Local SEO is a strategy to optimize your website to drive more organic traffic and leads to your business. Part of local SEO strategy involves optimizing your business’s Google My Business (GMB) listing, building NAP (Name, Address and Phone Number) citations, and making your website visible in the organic listings when users search for your business using local keywords, such as: house moving Singapore.
While traditional SEO focuses on improving your website’s organic visibility on a national or global scale level, local SEO focuses on finding local keywords and optimizing your website so that you can capture the organic traffic in your area. Although both traditional SEO and local SEO uses many of the same strategies, there are still differences between them, especially in the area of keywords selection.
According to the statistics, local searches make up a huge chuck of the organic traffic. As researched by Google, 76% of people who conduct a local search in their smartphone visit a business within 24 hours and 28% of those searches result in a purchase. Also, according to another report from Google, searches for local places without the qualifier “near me” have grown 150%, faster than comparable searches that do not include “near me”. This shows that people increasingly expect to get results that are tailored accordingly without the need to spell out their request. Hence, this data proves that local relevance is expected, and google’s algorithms will be tailored accordingly to deliver the local results.
Google Local Map pack is a set of 3 local business results with their map locations pulled from Google Maps. It appears at the top of the search results and the normal search results will appear after the Google Local Map Pack as shown in the image below:
Google Local Map Pack optimization is very important especially for retail businesses. This is because when someone searches using the keyword “store + address”, Google tends to return Google Local Map Pack in their search results. This is important to keep in mind so that when you are doing keyword research for your SEO, do select “store + address” keywords to optimize.
For example, if we search for Japanese Restaurant Orchard Road, this is the search results that Google returns, and yes, Google Local Map Pack shows up:
If you want to win in local SEO optimization, having an optimized Google My Business (GMB) listing matters. Here are some reasons why you should optimize your Google My Business Listing:
Google has released statistics to show that mobile traffic has overtaken desktop traffic. Approximately 60% of all searches take place on a mobile device and nearly half of all mobile searches are related to a location, for example, people searching for a japanese restaurant near them for dinner. When you have an updated and optimized Google My Business listing, you are well positioned to capture the audience.
And GMB listings appear just below the google ads. When choosing which GMB to rank, Google looks at different ranking signals such as positive reviews, keywords within GMB, etc.
GMB listing allows you to input information such as your business’s location, opening hours, contact information, website links, reviews, business description, business images, etc. A well-optimized GMB ranks well on Google Search results and allows you to showcase your business to your potential customers.
OOm has been assisting SMEs and enterprises with their SEO work since 2006. As one of the pioneers in digital marketing and SEO in Singapore, OOm brings along many years of experience to help your business to win in local SEO. Leverage on our local SEO experience and outsource your local SEO work to us.
By having an in-house SEO team, we are able to control every part of the local SEO process to deliver the highest quality work for you. Our highly-skilled and competent SEO team knows what works for you so that you can rest assured and leave the heavy lifting to us.
We care greatly about our clientele. Our clients are an expanded mix of SMEs and enterprises. Check out some of the companies we’ve helped recently through our diverse portfolio.
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*Only SMEs in retail sectors are eligible for 80% support until 31 March 2023