A lot of brands and marketers think of SEO as trying to achieve page one for a handful of large marquee phrases on a national or even international level.
Local SEO is about optimising your website to cater for your local environment and proximity, such as a town, city, county, region or country. This may be because you have a bricks and mortar store that you are trying to increase awareness of and drive footfall to, or you may be a service provider such as a tradesman, who only serves a specific geographical area.
I have experience of working with businesses who operate bricks and mortar stores in multiple towns and cities, while attracting leads and organic from a single site, optimised for the multiple locations (and industry related queries).
What does a local SEO campaign entail?
Since the Venice and Pigeon updates, user location has been playing an increasingly important part in how Google determines search results. If you’re in Leeds and you search for an electrician or a plumber, you don’t necessarily want results from London appearing.
Optimising your site for a local SEO campaign is a combination of having a technically good website, paired with high quality content that answers a plethora of user queries in good detail, optimised in places for your target areas.
It is also important that you have solid Google My Business, Bing Places and a Google+ profile for your business, using a consistent NAP (name, address and phone number) across all of them (and your site).
Please get in touch to discuss your business and your local SEO requirements. No SEO campaign is the same and after establishing your objectives, I can then assess your current online presence and website and put forward a tailored local SEO strategy for your business.
Google Algorithms affecting local search results
Pigeon Update
The Google Pigeon update was released in July 2014 and was the name given to Google’s local search algorithm. The update primarily changed how results are displayed on Google Maps and within the Google Map Stack.
Pigeon’s aim was to provide searchers with localised search results and give preference to local business websites for certain queries, such as ‘florist near me’. A user’s location (based on IP or search modifier) and distance from your address (defined on your site) are said to play a pivotal role in determining which results are displayed.
Venice Update
The Google Venice Update was a change in how Google understands queries, and delivers localised search results for broad match phrases. This means that users who don’t specify a location in their search may still be presented with localised results.
Optimising a website to harness the advantages of the Venice update requires a holistic local SEO campaign.