12 Reasons Entrepreneurs Should Focus on Local SEO to Succeed
Search engine optimization – or SEO for short – is one of the most important features of modern-day marketing. Statistically, Google searches account for just over 70 percent of global desktop search traffic. With so much going on, it can seem a bit overwhelming on the global stage.
But what if you only do business in Houston and the surrounding areas? Applying a local SEO strategy would be the way to go. There’s less competition and you can achieve faster results with a low budget compared to national or global SEO. If you have been interested in local SEO for the Houston area, read on for more information.
Local SEO vs Global SEO
One of the first things on your mind might be to figure out what makes SEO and Local SEO any different. The good news is that, essentially, there are no differences.
Search engine optimization is primarily done through engaging content, keywords, and relevant headlines. Local SEO is simply doing this on the local level. This means engaging deeper with your local community rather than doing so on a global level.
For example, “traditional” SEO might see you sharing links and engagement with a company based in another state, nation, or some other decent distance away. This is important to help your company grow recognizably. But if you’re focusing on raising your local business and engagement, having customers that you can’t reach isn’t very helpful.
Instead, local SEO focuses on engaging and interacting with the community local to you and your business. Focusing on positive reviews, social media pages, and the like are a great way to get local eyes on your company.
Local search engine optimization is incredibly beneficial to any company, especially growing businesses. Read on for an in-depth list of the top dozen reasons why budding entrepreneurs should focus on local SEO.
1. Strengthen Visitor Conversion Rate
One of the more common struggles that any company will suffer is its visitor conversion rate. The average visitor stays on a website for a matter of seconds before clicking away. This can make it extremely difficult to get traffic to your website and keep them there long enough to matter.
Local search engine optimization is a great way to improve this. Directing potential customers straight to your website means that they’ll rarely be there on accident or fleeting curiosity.
A stronger conversion rate will almost always translate directly to an improvement in your business. Rather than have potential customers visit and click away, you’ll have the time to convert them to true customers.
2. Promote Traffic to Your Site
Another intense difficulty of any company – especially newer ones- is promoting traffic to your site. Local SEO can help to push traffic towards you.
This works much the same way as the typical global SEO tactics work. You’ll want to encourage visitors to use internal and external links. The higher your ranking, the better you’ll find traffic.
But with local SEO, you have the benefit of knowing that your community will be visiting you. This helps promote traffic much more via word of mouth of local customers.
3. Bolster Growth for Your Business or Page
Local search engine optimization is incredibly effective for building your local growth. With more customers finding you in a grassroots setting, almost every person who finds your website will end up being a potential customer.
This bolstered growth can do much more for a budding business than global SEO can. While it’s great to have the attention of the globe, it won’t do much for you to have customers you can’t reach.
Of course, if you do have a global business such as something related to shipping or a blog, this isn’t quite as true. Still, you can only benefit from local SEO. Make sure that your search engine optimization has a strong focus on your local community before you start stretching across the world.
4. Found and Grow a Community
Many companies and entrepreneurship will benefit immensely from having a local community. This is especially the case for companies that offer goods and services. Being able to bring a community together is some of the strongest word-of-mouth marketing that you can find.
Imagine how much your business will benefit if your search engine optimization leads you to be able to hold local events. Not only will this help with marketing, but this will also lead to a solid uptick in searches for your company and website!
Bringing people together as a local community is great for your business and your search engine optimization. By strengthening your community, you’re strengthening your audience.
5. Keep Your Rank High
Search engine optimization ranking is difficult to keep up. Looking into affordable local SEO services can help keep your ranking high. If your search engine optimization has you ranking low then, bluntly put, you aren’t as optimized as your business needs to be.
Think of your SEO ranking as a sort of leaderboard. It changes constantly, and who was on top one day may not be on top the next day. Keeping hold of your SEO ranking is a vital way to keep yourself up.
Poor optimization will lead to your ranking falling, as you won’t be as optimized as others. A focus on your local SEO can help to keep you up as you remain a deeper focus of your local community. This translates to a higher global ranking as well from the increased traffic.
6. Increase Online Visibility
A great struggle of all online marketing, whether it’s social media or advertisement, is your online visibility. Your local search engine optimization can do a great deal to help improve your visibility considerably.
Your local SEO will do a great deal to keep your website popular as your site becomes more and more relevant. Through more shares in social media, greater marketing, and higher ranking, your online visibility will be greatly increased.
That isn’t to say that local SEO will guarantee you online visibility, of course. Instead, it will help you to build your visibility and stay on the radar of many customers local and global alike. Keep a deep focus on your local SEO to make sure that you remain relevant and visible.
7. Hone Relevant Traffic
We touched on visitor conversion rate earlier, but one of the best things you can get is relevant traffic. As the name suggests, this is traffic that is actually relevant to your site, services, and what you offer.
Take, for example, local SEO for doctors and medical practitioners. If you push one hundred new customers to that site and somehow manage to convert them all to stay on the site, will they be relevant to the page? What if these visitors are all from too far away to actually engage with or visit those medical practitioners?
Keeping your traffic relevant is what keeps your visitors customers. Focusing on your local SEO can help to massively increase the relevant traffic that your website receives.
8. Earn Return Customers
The only thing better for a business than customers is return customers. Your local SEO can help to immensely benefit your tally of return customers.
As your page becomes more popular and grows more visible, the local community will become more familiar with you. As this happens, many customers will naturally begin to gravitate toward you as return customers – provided you give them the excellent service as you should have to begin with.
Keeping your traffic relevant and converted is a great way to make a first-time customer. After that, their experience is the first factor in whether they ever come back. Make sure that your local SEO is keeping you relevant while you keep your customers happy.
9. Claim Trust and Authority
One of the greatest ways to earn return customers – and new customers, of course – is to posit yourself as a trustworthy authority. You don’t want to be an entrepreneur with a company that others don’t trust or believe in at all. In fact, if you find yourself as such a thing, you likely won’t find yourself an entrepreneur for long.
Your focus on local SEO can help your trust and authority grow in a myriad of ways. One of the most blatant is simple – if you show up quickly in a search engine, many customers will assume that you must be trustworthy. Otherwise, why would you be ranked above so many other sites in your field?
Keeping your local SEO up will keep your business up in every way imaginable. By putting yourself as a figure of authority, you’ll have a network growing as your SEO grows. This is a great way to grow your audience and customer base by giving new customers someone they can trust.
10. Benefit to Sales
By now, you’ve likely come to realize that local SEO is nothing but a boon for your sales as well. When customers see you more often, they’re more likely to buy from you. Having a higher conversion rate means that you’ll have more relevant traffic there to browse your products and services.
So with such enhanced traffic from your local SEO, your sales will rocket up as well. That said, don’t take this as something that only benefits sites that have something to sell. The same is true if your entrepreneurship has no “tangible” product, such as a writing blog.
By putting more people on your site, you’re continuing to increase your SEO. Your traffic will continue to grow, leading to more visitors and more potential customers, readers, viewers, or anything else you’d like. Either way, expect to see what you’re creating spread to the audience like wildfire.
11. Reduction to Advertisement and Marketing Costs
A key feature of SEO is that it can help you to drastically lower your advertisement and marketing costs. Some companies have begun to completely do away with marketing and advertisement and to hang on SEO instead. Some marry the two and focus on SEO to be their marketing with extremely limited ads.
Whatever strategy you pick, leaning on search engine optimization at the local level can only benefit your page. Consider looking into a free local SEO report to see what you can do to improve your local SEO.
You might also want to look further into affordable local SEO services. While not quite free, affordable marketing is always great to have. This is an excellent way to start your SEO, as it can take a great deal of time, so don’t hesitate to get an expert opinion.
12. Greater Exposure to Broader Community
Needless to say by now that you likely understand your local SEO directly translates to how you’re seen in your community. But what about when it comes time to move out of that community?
The enhanced exposure to your local community can help you massively when it comes time to expand. This is perfect for when you aren’t quite global but your business can take more than your local community.
With strong roots comes a strong tree, and with strong local SEO comes a strongly growing business. Do what you can to ensure that your local SEO increases your exposure to the local community more than simply getting a page in front of them. If you’ve done your SEO right, you’ll already be growing when it comes time to expand.
Local SEO Houston and Beyond
Houston is a great city, but your business has bigger things. You’ll want to work hard if you want to turn “Local SEO Houston” into “Local SEO Texas.” From that locale, it’s only a matter of time before you’re an international page drawing in customers from all over with your strong SEO practices.
By the way, if you’re looking for a little more strategic direction with your local business you can setup a free consolation here.
