With AI becoming more advanced and Google becoming more competitive daily, one of the most frequently asked questions is, “Is local SEO dead?”. The short answer is no; local SEO is not dead and will not die anytime soon.
People will always be searching for food, plumbers, or other necessities, and they will want a local business to help them. This is where local SEO can help your business gain some traction.
In this post, you’ll learn:
- The definition of Local SEO
- Common myths and questions about SEO
- Local SEO vs. Traditional SEO
- How YOU can use local SEO and have success
What is Local SEO
Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a strategy used by businesses to improve their rankings in localized search results. It focuses on bringing in customers in a specific region or city by trying to rank for “near me” or “plumbers in X city” terms.
These businesses do this by optimizing their online presence with platforms like Google Business Profile and local directories and updating their websites with more localized keywords.
As you have probably seen, when you search for most services online, the “3 pack” businesses show up first. These are the businesses that have put a lot of effort into ranking locally, and because of that hard work, they are now the first potential business customers to call.
What is a Google My Business profile
Google My Business is Google’s completely free local business directory. If you offer local services to customers, you should set up a profile as soon as possible, as this is one of the top-ranking factors.
How to optimize your Google Business Profile
Creating a profile is only the first step. To achieve top rankings, your profile must be optimized for the right keywords, categories, pictures, reviews, and more. Here are the key steps to getting your profile correctly optimized:
- Complete your profile: Google will tell you how complete your profile is. Try to get as close to 100% as you can, which includes a business description, photos, category, and more.
- Add photos and videos: When looking for a business to work with, people want to see high-quality photos and videos. Frequently add new photos and videos to ensure your business is displayed properly and professionally.
- Respond to reviews: Reviews are one of the most crucial ranking factors. Make sure you are always asking happy customers for reviews, AND make sure you are responding to these reviews. You should respond to both the negative and positive reviews as they show that you care about improving as a business. Nobody likes an angry response to a negative review, so try to always portray your business positively.
- Post regularly: You should be updating your GMB regularly as it not only updates customers but also lets Google know that your business is constantly staying up-to-date, giving them another reason to rank you over others. I recommend making it part of your overall social media strategy.
- Enable messaging: Google’s business profile has direct messages you can set up, which gives customers another way of reaching out and showing interest.
What other local directories should I get my business on
There are a lot of local directories out there, and you should look for the ones that are specific to your city. Here is a top 3 list of the most popular local directories every business should be on:
- Yelp: A social directory and app that allows businesses to create profiles and send messages to consumers. This is a social directory and app that allows businesses to add profiles and send messages to consumers. This is one of the most popular directories, and Google takes the reviews here seriously for ranking.
- Bing Places for Business: This is just like Google Business Profile except for Bing. You can add your address, phone number, hours of operation, and more to let customers know exactly who you are and what you offer.
- Foursquare: A platform that helps businesses connect with consumers in their area.
Some other free local directories that aren’t quite as popular but still great choices are Manta, MerchantCircle, Nextdoor, Facebook Business, and Yellow Pages. As previously mentioned, you should aim to get on as many as possible, especially those created specifically for your city.
6 Common Local SEO Myths
Google is pretty secretive about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to SEO, which leads to a lot of rumors that simply aren’t true. Here are the most common myths so you know to avoid them when you hear them:
Myth 1: Longer content equals better rankings
This is a super common misconception that even a lot of SEO experts get mistaken. Longer content does NOT mean your article will rank better. While it’s important to write in-depth and informative content, it does not mean you should make it as long as possible.
A great example of this is recipe blogs. There used to be a story behind each blog about the history of each ingredient and how the author learned about this recipe from his great-aunt Jane. But the harsh truth is nobody really cares. The reader just wants to know how to make brownies for the upcoming event.
So, even though it might seem harsh, that’s the key to creating good content. Your articles shouldn’t contain your life story. It should get to the point and try to satisfy the user as quickly as possible while answering any questions they might have.
If you are writing an article on “What is SEO,” the first thing in your article should be the definition of SEO. You can elaborate on examples and related questions/topics later in the article if they seem relevant. The last thing you want is for someone to click your article, realize it’s full of fluff, and then move on to the next article.
This is why popular brands like Ahrefs don’t pay writers based on word count but pay per article. Paying based on word count might incentivize the writer to write more words than needed, resulting in a lot of fluff and content no one wants to read.
Myth 2: Backlinks are what you need
Let’s get one thing straight: backlinks are important, and they can dramatically help improve your SEO results. However, when people say, “backlinks are what you need,” it is because they are trying to tell you to buy them. You should never buy backlinks, especially from sites like Fiverr or Upwork. While the sellers providing these links promise the world, they can actually hurt your site more than they can help.
Google sees backlinks as someone trying to game the system. They want everyone to play by the same rules, so buying these links could lead to a penalty from Google, causing you to lose not just some of your rankings but also ALL of your traffic.
The worst part? It is almost impossible to recover from a backlink penalty.
How to obtain backlinks naturally
- Create high-quality content: I can’t emphasize this enough. Create informative, well-researched content that people will want to link to. In-depth guides, statistics, and infographics are a great way to get people to link to your content.
- Guest posting: Create a list of relevant websites in your niche and contact them, offering to write free content for them. Most will accept this if the content is good and related to their site. You can link to your own site in this content, which gives you a backlink in exchange for some content you wrote.
- Broken link building: If you see a relevant website with a broken backlink, contact the webmaster or author and suggest replacing it with your own content.
- Social media promotion: Share your content on popular social media platforms like Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, and any other platforms on which your brand is active. This will increase your visibility and generate backlinks from users who find your content useful.
While these are all great methods for generating backlinks, they all stem from the first tip: create high-quality content that people will want to link to. None of these strategies will work with AI-generated garbage.
Myth 3: Keyword stuffing is a viable strategy
Look, we aren’t in 2010 anymore. Keyword stuffing is a super old strategy for getting search engines like Google to rank your site for a specific keyword. It used to work super well, and you could rank for competitive keywords using it, but now you will just get punished and not rank at all. The content is just seen as spammy and low-quality.
Google’s Panda update, which rolled out in 2011, heavily combatted against keyword stuffing. This is the same update when Google started to focus on high-quality content that is made for the user. Many sites were negatively affected by this, and most never recovered.
What is the proper way to add keywords
You should still perform keyword research and try to integrate them naturally into the content, but make sure not to overdo it.
If you focus on writing natural content and using specific keywords sparingly, you shouldn’t have any problems with keyword stuffing. Google is much smarter now than it was in the past, so it can figure out what you are writing about without much help.
Myth 4: Social media doesn’t affect SEO
While social media doesn’t directly impact your search engine ranking, it can significantly influence SEO by increasing website traffic, boosting brand awareness, generating backlinks, and providing signals to search engines that your content is valuable and engaging, which can indirectly improve your search ranking; essentially, social media helps build a positive online reputation that search engines consider when evaluating your website’s relevance.
While social media doesn’t directly increase your search engine rankings, it can absolutely help with SEO by giving you a boost in:
- Traffic: If people are following you on social media, it is likely they will click on the links you post within your content, given that it’s relevant. This can be great for small sites looking to get an initial traffic boost to start them off.
- Backlinks: Social media is a great strategy for naturally gaining new backlinks, which will help your page rank higher on search engines.
- User signals: Search engines track user activity on your site. If social media followers are clicking on your site, there is a good chance they will stay for a while and engage in some way. These are all positive signals that will give you a boost in the rankings.
Myth 5: Local SEO is a one-time strategy
Local SEO is not a one-time strategy; it is something you must implement month after month. Google and other search engines constantly release updates that you must keep up with. You should be frequently updating your on-page SEO, trying to get backlinks, and adding new content.
Search engines don’t like outdated information. If your content is based on information that has been updated since the time you posted it, chances are that page will no longer rank. You don’t have to write an entirely new article, but just update to outdated parts to be relevant.
Most people don’t start seeing results from their SEO for 3+ months of continuous work. Just like working out, if you don’t keep going to the gym, you will eventually lose all the muscle you gained. It works the same for SEO.
Myth 6: I should only try to rank on Google
While Google does dominate every other search engine, that also means it is the most competitive. You might not rank your business on Google for certain competitive keywords, but those keywords could be easily achieved on Bing, Yandex, Yahoo, and more.
While Google should be the main goal, you should also consider researching other search engines and looking for potential traffic.
Search Engine Market Share list:
- Google: 89.74%
- Bing: 3.97%
- YANDEX: 2.56%
- Yahoo!: 1.29%
This data is taken from Statcounter
Local SEO vs. traditional SEO
Local SEO focuses on improving a business’s visibility for local search queries like “near me” for specific cities/regions. Traditional SEO aims to rank a website on a much broader scale nationally or even sometimes globally. You can think of local SEO as a specialized subset of traditional SEO that is just focused on bringing in nearby customers, whereas traditional SEO wants to bring in traffic from all over.
Which one is right for my business
It all depends on whether you are able to provide for your customers across thousands of miles or if everything has to be done locally. A plumber could never travel the world for every job it has, but an e-commerce store could ship its products everywhere.
Example Scenario:
Local SEO: A moving company from Austin, Texas, will aim to optimize its Google Business Profile so they appear in search results when someone from Austin searches “Movers near me.”
Traditional SEO: A national digital marketing company will optimize its website content for terms like “best digital marketing agencies” to attract customers nationwide.
Key factors for local SEO success
NAP Consistency:
You want to ensure that your business name, address, and phone number are the same across all online directories. Semrush has a local SEO tool that will publish your information to the top 70 directories simultaneously, which not only saves you time but also ensures that there are no mistakes or duplicate listings between each one.
Local Keyword Targeting:
Always look for relevant keywords that include your location or another local modifier. You can incorporate them naturally into your website content, titles, meta descriptions, and directories like Google Business Profile.
On your website, you should create localized landing pages to target specific areas. A huge company named Doordash heavily relies on this strategy to generate local traffic. They created pages specific to tons of big cities and countries, so they are always at the top for any “food near me” searches.
This specific strategy from Doordash brought their traffic from a mere 200k to over 10 million monthly visitors, according to a study done by ahrefs
Local Backlinks:
Building backlinks from other reputable local websites to enhance your authority within your geographic area. Here are some ways you can get local backlinks
- Collaborate with local influencers and bloggers: You can connect with local bloggers to find out more about your local customer base and use that information to attract new leads. You can also work with influencers in the area to see if they can give your business a shoutout or work out a collaboration that would bring you attention, which will also bring backlinks.
- Sponsor local events or charities: Consider sponsoring a charity or big local event. In exchange, they will shout you out and promote your brand at their event, which will increase brand awareness. You could even ask for a backlink if they have a sponsors page on their website.
- Analyze competitors’ backlink profiles: You can analyze your competitor’s backlinks with tools like Semrush, Moz, or Ahrefs to see if you are able to reach out to those same websites and provide higher-quality content. Not only can you gain yourself a backlink, but you might also have your competitor’s backlinks removed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are businesses still benefiting from local SEO?
Yes, businesses are still significantly benefiting from local SEO. It remains one of the top strategies for reaching potential customers who are searching for products or services in their immediate area. It leads to a huge increase in visibility and foot traffic for local businesses, especially if you correctly optimize your Google Business Profile and other similar platforms.
What role does Google Business Profile play in local SEO?
Google Business Profile plays a super important role in local SEO by providing a central platform for managing your business information on Google. This significantly impacts how your business appears in local search results on both Google Search and Google Maps. This allows you to directly influence your visibility for nearby searches. for optimizing
What are the best tools to use for Local SEO?
Some of the best tools for local SEO include Google Business Profile, BrightLocal, Whitespark, Yext, SEMrush, Moz Local, Local Falcon, Ahrefs, and SE Ranking. These platforms excel at managing listings, tracking local rankings, building citations, monitoring reviews, and analyzing local keyword data to effectively target a specific geographic area.
Final Thoughts
By now, it should be clear that local SEO is by no means dead. It’s more important than ever, and you can get foot traffic for your business with backlinks, keyword targeting, and local directories. If you need help or advice with local SEO rankings, contact us for a free personalized strategy on how YOU can get ranked in the “3 map pack.”
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