With mobile devices being the primary medium of internet surfing and advent of voice search, location-based searches have been on rise. Bringing about local SEO as rather a new digital marketing concept to focus and work on.
Let’s first get to understand what local SEO is.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is similar to a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy but with the difference that it helps your business be more visible in local search results on Google. It focuses on improving the business visibility and ranking in local search results such as on Google’s map/ local pack.
A business that has a robust physical location and is confined to a geographic area can make use of local SEO. When you search Google for any desired keywords related to your business, you might have seen a map with 3 listings come into view below it. This is also known as map pack. This is local SEO at work. There is an opportunity that local SEO help grow your business.
Traditional SEO Vs Local SEO:
With traditional SEO you tend to improve your site’s visibility on a global or national scale, while with local SEO visibility improves in local search rankings.
Why Local SEO Matters?
Local SEO is a fundamental digital marketing strategy for the businesses that work in a specific geographic area and target only local clients and customers. It includes optimizing a website so that its online presence ranks higher in local search engine results pages (SERPs), resulting in increased visibility, more foot traffic, and enhanced leads.
Benefits of Using Local SEO:
- Attract targeted local audience
- Increased online visibility and traffic
- Get found by new customers and out throw competitors
- More direct calls and higher conversion rates
- Increase profits and cost-effective marketing
How to Get Local SEO Clients?
If your business does not provide products and services across the globe, getting local SEO clients is important for it to succeed. If you want to capitalize on local SEO and get prominent in the industry, continue reading below as we dig into the things necessary to consider while finding local SEO clients.
The strategies in this post will tell you how to get local SEO clients for your business. These are all well executable and actionable. This means they can be readily put into practice with ease.
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Identify Potential Clients:
Firstly, define your target market and niche down the desired chunk. Find the field and services that you are expert at and comfortable working with so that you can provide your local SEO clients with the best results.
Look for local businesses to work with, especially those with nearby physical locations.
Don’t try to spread yourself too thin by trying to serve every industry and client and fulfill all their needs. Instead focus on what you specialize in, refine your offers, and offer it to those who can get maximum benefit out of it.
Relevant article link to follow: How much time need to learn SEO?
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Conduct a Local SEO Audit:
Reach out small businesses that are beginning and struggling with SEO. Offer them free audit services. Analyze their current SEO presence and show them their shortcomings and room for improvement.
When you will deliver value to them in such way they are more likely to come to you for further SEO related assistance too. Most of the small businesses have serious SEO issues and providing them help at this stage will help you get a lot of customers in future.
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Offer Free Consultation:
Offering free consultation services will help you draw customers at initial stages. Customers, who hesitate to invest or spend in SEO strategies thinking them to be too costly or confusing.
When you will conduct free audit for them and present them your findings about their current SEO state and its shortcomings it will help them see and understand better. It will also convince them to indulge more into this field and tailor a local SEO strategy for their venture and improve their current state.
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Highlight the Benefits:
Highlight to prospect clients the benefits of working with you, with enhancing local SEO, and dealing with your business. What benefits and solutions you offer to consumers and and how are they better and feasible than those of others.
Show them the benefits of improved visibility, catering targeted audience and elevated conversion rates and how improving local SEO can take their business miles forward within months.
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Showcase Your Expertise:
Consumers believe more on work practically done than on mere claims and declarations. Show your skills and expertise to prospect consumers through case studies, certifications, testimonials and other customer’s feedback. These help build your repute, trust, worth and establish your name in the industry.
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Partner With Related Agencies:
Collaborations with related or similar companies can help you a lot in getting an increased customer base. There are many agencies such as website designers, developers, social media managers, content creators, etc. that are likely to co-work with you.
They have good client base that also need SEO services for their ventures. Partnering with such agencies can help multiply your client base within weeks.
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Participate at Marketing Seminars and Conferences:
Marketing seminars, workshops and conferences provide a chance to talk to a lot of targeted customers at once! This is a golden opportunity where you can showcase your expertise, outline services, offer prices and present the outcomes of your excellent performance to a large group of interested prospects.
This discussion can immediately lead to direct, high-quality leads. The ripple effect the talk cause also brings in long term benefits and customers.
Speaking at such conferences also greatly boost your industrial worth. You should publish this talk on your website, YouTube and other social media platforms to serve as a proof of your performance. It will serve as an effective credibility indicator.
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Utilize Online Directories:
Use SEM to improve your local SEO. Register your services with local business directories and listings to complement your local SEO functioning. Invest in paid ads to gain visibility and popularity. To know further about SEM (search engine marketing) and how it reinforces SEO strategies, follow this link:
How SEO and SEM Work Together?
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Get Help with Social Media:
Use your social media platforms to your advantage. Just creating a profile and spamming it with content isn’t going to work. Post regularly, engage with potential clients, Share Local SEO tips, promote your services, and get customers feedback. Generic invites are useless.
Build customized relations and provide value to each visitor. Show genuine interest in customer’s well being and value their inputs. They will remember you when they will need SEO services.
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Follow up and Build Customer Relationships:
For any business, client retention ultimately comes down to the value you provide to them. The end results you get for clients help build long-term relationships with them. Building long-term relationships with local SEO clients it isn’t merely about accomplishing high rankings in search results but about nurturing trust, offering support and displaying good values.
One should establish trust, continue demonstrating value and adjust to the evolving local search landscape to keep getting clients in the long run.
Local SEO Services to Offer:
Some of the local search engine optimization services likely to help online businesses accomplish their desired local market position are as follow. You can offer these services to customers and provide them solution to their local SEO problems in following ways:
- Conduct local SEO audit and analysis
- Provide keyword research and optimization
- Help with local business listing management
- Facilitate content creation and marketing
- Guide in online reputation management
- Help develop link building and local citations
- Provide ongoing optimization and support
- Benchmark with Google My Business setup and optimization
- Manage website optimization for local search
- Plan customized Local SEO strategies
Relevant article link : What should you consider when developing your website content?
Local SEO Strategies:
To enhance local online presence for small businesses and attract more traffic, implementing effective local SEO strategies is necessary. Some of the local SEO strategies include:
- Use Google My Business service to provide essential information to searchers when they look for it through search engines.
- Work to build high-quality links and local citations.
- Use location-specific, targeted keywords to target desired audience.
- Create local content, that interests and benefits local population.
- Create local links to build authority and credibility in your area of function.
- Optimize the website for mobile devices usage.
- Use schema markup so that search engines easily read and understand the content on your website pages.
- Observe your online reviews and use them as a guide for improvement and suggestion.
- Use local business directories to support local dealings.
- Analyze and track performance to see your current standing and the one you want to achieve.
By understanding that how Local SEO works and enacting effective strategies, you will be better able to acquire more clients. You can thus help local businesses to flourish in their respective fields and also establish your own business in doing so as a Local SEO expert.
Tips and Recommendations to Thrive in Local SEO:
Businesses can help their clients establish themselves as top performers in their respective local markets by observing the following recommendations and tips:
- Focus on long-tail but concise keywords
- Use desired location’s specific pages
- Build relationships with local entrepreneurs and influencers
- Use local public relation and advertising
- Check and respond to online reviews
- Use local SEO tools and software’s such as Keywordtool.io, BrightLocal, BiQ Cloud etc
- Stay informed with current, local SEO trends and top practices
Wrapping Up:
We are hopeful, by now you must have understood local SEO, its importance and how it works. By following the above mentioned tips and strategies you can attract potential client base and help them with improving their online visibility, get more traffic, boost sales and generate leads.
Finding clients for local SEO might seem daunting, but it becomes easy when you educate them on the topic, listen to their problems, offer solutions and demonstrate value. Enlighten clients with your professional knowledge, highlight the importance of optimizing for local search and showcase the many benefits they can harvest by working with you.