SEO should be a core part of every marketing strategy, yet the importance is often overlooked, particularly by small businesses. For local businesses, investing in a strategy targeting the local area can be transformative for a business, and we’re going to talk about why that is today. From getting great value for money to raising awareness locally, there are so many benefits of investing in SEO for your local business.
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It’s Less Competitive
Firstly, a great benefit of a local SEO campaign is that the keywords you will be targeting are usually less competitive than if you were targeting national terms. For example, a small digital marketing agency in Manchester may try to rank for national terms like “digital marketing agency”, however this will not only include large London based firms, but also agencies from all across the country trying to rank for the exact same keyword. So, by focusing on Manchester based keywords rather than national, you are significantly cutting down the competition from tens of thousands of agencies nationally to far less locally. This isn’t to say that it will be easy to rank locally on every occasion, as many small businesses would have been doing it for a long time, however you do tend to see quicker progression with local campaigns as opposed to national ones.
Qualified Users
The main benefit of a local SEO campaign is that you attract qualified users. Not only are users actively searching for exactly what you’re offering (as long as the right keywords are selected), but they’re also looking exactly in your area too! From here, as long as the user lands on your website, finds what they’re looking for and has a good experience, then they should be likely to get in touch with you. If you focus on national terms as a local business, the likelihood of ranking and then users being within a close vicinity to your business is quite low. With local SEO, you will be investing your money in very qualified users.
It’s The Most Cost Effective Marketing Channel (When Done Well)
Still on the point of qualified users, SEO is the most cost effective marketing channel when it’s done properly. Firstly, this is because you are investing your money in users who are looking for exactly what you offer in the area you operate in (again, as long as the keywords chosen are highly relevant), compared to more passive forms of marketing like paid social ads where you choose an audience you think might be interested and hope that they are. Also, with SEO, you don’t have to pay anything to actually appear in the SERPs, you just pay your agency for SEO in Manchester the fees for their knowledge, so once rankings appear, you don’t spend anything else (aside from the ongoing fees to the agency, as we’d never recommend stopping SEO when rankings appear!). Compare this to PPC where you pay Google to appear on the search engines, as well as pay a management fee to an agency, SEO definitely provides fantastic value for money in terms of what you can benefit from it.
It Builds A Local Awareness
SEO is also a great tool to build local awareness for your business. Many people will now use Google’s SERPs as a way of deciding whether a business can be trusted, so when you are appearing high for relevant terms, this will help people to see the business as reliable. A big part of a local SEO campaign is appearing on Google’s MAP packs, which is where you can see businesses on a map itself at the top of the page. When you have a well optimised Google My Business profile, this helps you to appear there, showing the benefits of your business including the services you offer, opening hours and also reviews. One thing to focus on when it comes to the local awareness is focusing on building reviews for your website, as this is such an important factor when it comes to building trust with users. Encourage your customers to leave reviews and make sure you respond to them once they’ve left them. Not only does this help to encourage users to enquire, but it also provides an indication of trust for Google and this can help to improve your ranking positions too.
Final Thoughts
If you’re a small business looking to invest in your marketing, then local SEO is a fantastic place to start. It can take up to 6 months to see results, as SEO is a long term strategy, however your business can benefit so much when you find the right agency. Make sure to take your time and choose a well recommended agency, to ensure that your money is being invested in the right way with the right agency.
