When HITS are designing a new site, one of the first questions we ask is what sort of SEO are you looking for? For many clients, particularly with brick and mortar stores, the answer is that local SEO is their number one priority.
A significant factor in whether a website is well ranked in Google is whether the site has been structured and built in an SEO-friendly way. All our designers and developers have an expert understanding of the principles of advanced and local SEO. Let’s take a look at what local SEO is and how it can help your website ranking:
What Is Local SEO?
Local SEO marketing or local search optimisation is the process of optimising your owned properties to generate traffic from location-based searching. The rapid growth of mobile usage and on the go searching has made local optimisation an essential focus for a variety of businesses, but most importantly for businesses with brick and mortar stores. It is estimated that 43% of all Google, 25% of all Bing, and 25% of all Yahoo searches are location-oriented. In June 2017, ComScore announced that approximately 50-60% of all mobile searches carried local intent.
What Are The Primary Types Of Non-Paid Local Results?
In search engines, there are three primary types of non-paid local results (localised organic, pack/carousel, and maps) for both mobile and desktop searchers:
- Localised organic searches are the traditional organic search results for keywords that contain geographic modifiers
- Pack (or carousel, depending on the search) refers to the portion of the search results that are strictly for local searches
- Pack/carousel is a separate set of listings (above the traditional organic search results) that call out specific points on the map contained within the search results page
- Maps refer to searches generated through Google/Bing maps
Local Result Factors
The below factors are based on the opinions of 34 local SEO search experts throughout the world:
- Place Page Signals – Categories, Keywords in Business Title, Proximity, etc
- External Local Signals – Internet Yellow Pages / Other Aggregators – Name, Address and Phone number consistency, Citation Volume, etc.
- On-Page Signals – Presence of NAP, Keywords in Titles, Domain authority, etc
- Links Signals – Inbound anchor text, linking domain authority, linking domain quantity
- Review Signals – Review quantity, velocity, and diversity
- Social Signals – Google+ authority, Facebook likes Twitter followers etc.
- Behavioural/Mobile Signals – CTR, Mobile clicks to call, Check-ins
- Personalisation – personalised results unique to the searcher
Why not contact the HITS team today to see how we can boost your local SEO?
