Studies show that 90% of consumers hop on Google to find local products/services. 

Local SEO is not for every business. For example, if you are an ad agency in Poland providing services to clients in the UK, you might not need a local SEO. However, if you have a business or a service in a specific location where your business exists, local SEO will help you gain more leads. 

In general, the following list of businesses can benefit from local SEO that includes;

  • Restaurants, coffee shops, bars, and eateries
  • Local wedding photographers
  • Schools, and colleagues 
  • Lawyers in specific locations 
  • Advertising firms 
  • Carpet Cleaners 
  • Emergency plumber fixation
  • Emergency medical kit 
  • Veterinarians 
  • Manufacturers 
  • Flooring services 
  • Manufacturers 
  • Plumbers 
  • Gardeners 

In this article today, we will explain how to use local SEO to gain more leads.

Let’s dig into that.

  1. Analyze your product/service

Local businesses are geared towards the local communities, so if you are able to analyze your product/service according to the needs of the local communities you’ll be able to generate leads quite easily and make your brand name and logo design popular. If you have a product or service that serves people in your locality, it's a perfect fit for local SEO. 

Here’s how you can come up with ideas to analyze your local business. You might provide Chinese food in your locality, in that case, you can use the phrases like; 

  • Chinese food restaurants in ABC
  • Chinese food near me
  • Chinese food 
  • Best Chinese food in ABC

Create a list of phrases that you think will your target audience might search on Google and add them to your website. These geo-specific words will help you bring in traffic and convert them. 

Just like if you have a dental clinic in a specific location, the phrases would be,

  • Best dental services in XYZ
  • Dental services near me 
  • Affordable dental services in XYZ

  1. Audit your website for local SEO

The local SEO audit will help you have a clear picture of how your website is performing. It can assist you in seizing opportunities while providing the best services to your local target audience in times of need. 

A systematic health check will give you an idea about your prominence & relevance. Check out the following aspects as you conduct your website audit for local SEO. 

Google Penalties 

Google often penalizes websites for thin, or plagiarized content, link spamming, or unnatural link building. Check your Google penalties, and try to avoid them to get a better ranking in local SEO. 

Conduct local keyword research

Use Google keyword planner to find the local keywords. With this, you will be able to incorporate the terms that your local audience uses when searching for your business. It’s great to leverage the power of Google Trends. 

Local SEO ranking

Use your specific location to analyze the local SEO ranking, you can use some tools to conduct searches from specific locations. 

Analyze the link-building strategy and website authority

High-quality links can boost your SEO game, and therefore it’s important to have pillar pages with healthy links that are relevant and prominent. Pay attention to both the inbound, and outbound links. 

  1. Competitor study 

Discovering the local competitor is quite straightforward. Just search the top 5 phrases that you’ve identified in step one that ranks at the top. The maximum number of keywords that you'll find for your local competitor is maximum 50 to 100, and that’s it! Analyze the Google Business Profile, proximity, and page content of the top 5 links. 

Analyze the content strategy 

Once you find that, take time to identify your local competitor. Then, analyze the content strategy by identifying, 

  • What topics the local competitor is talking about
  • How frequently he creates new and fresh content 
  • What’s the average length of the articles/posts it creates

  1. On-page SEO

Pay attention to the following aspects as you analyze your on-page SEO.

A consistent NAP

Accuracy is the key when it comes to on-page SEO. Make sure your name, address, and phone numbers are the same all across the profiles. This helps the users as well as crawlers to identify your business and connect your website, profiles, and all other local citations. 

On-page content

High-quality on-page content helps you stand out among your competitors. As you create content, put yourself in the customer's shoes and ask yourself what terms will your customer be using. It will help you create content that aligns with your target audience's needs. 

Google matches up the searchers with the content providers in their locality based on their search queries. Hyper-target your audience with the intent of the content, and its keywords. 

Local Business Schema

It helps search crawlers find your business by providing business info like, 

  • Reviews 
  • Hours of operation 
  • Social media accounts 
  • Physical addresses 
  • Service area
  • Departments 

Optimize headers

We know headers are important. Optimize your heading tags with local-based keywords + your services. A highly targeted header will give your audience, and the crawlers an idea about what the page is all about. 

Internal linking 

Use internal linking as a strategy to navigate through the pages to help your audience find what it wants. For example, if you are writing about the Plumping services, you can link it to the service page where they can actually hire your service.  

  1. Geographical keywords

Location-specific keywords are the key to your local ranking. They generate results in the same geographic location and help your target audience to find services seamlessly. 

Use a keyword tool to find a list of the keywords that you can incorporate on your website. For example, if you provide plumbing services in North Carolina, you can start by typing, “North Carolina Plumbing Services” or a few other relevant terms like, 

  • Plumbing services North Carolina 
  • North Carolina Emergency Plumbing Service
  • Plumbing services in North Carolina 
  • Best plumbing services in North Carolina 

Doing so will help you tailor the local search queries to find the local leads. 

  1. Listing directories

Listing your business in online directories will improve exposure and makes your business discoverable among your audience. It can bring you a lot of traffic, and social identity. You can reach your customers that you didn't have contact with otherwise. 

Secondly, online directors allow consumers to post reviews about your business, thus providing social proof. As a result, it strengthens the business reputation in the long run, and most likely people will come back to you after reading the reviews.

While most of the directories are free, you can buy premium versions to benefit from the features. Some of the most popular online directories are; 

  • Google My Business 
  • Bing Places 
  • Yellow Pages
  • Yelp
  • Yahoo Places 

  1. Landing pages

Create landing pages for your website and optimize them for local search engines. It should target specifically your local audience. If your business provides services in multiple locations, you should create landing pages for each location. 

You can put your general business info on your home page and display your specific services at different locations on landing pages. For example, if you have emergency plumbing services in Illinois and Houston, you can create two different landing pages for them. This will allow converting your local searchers quite easily.

To capture all the leads that you generated via local SEO efforts you can use a lead generation CRM and engage with your leads in an effective manner to close more deals. 

  1. Customer reviews 

Getting positive reviews from your customers is not an easy task. The first thing is to make sure they actually have a great experience with your product or service. Once you accomplish that, politely ask them to fill out a web form or send them an email if they can provide you with an impactful review. 

This is important because it is one of the factors considered by search engines. When analyzing Google Business Profile, the search engine pays attention to three factors i.e. relevance, distance, and prominence. Great customer reviews assist in providing relevancy to new customers. 

Customer reviews improve local SEO in two ways;

  • First, it provides relevancy to your target audience, 
  • Secondly, it serves as proof to the new customers 

Either way, it helps improve the customer's confidence in your product or service to take an action. 

Conclusion

A comprehensive load SEO strategy can help you get an incredible number of leads. Follow the tips mentioned above to leverage your local SEO strategy. 

Do you have a proven local SEO strategy in place? Let us know in the comment section below.