Just over a third of all searches in 2017 were local. Pretty surprising stuff, right? Well probably not surprising once you think about your own searches. About 60 percent of users on mobile are likely to visit a local business when they have a mobile friendly site and around 50 percent of consumers look up local businesses every month with 86 percent looking for locations on Google Maps.

Local search marketing is important and business owners who are reaping the rewards, aren’t going to talk about it.

Local Digital Marketing, What is it?

Local search marketing is often referred to as local search engine optimisation. It helps your business to be found online in the search engines for the relevant products and services you sell. At its simplest, it’s about making your business visible to potential customers.

Some businesses will want to reach customers in other ways like social or via paid advertising but this really depends on what type of business you run and your specific needs.

Why Is Local Search Engine Optimisation So Important?

Check your search history, we use local searches for everything, from checking the quickest routes on Google Maps, to seeing if that shop is open when we forget a to buy a birthday present. It’s the first place we look when we want to find out who has the latest phone in stock.

We have over the years begun to use it for literally everything and because the process was a gradual, many haven’t realised just how central local search has become. With 97 percent of people looking up online business in 2017, local search is here to stay.

What Are the Benefits of Local Search Marketing For Your Business?

Let me give you a hypothetical situation. You open a new Vietnamese restaurant in your area. You are the only one in the neighbourhood so you are already in a good position. Making sure you are listed and found online and in the various maps services when people are searching for Vietnamese restaurants will produce a steady flow of customers. But how many?

Well, 72 percent of customers visit a local business (8 kilometre radius) after searching locally and almost 80 percent of local searches lead to an in store purchase.

But now imagine there are 6 other Vietnamese restaurants in your area. How do you capture people’s attention amongst the crowd? That’s where local search marketing comes in.

How to Get Started With Local

You could hire local seoexpert in your area or you could be brave and do it yourself. If you decide to go it alone, remember that things change fast in the digital realm and you have to stay abreast of all the different trends. To give you an idea of just how much things change, in 2017 alone there were between 500 and 600 algorithm updates.

One of the first things you’ll need to do is to claim your business listing in Google. And before you ask, about 56 percent of business owners failed to do this last year. And if you have your website connected to your listing, you’ll get around a third more people clicking.

Then next thing you’ll need to do is make sure that your business details are the same across all the local directories. Any mistakes in your name, address and phone number could hurt your visibility online.

Another ranking factor for local search is links, try sponsoring charities or local sports clubs. Remember it’s the quality and not the quantity of links.

One last thing you can do to improve your visibility is to reach out to customers and ask for a review. Unfortunately with reviews, it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the oil and people are more likely to leave a bad review than a positive one. When customers are happy ask them to leave a review.