How Local SEO Works
Local search engine optimization is exactly what it sounds like: SEO for a specific geographic region.
仅仅因为它是面向一个更小的子集f customers doesn’t mean it’s less important or time-intensive than a broader SEO campaign. To some extent, every business is a local business, and a Page 1 search result on Google — or better yet, the Local Pack on Page 1 — is the best business listing of all. A small business and a global company alike can benefit from a local SEO campaign.
Local SEO strategy in many respects boils down to optimizing your existing online presence within Google apps and increasing your brand reach across relevant local directories. It’s about maximizing foot traffic and website traffic in a coordinated effort.
As the majority of commerce migrates to the web, your company’s digital footprint is even more important than its physical storefront. Local search engine optimization boosts your organization’s online visibility so leads are continuously in touch with your locations, products, services and differentiators.
Who Can Profit From Managed Local SEO?
A local SEO solution as part of your digital marketing service from Brafton is an excellent option for businesses that:
- Want to move away from managing their local SEO on their own due to time constraints and lack of a suitable in-house local SEO expert.
- 已经有一个战略但想要it to the next level and build their online reputation with customized local search engine marketing from the best local SEO company.
- Plan to outsource their local SEO while remaining in control of their business’s digital marketing decisions.
The Benefits of Local SEO
Local SEO has proven to be a responsive marketing tool for turning your community into a customer base. Even if you don’t have an online shopping element — or even a website — your business is going to be impacted by SEO. Many things come together to form your business’s online reputation, including happy (or peeved) customer reviews, backlink mentions on personal blogs and your Google My Business listing. It’s better to be in control of your local SEO than to cross your fingers and hope for the best — especially since this approach could increase brand awareness, grow your customer base and set you in the best possible light.
There are multiple benefits of focusing on your local SEO, including:
Customization
Local SEO is easily trackable through platforms such as Google Analytics, which makes it simple to customize and adapt this approach for big improvements in web traffic.
Real-world Engagement
Local SEO also increases the amount of traffic to your store and helps visitors share their good experiences with other potential customers.
Multiplying Results
There’s an improved likelihood that your business will be shared across Google’s 3-pack without any pressure from you — as long as your GMB is complete and up-to-date.
Essentially, increased local organic traffic to your site leads to increased foot traffic through your local business — or increased on-site conversions.
You can think of local SEO as being everywhere your local customers need you to be — all at once.
Brafton Local SEO Services
Brafton has been a leading digital marketing agency for 10+ years, and we’ve adapted our local SEO services alongside industry changes and best practices. Our SEO experts know what it takes to get your company to appear in local business listings, Google Maps and Google SERPs — all within the same SEO campaign.
As a full-service local SEO agency, our strategists and consultants craft campaigns to capitalize on your organization’s near- and long-term commercial opportunities, pushing your digital presence forward every day with local SEO that converts.
Here’s a quick rundown of expert SEO services you can expect from your Brafton team:
- Google My Business listing and optimization.
- Google Map marketing and advertising.
- Local citation management.
- Local listing monitoring.
- Brand monitoring.
- Reputation management.
- Localized content creation.
- Localized site copy refreshes.
- Localized metadata analysis and optimization.
- Keyword research.
- Targeted link building.
- NAP (name, address, phone number) verification for multiple locations.
- Customer review solicitation and response.
- Mobile optimization.
- Structured data markup.
- Business directory optimization.
- Google Posts publishing.
- On-page optimization.
- Google Analytics setup.
Brafton local SEO packages are fully customizable to your company’s unique needs, today and tomorrow. They can be purchased together as part of a larger SEO campaign, or contracted à la carte local SEO service as needed. Either way, you’ll always have a local search expert at your disposal.
And as your target demographic, industry or products change, our services evolve right alongside them.
With Brafton, your potential customers have never been so within reach.
With Brafton, your potential customer has never been so within reach.
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Local SEO Expertise and Support
SEO is really an omnichannel initiative, especially in the local realm.
Signals from social media, backlinks and online business directories all influence SEO results, which means you need an SEO firm that’s versed in many marketing disciplines. That includes the strategy to plan campaigns, the coordination to execute on them and the talent to see your projects come to life — all in one local SEO package.
Brafton’s SEO service is complemented by technical support from our web developers, ideation and creation from our multidisciplinary creative departments and end-to-end accountability from project managers.
Our local SEO marketing services are organized and run by an in-house team. That means you can access strategy, assets and analytics through a single point of contact across the entire spectrum of your SEO package.
With Brafton, there’s no need to juggle multiple vendors, outsourced contractors or unvetted freelancers — everything’s done in a cohesive, collaborative workflow you can trust. You’ll work with a dedicated SEO expert who can guide your strategy in the right direction. From small businesses to large corporations, every organization can benefit from an effective local SEO strategy.
Make Google Your Homepage
We take a methodical, data-backed approach to engineering SEO victories, and that often starts with optimizing your brand across Google’s suite of interconnected applications.
What is Google My Business?
Google gives businesses a free business listing that will appear appropriately on Google Maps and in SERPs. Your Google business profile is an integral part of your local SEO because it ensures your potential customers can find out more about your business. If your company is properly listed with the right information, you’re more likely to show up first in Google Maps when somebody nearby searches online.
Google is also the first place people search for company reviews — 81% of consumers use Google to evaluate local businesses. Therefore, building the trust of your organization by growing your positive reviews on Google will go a long way to attracting new customers that find you via local search.
It’s up to the business owner to add and update their information to keep it accurate. The more up-to-date you keep your Google business profile, the more likely you’ll rank higher than those who haven’t. Google also provides a space for businesses to update their customers about their operations through their profile as well, making it easier for customers to know exactly how to do business with you.
Google automatically exports the business data from your Google My Business account to a number of other important online marketing channels, including:
- Google Maps.
- Local 3-packs.
- Knowledge panels.
- Google Posts.
- Mobile SERP carousels.
That said, the proper transfer and population of this information — addresses, services and others — is only possible if your Google My Business profile is appropriately claimed, set up and optimized.
With Brafton, every Google SERP effectively serves as the front door to your business. When searchers need you, they find you.
Local SEO Ranking Factors
Organic SEO ranking factors have an enormous impact on whether your company is visible online and how much traffic you can expect to generate.
While the core tenets of SEO apply in principle, local search follows subtly different practices because the ranking factors in play are weighted differently in the eyes of search engines.
Industry studies have shown that the top local SEO ranking factors that should influence your organic marketing campaigns are:
On-Page Signals: 34%
There are several on-page signals that can help improve the local SEO of a website. These signals include:
- Using your location name in the domain name, URLs, and header tags.
- Adding geo-targeted content to your site such as images, videos and blog articles.
- Creating an XML sitemap with local listings and adding it to Google Webmaster Tools.
链接的信号:31%
Link signals for local SEO are very different from the link signals for general SEO. In broader terms, links should come from authoritative sites with high Domain Authority and good page rank. However, in local SEO, links are more important if they come from sites that have a lot of traffic. The more mentions and citations that other local businesses make about your business — and vice versa — the better ranking score you’ll receive.
Behavioral Signals: 11%
The behavior signals for local SEO are the actions that show potential customers are looking for a local business. Some of these signals are:
- Exploring nearby businesses on Google Maps.
- Searching on Google Maps for directions to a specific location.
- Checking in at a specific location on Facebook or Foursquare.
Citations: 7%
一个citation is a mention of your business that is not necessarily a direct link. Citations are mostly found on directories but can also be on blogs, press releases and other sites that list or rank businesses. The citation signals for local SEO include the number of citations and the quality of these citations (including H1 and H2 tags) and their frequency.
Personalization: 6%
Although slightly less important, the personalization of users also plays a role in how your business will rank. This means that the search history, device location among others will be factors. So, the more localized your business is on Google — how accurate your listing is and the rest of the signals outlined here — the higher you will rank than for those businesses trying to market to multiple geographical locations.
Google My Business Signals: 6%
Your business needs to have a verified listing with Google My Business. Make sure you always have accurate information about your business such as your hours of operation, contact information, menu items, photos of what you offer and more.
Reviews: 5%
The length of comments, their diversity and popularity will all be important factors determining how much your business reviews on Google and other sites will boost your local SEO strength. Managing these and replying promptly is also vital. If you manage to get your customers mentioning your location within their reviews, even better.
Local SEO services must be tailored to user experience because customer reviews and social commentary have an outsized impact on your site’s ranking potential. In terms of local SEO best practices, the above ranking factors are a great base on which to build your next campaign.
Local Marketing for a Local Market
Brafton’s local SEO services increase your presence in search, in local listings and in online directories of every kind.
For brick-and-mortar shops with one storefront, your potential customers may be the local consumers on your street. For digital-first stores, your chief audience may be anyone querying search engines with local phrases or questions.
Why are Local Directories Important?
When you create a listing on an online directory, it’s the equivalent of you telling the world that you exist.
Directories help to rank your website higher in search engines, especially if they’re already well-optimized and have a lot of valuable SEO-driven content on their site. For directories to be effective for local SEO, they need to be both high quality and authoritative in their niche.
A directory will usually have a section for people to add their business and list contact information, but some also allow people to submit reviews or write articles about your business. They also often have links to your social media pages and other websites where people can find more information about your company or products.
To earn the attention, trust and authority of your local market segment, Brafton SEO experts capitalize on any and all local citations we find across the web. Those citations often come from online directories like:
- Yelp.
- TripAdvisor.
- Google My Business.
- Better Business Bureau.
- Facebook Marketplace.
- Amazon.
- Bing Places.
- Foursquare.
- Twitter.
- Chamber of Commerce.
- Local.com.
- Angie’s List.
- Yext.
- Merchant Circle.
- LinkedIn Company Directory.
- Apple Maps.
- And more.
Our local SEO marketing services put your business front and center — in both the physical and digital realm — creating a branded, widespread customer experience for your local marketing niche.
How Local SEO Fits With Other SEO Campaigns
Local SEO isn’t an isolated effort. It can (and should) be combined with other digital marketing tactics, as well as larger SEO campaigns that target audiences in different geographies, markets or stages of the sales funnel.
Brafton’s specialized approach to content marketing and SEO is agile enough to keep pace with changing Google algorithms and customer expectations. And that means developing optimized strategies for your business as it undergoes any transitions, interruptions or expansions.
As such, your company may need to tap into SEO services outside of or in addition to local SEO — and we’ve got you covered.
Brafton’s SEO experts engineer bespoke campaigns for:
Regional SEO
With regional SEO, your goal is to target customers within your city or municipality as well as those within the surrounding area. You’re not aimed at reaching the entire country, but may want to serve the county or even state with relevant SEO targeting.
- Region-specific organic content creation.
- Geo-targeted long-tail keywords.
- High-value link building.
National SEO
National SEO requires much broader terms than those used in local and regional SEO and will require its own strategy to ensure its continued success. Although you have a wider audience to reach, keywords should be precise to guarantee you’re reaching the right audience.
- Broad, location-agnostic keyword ranking.
- Featured snippet optimization.
- Enterprise-level link building.
- Multi-site, multi-brand management.
- Advanced audience segmentation and list building.
International SEO
Our global community makes it easier than ever to reach millions of viewers and potential customers worldwide. Much of your content should determine which countries and even what languages you want to reach. You don’t necessarily need to target the entire world; however, international SEO techniques are important to reach countries beyond your own.
- Multi-national content creation.
- Language localization.
- Multi-domain and multi-site management.
- Global keyword research.
We also work laterally across many different content formats and technical disciplines, providing:
On-page SEO
On-page SEO can be defined as all the work that you do on your website to improve its search engine rankings. It includes:
- Optimizing your site for search engines so that it ranks well for relevant keywords.
- Creating useful, high quality content that attracts links from other websites.
- Making sure your site loads quickly and doesn’t have any technical issues.
- Ensuring you have a sitemap and robots.txt file set up correctly.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO is about creating links to your site from other sites and social media platforms in order to rank higher on the SERPs. Off-Page SEO can be divided into:
- Link Building:Any form of link building such as guest blogging, influencer marketing and email outreach.
- Social Media Marketing:Any form of social media marketing such as Facebook ads and Twitter advertising.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO includes tasks such as building a website with a fast loading time, optimizing the site code and ensuring that your site has proper security measures. Of course, technical SEO isn’t just about making a website look good to humans — it also needs to be optimized for machines. If a search engine’s crawler cannot see or access the content on your site, it won’t show up in search results either.
Video SEO
Video SEO is the process of optimizing a video for search engine crawlers. The first step to optimizing video is to find the best and most relevant keywords. Once you have found a list of keywords, it’s time to create subtitles for your video so that it can rank well in YouTube searches. You should also add metadata about your video such as tags, title and description to help with ranking on other sites like Facebook.
Mobile SEO
Mobile SEO is the optimization of your website and online presence to adapt to mobile devices. It’s important to have a plan for mobile SEO throughout your entire digital marketing strategy and not leave it as an afterthought. If anything, it should come first as mobile searches account for about 60% of all online search traffic.
Voice SEO
With over 110 million voice assistant users in the U.S., voice SEO has become more relevant than ever. Google is more likely to use your website if it directly answers a question that’s asked. If it’s the best response available (uses the best SEO techniques) then your site will appear in Google’s answer box, which is the space most likely to be used by voice assistants.
E-commerce SEO
E-commerce SEO is the search engine optimization process taken to boost traffic to an online store. Your description links, backlinks, targeted keywords and all of the above SEO types will impact your store’s credibility and the likelihood of appearing on Google SERPs and, even better, on Google’s shopping lists.
If you need search engine optimization, you’ve come to the right place. There’s no such thing as an SEO service that we don’t offer.
Local Search, Big Results
Traditional SEO companies may only be proficient in old-school SEO and nothing else.
We’re not a traditional SEO company. At Brafton, SEO strategies can be localized, but their results are supersized. Furthermore, we can simultaneously act as your local SEO company while also working on your national or global search campaigns. In other words, we’re the only SEO company you need.
Up and down the sales funnel, and throughout the customer journey, your dedicated team drives results regardless of scale. From conception to creation to conversion, the full lifecycle of your digital marketing is optimized for the qualified leads you intend to earn. This translates to cold, hard ROI.
会见当地Brafton SEO顾问开始getting the local results your business needs.
Not in the US?
We offer local SEO services all over the world: