Acquiring customers is a process whose effectiveness largely depends on a well-thought-out marketing strategy. One of the key elements of such a strategy is search engine optimization of a website. General keywords (short phrases or single words) related to a company's industry and offer are characterized by high competition, which often requires significant financial outlays and time to achieve a high position in search results. Does this mean that small and medium-sized companies have no chance of success in this fight for visibility? Not at all! The answer to this problem may be local SEO, which can significantly improve a company's visibility in search engines, especially in the context of its operations on the local market.
Why SMEs should bet on local SEO
Why SMEs should bet on local SEO?
The essence of SEO is to increase a website's visibility in search engines. In the case of local SEO, the goal is to achieve high positions in search engine results for phrases related to a specific region. As emphasized by Agata Gruszka, International SEO Manager at WhitePress, contrary to a frequently appearing opinion, this is not solely about ranking for phrases containing a city or street name.
– Location is one of the most important factors influencing search results, even if the phrase does not contain a city name. When people in different places type the same query into a search engine, they may receive completely different data – this results from the fact that results are tailored to location. Moreover, many users of mobile devices, after entering a phrase, look for services located near them. As many as 76 percent of them visit the searched company within one day[1]. Local SEO is therefore an effective way to reach customers who live in the same city or have just visited it – explains Agata Gruszka.
Local positioning in a nutshell
Local positioning in a nutshell. Where to start?
Just as with "nationwide" positioning, local positioning also requires website optimization. On-site activities include, among others, keyword analysis (phrases containing a city name, or even a district name, are particularly important), meta tag optimization (meta title and meta description, i.e. the page title and description, respectively), as well as ensuring appropriate image descriptions and alt texts. Technical issues such as speed, performance, and website responsiveness are also important – these affect user experience. Jakub Kitel, SEO Manager at SEM House, additionally draws attention to the role of content in a website's local positioning.
– As standard, companies should focus on the uniqueness of content and its value and usefulness for recipients. How can you add a local dimension to this? A common practice is to create subpages with offers for residents of individual cities, or even districts. It is precisely in the titles or descriptions of such subpages that local phrases are most often included. A good idea is to find space on a company blog for articles on local topics, e.g. concerning current events. Of course, this only makes sense if we are able to link such news to our service or activity via the company address, or at least a few links from local portals. – Jakub Kitel.
And what about link building? As Agata Gruszka suggests, companies deciding to implement a local SEO strategy should focus primarily on acquiring links from local online portals.
Strategies for fighting for online visibility for local companies
– Such portals can be, for example, city or county news services, which operate even in small towns. It is also worth doing research and finding bloggers operating locally. We must remember that the reach of a website or blog is one thing – additionally, attention should also be paid to the audience group and whether the website's subject matter relates in some way to our industry and offer. Although WhitePress gives users a choice of over 100,000 portals, finding local ones should not be a problem. It is enough to use filters concerning the region and type of website – adds Agata Gruszka.
An important element of local positioning is also optimizing the company profile in Google (Google My Business). Presence in Google Maps not only raises the site's position in the list of local searches, but also increases the company's visibility in several other ways. The Google Business Profile may display on the right side of search results or as part of the so-called Local Pack, i.e. a map along with a list of three companies responding to the user's query. Which places will be included in this list depends, among others, on the connection between services and the searched phrase and on elements affecting trust, e.g. positive reviews and other "signals" – such as local searches for the company/service or even behavioral ratios related to the business profile, for example clicks to the website or the number of interactions with the phone number provided in the GMB profile.
It won't work without mobile optimization
It won't work without mobile optimization
For local SEO to bring the expected results, the website must be responsive. The reason is simple: as many as 88 percent of internet users connect to the web using mobile devices[2]. People looking for local services and companies mainly use phones – if the website displays incorrectly or the loading time is too long, the user's visit will end very quickly.
Mobile optimization of a website involves adapting it to every resolution of mobile devices. A company should ensure an appropriate page size, readable font, the presence of a drop-down menu, and a clear content layout. It is also worth regularly testing loading speed on mobile devices - explains Jakub Kitel from SEM House
Monitoring and analysis to constantly improve the effectiveness of activities
A company will never find out whether its local SEO strategy is effective if it does not monitor the effects of its activities on an ongoing basis. Monitoring, carried out by systems such as Piwik or GA4, should include both analysis of search engine positions for local queries and the number of visits to pages containing a local offer, customer behavior, and the degree of their interaction with the site.
There is also an option to study the effectiveness of publications on external portals. For example, WhitePress provides a free tracking script, thanks to which a company can receive detailed statistics concerning visits to a publication. This data allows for optimizing future activities within local SEO.
Local positioning is a very effective form of promotion in a region or city. Primarily because it allows you to reach both residents and tourists located a short distance from our area of operation with information about the offer.
Given the constantly growing importance of mobile devices over PCs in the search area, in the future we should expect a systematic increase in the importance of localized search results and SEO strategies tailored to them. It is therefore not worth postponing this issue for later.
