What Makes Local Internet Marketing Important for Your Business?
As SEO is now poised to become a very crucial marketing tool for small and medium sized businesses, it's fast becoming one of the harder strategies to master. Capturing the attention of online prospects has become an increasingly challenging task, particularly when everyone is racing to be on top of the massive list of search engine results. What can businesses do? Leveraging your local area can be a great option to attract more customers if you are using the internet to market your business. This is local internet marketing.
Local internet marketing, also referred to as Local SEO or Geo-targeted SEO, is a unique strategy slightly differing fr om the typically known general SEO. This is because its main focus is on optimizing your site, blog or content for the local audience, city, or geographical area wh ere your business is located.
In order to provide relevant search results for local searchers, most search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing allow local businesses the ability to register themselves. The business listing can be optimized as well as promoted as a "local listing" when visitors make local queries.
Why is local internet marketing so important?
Recent studies indicate that over 90% of prospects research online and of these percentage, the majority make their purchases offline. Additionally, the average customer uses over 7 different media sources to search for products or services prior to making their purchases. With such statistics, local web marketing is essential for any business to fulfill its full potential. Here are the reasons why a business should consider this marketing strategy:
Prominent Online Presence
With the help of our local SEO services, you will easily find your business ranking among the results displayed on the first page of most search engines. You have a better chance of competing against the national competition by appearing higher in SERPs with your well placed local rankings on search engines. Most SEO companies will ensure that the keywords used are related to your business in order to combat the high competition in your niche. Potential customers will then be in a better position to find your business easily.
Specific Target Traffic
Local internet marketing is very important as well since you get to target only the right traffic. You can convert potential prospects into customers by targeting the right group of online visitors who are likely to make purchases, and there is no better group than your local community. Experts recommend starting with people closer to your business location and then as the business expands, you can spread your reach further.
Credibility
Having a presence on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+ can give you increased authority to local searchers. Visitors trust local listings more the traditional listings since they can access maps, images, physical addresses, and reviews among other valuable information. A recent report shows that over 90% of online shoppers browse on the internet first before buying offline. It's important that you show up to these potential customers.
Cost Effectiveness
One of the greatest reasons why a local business should consider local internet marketing is the cost effectiveness of this strategy. This is because most online marketing tools are free. Therefore your business will have the chance to be listed on online directories among other business listings and even distribute details on social media platforms without any costs. You can have an SEO company do the tasks for you at an affordable cost as well and in the end, you still reap the benefits from local online marketing.
Accessibility for Mobile Users
The Yellow Pages, which was once the "go-to" resource for locating local businesses, has recently been replaced by mobile browsing on tablets and smartphones. Potential prospects on the go look for results that they can immediately act on. If your site is mobile friendly, and has prominent local search position, then your viewers will find you easily and navigate through your website, giving you an advantage over your less mobile optimized competitors.
It is Easy to Implement Local SEO
Geo-targeted SEO offers an easy way to rank well locally on most search engine result pages. Once you establish, verify and develop your presence on Google+, Yahoo or Bing, you will rank highly on SERPs with less effort compared to traditional SEO online.
Local SEO is fundamentally the same as traditional SEO on a large scale; rankings may change daily and there are other factors that can affect your visibility online. However, with increasing competitiveness over keywords and temperamental search engine algorithms, it can be easy for you to rank your business on a local scale with the help of our SEO company that knows the ropes.