What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is a type of search engine optimization (SEO) that makes your company more prominent in Google’s local search results.
It can benefit any company that has a physical location or serves a specific geographic area. Local SEO can help you expand your business if you search Google for any essential keywords linked to your business and a map with three listings shows underneath it (also known as a map pack).
However, before you can comprehend local SEO, you must first understand how Google works.
What is the history of search engines?
Because there were few websites in the early days of the internet, accessing the web was simple. However, as the internet grew in popularity, search engines were developed to help people discover the sites they were looking for more quickly.
When you typed a term into a search engine, it was matched to webpages that contained the keywords in your query. Google took the same technique, but it swiftly surpassed the competition when it became the first search engine to use links between websites to determine which sites were trustworthy and authoritative.
Google now considers a variety of indicators on and off your website to evaluate whether it is relevant to display as a search result. Your “digital footprint” is made up of factors, each of which has a particular weight or value that the search engine combines to return results. Your digital footprint influences whether or not you appear as the first result in a Google search.
So, how does Google function?
When you type a search phrase into Google, it examines the pattern of several website signals, or ranking variables, such as the relevance of your site, to provide a list of pages that match your query.
Most people are unaware that when they type something into the search field, Google does not conduct a live search of the entire internet. It’s essentially looking through a backup of all of the sites that Google has found. The Google Index is the name given to this copy.
Google crawls the web with little programmes called “spiders” to create the index. Each spider follows the same pattern: it begins on a single page, then follows the links on that page, then moves on to the next page’s content, and so on.
The index is produced as web information is crawled and stored on Google’s servers. The spiders operate on a massive scale, constantly crawling trillions of pages at breakneck speed. This keeps the index as current as possible and allows new sites and links to be detected promptly.
Google’s ranking system for search results
In the blink of an eye, Google ranks hundreds or thousands of websites using a variety of algorithms. Algorithms are the terms for these procedures. When you Google something, an algorithm searches the index and delivers a list of websites in organic results that match your search. Those results are chosen and ranked depending on inbound links’ relevance, significance, and popularity.
To identify whether websites have something connected to your search, the algorithm considers a variety of on-site and off-site factors. All relevant websites are added to the list, which is then ordered according to their importance.
The algorithm evaluates which sites best answer your search query based on different on-site and off-site characteristics, and those sites are presented at the top of the search results.
Improving your SEO has an impact on your website’s relevancy, visibility, and link popularity. Your site will appear higher in more search results if the right aspects of its digital footprint are optimised.
Local SEO follows a distinct trend
What about organic search results in your area? Google discovered that customers looking for specific types of companies want results from their immediate location after researching user behaviour during trillions of searches.
That’s why Google’s local search algorithm includes a proximity component, which is a fancy way of saying that when you search for a local phrase, Google considers your location (a query with local intent). Even if the searcher does not mention a city name or “near me” in their query, this occurs.
If you’re at work and want a pizza delivered, Googling “pizza delivery” in its local SERPS will return results near your company.
However, if you do the same search at home, you’ll receive completely different results. This makes sense because you need a pizza delivered from a nearby location.
Local search has been around for a long time, but it was limited due to the fact that most people only used desktop computers. However, with the recent increase in mobile internet connectivity, mobile search has increased, making local SEO critical for any business’s success.
How Does Local SEO Work?
Local SEO functions similarly to “regular” Google search on a high level. When someone conducts a search, Google searches its database to get the most relevant results. Local SEO is distinct in that Google ranks local search results using a different set of ranking variables.
Local SEO, in reality, has its own set of ranking signals, including:
- The person is looking for a location based on NAP citations.
- Google’s presence My company’s listing
- Google’s keyword phrases Sentiment of online reviews in my business profile
- Keywords used in online reviews
- At that location, the number of “check-ins”
- Social media shares
- That company’s star rating on Google Maps