Local SEO Services – 14 Elements to Have in Your Strategy

Local SEO services can help you smash more of your small business goals using targeted approaches and proven strategies. As this will be your first foray into hiring SEO professionals, what kinds of services does your company need?

Here are indispensable strategies for local SEO campaigns:

• SEO audits
• Competitive analyses
• Site localization
• Keyword research
• Local content
• Google Business profile
• Business listings
• Local link building
• Local citations
• Reviews management
• Reputation management

Ahead, we’ll dive deep into what local business SEO services entail and why your small business needs them.

What Are Local SEO Services?

Local search engine optimization is a specialized form of SEO that utilizes strategies and tactics to reach audiences on a smaller scale. Preferred by startups, local businesses, and small businesses, local SEO helps these companies grow to scale.

According to Internet marketing company On the Map, 93 percent of consumers found local businesses through online searches in the last years.

If you don’t already have a local SEO strategy, your small business or startup can fail to capitalize on the opportunities you need to propel growth.

That’s where digital SEO experts come into play. Like the SEO services applied on a broader scale, local search engine optimization services can create or elevate an existing SEO strategy to achieve your goals. 

What Does a Local SEO Company Do?

As a small business, local business, or startup, you don’t have a lot of capital to go around. You still want to invest in a local SEO strategy, but if you hire an agency, what would they do?

Here’s what the process would entail. You’d meet with the local SEO company to discuss your current SEO challenges and goals.

The agency will plan a custom strategy for you based on what you’re trying to achieve and what kinds of SEO-related measures you’ve already taken.

They can rework existing SEO tactics or help you start completely from scratch. Since they’re experts, the local SEO company understands what it takes for a website to break into the first page of search results and will help you get there.

Along the way, the agency will ask for critical information such as your products and services roster, audience data, email list numbers, social media numbers, and more.

They’ll create a tailored local SEO campaign for your startup. You’re included every step of the way, so you understand what kinds of measures the agency will take and what the results should be.

When the campaign finally goes live, you’ll receive real-time updates from the agency about ongoing progress, what goals they’ve already achieved, and what objectives they expect to meet before the campaign ends.

Why Does My Business Need Local SEO Services?

If your small business or startup doesn’t already use local SEO services, the question becomes – why not?

Local business SEO services can benefit a company of any size in so many ways. Let’s go over the advantages now.

Build a Strong Community

Local SEO is all about developing strong ties with your community. If you wanted to reach a larger audience, you’d just use regular SEO services.

Through proven local SEO measures such as lead generation, local citations, business listings, content marketing, and online reputation management (among others), you can build in your audience the kind of staunch loyalty that leads to years of repeat business.

Increase Visibility

As a small business, it’s so easy to feel like the littlest fish in an overwhelmingly large pond. You post on social media and keep an active blog, but sometimes, it feels like you’re posting into the void.

Rising in the ranks through local SEO services will make you more visible. You’ll become a more viable contender, attract more business, and inspire the competition to change what they’re doing to keep up.

Get More Reviews

According to Exploding Topics, more than 92 percent of consumers agreed that online reviews influenced their purchasing decisions.

If you only have a few sparse reviews on your products or services, local SEO will help you obtain more.

Potential customers will see your reviews and make a confident, clear-cut decision about whether to buy from you.

Spend Less to Advertise

The whole point of advertising is to spread awareness about your small business and its products and services. When you have a healthy SEO standing, you don’t have to funnel nearly as much money into advertising.

Dollars are a precious commodity to small businesses. Every last dollar and cent counts. You likely already have a small advertising budget as it is. Shrinking it even further will help your business manage its finances.

Attract More Website Traffic

Digital marketing company Infront Webworks states that the first result on a page of search engine results attracts 28.5 clicks.

Even being in the second spot reduces your clicks by a significant margin, as you get only 15.7 percent of clicks.

Clicks lead to more website traffic. Once users arrive on your website, you should have a well-optimized design that invites them to explore, learn more about your business, and sign up for your email newsletter.

Boost Your Conversions

Do you have a teeny-tiny conversion rate that you’d love to increase but you don’t know how? Local SEO services can help.

As your site shapes up and begins rising in the ranks, you’ll notice an influx in more than website traffic. You’ll also have readier leads entering the sales funnel who will eventually convert into customers.

The 14 Best Local SEO Services to Boost Your Business

You’ve decided you’re interested in local SEO marketing services, but which services will best drive success for your startup or local business?

Per the intro, here are the 14 most integral parts of an efficient local SEO strategy. The local SEO company you hire can provide any of these services and more!

1. Local SEO Audit

Before suggesting any strategy, the local SEO agency will begin with an audit.

A local SEO audit assesses the state of your website as a whole, reviewing for elements such as the number and viability of backlinks, on-page SEO, keyword research used, site architecture, and the quality of the user experience.

Search engines like Google use these elements to index your site and determine its crawlability.

You’ll likely fail in some areas, especially if you’ve never had a local SEO audit done before.

That’s okay, as you’ll have local SEO services to make your site a more viable tool for ranking well in search engine results. 

2. Competitive Analysis for Local SEO

Although your company exists on a local scale, you still have a fair number of competitors. Do you know who they are and what they’re currently achieving? What about how they rank?

A competitive analysis with local SEO solutions can answer these questions and more.

During an SEO competitive analysis, the local SEO company will review who among your local competitors ranks for the top spots.

More so than just identifying these companies, the agency will delve deeper to understand how your competitors outranked you.

Perhaps they have a mobile-optimized website and you don’t, or they’ve focused on SEO since their inception while you’ve only begun recently prioritizing it.

No matter why the competition outranks you, part of a practical competitive analysis includes a review of how you can outrank the competition.

3. Local Keyword Research

Local SEO marketing services also include assessing the quality of your keyword research, the types of keywords you’re targeting, and how well you’re utilizing keywords in your content.

As a startup or local business trying to reach a nearby audience, you should use local keywords in your content marketing strategy. 

You can’t choose just any random keywords when putting together content or what you write will fall flat. Your audience simply won’t care.

Instead, you need tailored, local keyword research, another service you can rely on a local SEO optimization company to provide.

You’ll learn to find keywords your audience searches for and then slot them into an editorial plan. We’ll get more into editorial planning shortly, so make sure you don’t miss that. 

4. Website Localization

It’s more than just the keywords you use. Your website must also be localized from top to bottom.

If you’re stumped on how to do that, local SEO services can assist. By learning about your target market, the local SEO agency you hire will recommend what culture and language to use.

Cultural elements the agency can roll into your website include mentions of local holidays, local units of measure, and accurate time and date formats.

The agency will also recommend tailoring the language of your website down to regionalism so you connect more successfully with your target audience.

Website localization can build trust and help you strengthen your bond with your local community.

5. Editorial Plan Based on Local SEO Keyword Research

Now that you’ve got a batch of local SEO keywords to start with, let’s talk more about what an editorial plan looks like.

Through a local SEO company, you’ll determine what kind of content you’ll publish to your blog, including post length and frequency. You might end up tweaking these criteria as you get a gauge of what your audience likes.

Once you know, your editorial plan will come together more seamlessly. You’ll perform keyword research using the strategies the local SEO agency imparted to you and publish winning content that engages, educates, and even entertains your audience.

6. Localized Content

Blog content makes for an excellent start to rising in the local SEO ranks, but you need to produce yet more kinds of localized content.

Here’s a list of the content to incorporate into your local SEO strategy:

• Videos: In 2022, 3.37 billion Internet users watch videos, according to marketing company Social Shepherd. Localizing video to your audience means incorporating the localisms and regionalisms in your language.
• Guides: What kinds of guides can your small business produce with a local flair? Whether it’s a guide to the best food and drinks or sightseeing destinations, you’ll have high-value localized content to content.
• eBooks: When a blog post just won’t cover a topic, you can expand upon it in an eBook. Write as locally as you can. 

7. Localized Landing Pages

Every company has landing pages on their websites, but local businesses need landing pages with a local flair.

Since you’re only selling products or services to a specific audience, localizing your landing page shouldn’t prove challenging. You’ll still have local SEO services to ensure you nail the language per the localization tips mentioned above.

8. Google Business Profile: Setup, Optimization, and Update

One of the most important parts of any local SEO campaign is the inclusion of a Google Business profile.

You may have created a Google Business profile when your small business opened its doors. If you didn’t, your local SEO agency will help you put the finishing touches on your profile now.

The agency will also optimize your page, which they can do in a variety of ways:

• Upload your own videos
• Upload high-resolution photos
• Write a company description that engages your audience
• Double-check for accurate information such as hours of operation
• Include your local phone number

9. Business Listings

It would behoove any small business or startup to get on local business listings, but you might have no idea where to start.

Perhaps you’ve appeared on some listings before, but only small ones. You aspire to show up on larger listings.

You can again rely on a local SEO agency to find business listings that you’d benefit from being a part of. Your target audience will peruse these listings, so you can you build awareness by joining business listings and elevate your website traffic and rank.

10. Local Link Building

As an SEO strategy, link-building ranks among the most valuable.

However, building links associated with huge online resources when you’re a small business doesn’t make much sense. You need to downsize with local link building.

Local SEO services include link building. The local SEO company will know precisely how many referring domains you need to impact search engine results and what it takes to build quality local links that search algorithms pay attention to.

The agency can assist you in taking back lost links, obtaining the links your competitors have laid claim to, finding new local link-building opportunities, and adding relevant internal links. 

11. Building Local Citations

Connected to local link-building are local citations. A local citation includes your Name, Address, and Phone Number or NAP data.

You already added this information to your Google Business profile, which will inspire the accuracy of your NAP data that appears on the web.

Any mention of your small business NAP data, either partially or in full, counts as a local citation.

The more local citations you have, the more beneficial for your startup, but building the number of citations isn’t easy.

A local SEO company will find local and industry websites to send your NAP data, including core sites. They’ll also use data aggregators so that your name appears more plentifully on the Internet.

12. Online Reviews Management

We’ve already discussed the value of reviews in influencing a customer or potential customer’s purchasing decisions. Local SEO marketing services can take it one step further with online reviews management.

Online reviews will begin piling up as your small business or startup rises in the SEO ranks. You might find yourself inundated with other tasks and unable to manage, but your local SEO agency can.

Review management does not mean deleting negative reviews and highlighting positive ones. Instead, the agency will monitor who’s posting what on your Google Business profile, social media accounts, and website.

The agency will recommend that you respond to reviews to continue to drive up positive sentiment and smooth over issues before they negatively impact your audience.

13. Online Reputation Management

Going hand-in-hand with online review management is the next in our list of local business SEO services: online reputation management.

Besides NAP data, mentions of your company will go up as your SEO standing does. People will talk about your local business on your website, social media, and review and industry websites.

As your hired local SEO company will track for reviews, they’ll also frequently comb the web to look for mentions of your business.

Based on your perceived reputation, the agency may recommend instituting an SEO or marketing strategy or several to improve your reputation.

14. Social Media Management

The last part of a great local SEO strategy involves social media management.

Think of social media management as online reputation management on a smaller scale. Rather than focusing on what people say about your small business across the Internet, the focus is on social media.

This may sound easy, but it’s anything but! Social media is a vast corner of the Internet, and you don’t even have to actively use every social media platform for people to talk about you on them.

Work with a Local SEO Services Company

Although a local SEO services company specializes in local search engine optimization, that’s far from the only service they offer. You can also entrust them with general SEO services such as analytics, e-commerce SEO, onsite SEO, offsite SEO, and other elements of local SEO.

Conclusion

Local SEO services can elevate your ongoing SEO strategy, incorporating elements that will increase leads, sales, and conversion rates. Mediaboom is a trusted local SEO agency that helps you achieve your goals. Contact us today to learn more!