Local SEO: What Is It And Do You Need It?

You’re on your way to a 2:00 pm meeting and you need a quick pick-me-up, so you pull out your phone and search for “coffee near me”. Do you ever wonder why you’re given these specific results, and not other results? It’s probably because the shops that appear on your local search results have hired experts for local search engine optimization services, and these experts have executed their local SEO strategy to perfection. 

Look at the image above. Does this look familiar? Your chances of getting local customers skyrockets when your business appears in this Maps “Snack Pack”. In fact, 70% of local searchers use the “click-to-call” function that often appears on this Maps Snack Pack, so if your business is not properly optimized for local SEO, you’re likely losing out on a lot of revenue.

Why You Need Local SEO

Did you know that 97% of consumers find local services online and that 82% of smartphone owners find a local business through search engines? If you own a brick-and-mortar or rely on highly local customers for your business, local SEO is critical to the success of your business. 

In some industries, search engines have begun to favor larger aggregators instead of smaller, local results. This makes it all the more critical to seek out help from local SEO experts, as every signal you can send to search engines gives you a better chance to rank above larger aggregators and your competition.

The Goal Of Local SEO Services

Local SEO services focus on making your business stand out among other nearby, similar businesses. Local SEO services can help your business:

• Increase awareness for your brand and your products or services. Remember, users may not always click on your business. But it’s important that they see you in local search results, and that increased brand recognition usually leads to future customers down the road.
• Stand out from the crowd. Local stores often have competitors located just down the street. Local SEO services help set your store apart from your competition by helping you rank above them when people are searching for services in your industry.
• Focus on the desired target audience in the desired locations. Local SEO is all about meeting the correct customers with the right intent at the right time. More on that in a bit.

DLD’s Local SEO & Local Maps Optimization Services

Local SEO focuses on creating strategies that build a website’s relevancy for a number of specific keywords or keyword phrases. Here are some of the services involved in local SEO:

SEO Audit

Optimizing for local maps begins by nailing down the fundamentals of SEO. DLD ensures your site is mobile-optimized, speed optimized, has clear call-to-actions on mobile and desktop, provides a positive user-experience and adheres to the basic fundamentals of solid SEO.

Optimized Map Listings

Next, we target local maps optimization and ensure your business is set up for Google Maps, Bing Places and Apple Maps. The key to Google Maps SEO is ensuring you have a correct and complete Google My Business page; Bing Places For Business is and Apple Maps Connect are critical for Bing and Apple Maps, respectively.

Local Citation Optimizations

Now we move to national and local aggregators; we create correct and complete listings for Yelp, Tripadvisor, YellowPages and similar local business specialty services that are key to local maps optimization.

NAP Consistency

NAP stands for Name, Address and Phone number: N-A-P. One of the main goals of search engines is to send people results that are highly relevant and contain accurate information. 

When a business has the same address and phone number across the entire web, search engines are very confident that they can send this result to searchers, and that this result will be correct.

Search engines like Google and Bing do not want to show a business high up in the search results with an outdated phone number. Why? Because searchers will likely get upset that their search engine is not returning accurate, reliable information and they’ll thus try a new search engine.

That’s why Direct Line Development uses software to ensure your NAP is consistent across the web and improve the chances you appear at the top of local search results.

Content Creation For Local Listings

To further solidify your value to your local clients, DLD creates content for local businesses, newspapers, and/or aggregators that link to your site, further signaling that you’re a local business, and you offer what your clients are searching for.

Reviews

Have you noticed that you’re more likely to click on a search result when you see a star rating next to it? That’s called social reinforcement; it shows people before you have used this product and liked it, and that you probably won’t regret your purchase.

As part of our local SEO package, Direct Line Development helps generate reviews for your business, which can lead to more stars next to your business in search results and ultimately, more clicks.

Structured Data Implementation

DLD implements Structured Data, which is embedded in the HTML of your web page and yet another way to convey to search engines what you offer and where you’re located. 

What Businesses Benefit Most From Local SEO?

While almost every businesses benefits from proper SEO implementation, the businesses that generally benefit the most from local SEO are:

Direct Line Development: The Local SEO Solutions Experts

Direct Line Development is more than just an industry-leading web development company; we offer local SEO solutions for companies large and small to grow their search engine presence and become more visible to local clients. 

With offices in Austin, TX, Denver, CO, and Philadelphia, PA, our SEO and web experts are ready to help your business increase your local visibility and create more customers near you.

So give us a call at (267) 626-2554 today and let’s get started!