, as well as reviews, hours of operation, and the like to Google, Yelp, or other websites that users regularly visit to find this kind of information. They will then be able to locate you based on how accurate and how detailed your information is.

Implementing and Maintaining your NAP

This area of Local SEO can be a bit tricky, and even confusing to some if you aren’t careful. The reason for this all starts with what is known as the NAP (name, address, phone number). This kind of crucial information needs to be constantly updated and maintained across all of your citations. Yes, that’s a lot of information to keep track of, but more than worth it when you weigh in the potential benefits to your business by doing so.

If you feel overwhelmed by having to go through all of your citations yourself, you can hire someone to help you with this process. The important thing is to ensure that your information is as updated as possible. This makes it much easier for users to find you. The smallest errors can throw off your search results rankings and make it almost impossible for the local populace to find you. For example, if you are simply listing yourself as a “boutique”, instead of “Sherry’s Dress Boutique”, you aren’t doing your business justice and to the search engines, you simply fade into the background along with thousands of other businesses in the same category.

Being able to stay on top of your information is not an easy task. One of the ways that you can make this easier on yourself is to simply keep track of the different sites that you use as you use them. This way, whenever your business changes names, address or phone numbers, you are able to go in directly under that information and change them. This can definitely help you to expedite the process and keep your Local SEO ranking from plummeting.

These great tips are just the start of your success. By having the understanding of what Local SEO is, and by keeping all of your information up-to-date, you are setting yourself and your business up for success now and in the future.