What is Local SEO, and How Does It Work?

Local SEO is a technique for search engine optimization (SEO) that helps your business show up higher in Google's local search results.Local SEO can benefit any business that has a physical location or specific area. Local SEO can help your business grow if, when you search Google for important keywords related to your company, a map with three listings appears below it. This is called a "map pack."

But you need to know how Google works before you can understand local SEO.

How did search systems change over time?

In the early days of the web, there weren't that many websites, so it was easy to get around. But as the Internet grew, people made search engines to make it easier for people to find the sites they were looking for.

When you put a phrase into a search engine, that phrase was matched to websites that had the keywords in your search phrase. Google used the same method, but it quickly beat out the other search engines because it was the first one to use links between sites to figure out which sites could be trusted and were authoritative.

Google looks at hundreds of things on and off your website to decide if it should show up as a search result. Your "digital footprint" is made up of different things, and each thing has a different weight or value that the search engine uses to give you results. Your digital trail is what determines whether or not you come up at the top of a Google search.

So how does Google work?

When you put a search phrase into Google, it checks the pattern of different website signals, or ranking factors, like how relevant your site is, to give you a list of sites that match your search.

Most people don't know that when they put something into Google's search bar, it doesn't do a live search of the whole internet. In reality, it is looking for a copy of all the sites that Google has found. The Google Index is what this file is called.

Google uses small programs called "spiders" to crawl the web. This is how the index is made. Each spider works the same way: it starts on one page, follows the links on that page, looks at the information on the next pages, and so on.

As Google crawls the web, it stores the material on its servers and builds the index. The spiders work on a scale that is hard to imagine. They constantly crawl trillions of pages at a very fast rate. This makes sure that the index is as up-to-date as possible and that new sites and links are found quickly.

How Google puts search results in order

Google uses many different methods to quickly rank hundreds or thousands of websites. These stages are referred to as "algorithms." When you enter something into Google, an algorithm searches the index and returns a list of organic results that match your query. These results are picked and ranked based on how important they are, how relevant they are, and how popular they are.

The program looks at different things on and off the site to figure out which websites have something to do with your search. All of the necessary sites are added to the list, and then it is sorted by how important it is. Again, the algorithm looks at the different on-site and off-site factors to figure out which sites best answer your search question. Those sites are at the top of the search results.

Improving your SEO has an effect on your site's relevance, prominence, and link fame. If you optimize your site's digital footprint in the appropriate ways, it will appear higher in more search results.

Local SEO is not the same.

What about direct search results in your area? After looking at how users behaved during trillions of searches, Google found that people looking for certain kinds of businesses want to see results from their own area. So, Google's local search algorithm has a "proximity factor." This is a fancy way of saying that when you look for a local keyword (a query with local intent), Google takes into account where you are. This happens even if the searcher doesn't type "near me" or the name of a place.

If you're at work and want pizza brought for lunch, for instance, Googling "pizza delivery" will show you a list of places near your office. These are called "local SERPS."

But if you do the same search at home, the results will be completely different. This makes sense, since you need a pizza to be brought to you from a nearby place.

Local search has been around for a long time, but because most people only used desktop computers, it wasn't very useful. Mobile search, on the other hand, has exploded in recent years as mobile internet access has grown. As a result, local SEO has become very important for the success of any business with local goods or services and for local marketers.

Why Local SEO Is Important

What does this mean for people who run search engines? Even though the local map pack is shown in the normal Google organic search results, the main Google search results for local rankings and the local map pack results are based on different algorithms. As a local business, you have the opportunity to appear in both the main organic search results and the local map pack.

If you're new to selling your business online, one of the hardest things is figuring out what you should focus on to make your efforts as effective as possible.

Moz, a company that creates marketing analytics tools, publishes its annual Local Search Ranking Factors survey, which is completed by the top 35 to 40 local search experts. SEO from around the world. Its results are the best way to find out which factors affect how visible you are in local search results.

Localized content and local link popularity are still elements in Google's traditional search algorithm, therefore it's critical to create local landing pages for each of your locations, particularly if you have multiple locations. have more than one. On these pages, you should include not only your business name but also its address and phone number, as well as optimize their title tags, and meta descriptions, and follow SEO best practices. This should also be a part of your plan for marketing your material and building links.

Local SEO rankings also consider location-based variables such as having a Google My Business directory, local citations from data aggregators, and review signals that should be displayed by your local customers. As a result, you should take these factors into account in your local SEO efforts as well.

Also, it's important to know that there are SEO tools for local search that can help you create locally-focused SEO audits. These tools can help you do things like research keywords for your local audience, build citations, manage your Google My Business listings, business profile, and Google posts, and even keep an eye on your presence in local packs.

The content of a website is still a big deal, just like it is in Google's old search algorithm, but there are also location-based factors like Google My Business, citations, and review signs.

Start harnessing SEO

Now that you know more about the basics of SEO and how Google ranks local search results, you can start to focus on signs that will improve your site's digital footprint in the ecosystem of local search. This will help your business show up higher on the results page, which could lead to more possible customers finding your business.

There are a lot of things that affect how visible you are in these searches, but remember that local search is always growing and changing. Moz's annual poll can help you keep track of which signals are becoming more important and which are becoming less important. Once you start to improve each important signal area, you'll be able to help more people in your area and grow faster.