Local SEO

When your clients are on the hunt for a product or service, they use Google. If you don’t appear in the search results, you don’t get considered. At A&A Associates, SEO is our trademark service and the foundation on which we build successful digital marketing strategies. We know that every business is different, which is why we create customised strategies to meet specific business goals and needs. We prefer to choose keywords that aren’t just relevant to your industry, but also profitable. That way, you can increase website traffic as well as revenue. While organic search and its results are based on the relevance to each user’s search query, links (both internal and external), and the other search ranking factors, local search takes into account something different: providing geographically relevant information from the local intent behind its users search queries. Organic search serves to benefit a much broader audience of both informational and transactional searchers (think featured snippets to common questions and e-commerce stores). And while local search still serves the informational searcher, there is a heightened sense of purchasing intent within a user’s local search query. Users performing local search queries are looking for a business or place they can visit in person or a service that comes to their home. Typical search queries with local intent include the following modifiers:

[term] + city [term] + near me [term] + closest to me. These modifiers work to filter a user’s search results based on their location, how far they’re willing to go, and the urgency behind the search. More recently, however, these modifiers have been dropping from users’ queries. Google has stated that they’ve implemented neural matching for local searches. This means their search engine can better understand the meaning behind keywords that may imply local intent and match them with the most relevant local search results, even if there are no indicators such as a business name or specific locations entered. This means that where you once would use more long-tail keywords.

How are local SEO strategies different?

For any SEO strategy, you should always implement technical SEO, on-page SEO and off-page to get the most out of your website and see the best results. However, while both general and local SEO should involve a similar plan to improve and optimize your site for search engines, there are key differences in the areas you should focus on for successful a local SEO strategy. Strategies you use for local traffic warrant a more customized approach, such as weaving location-specific keywords into your web copy or including reviews from local customers on your site. Local SEO can incorporate the SEO efforts found in off- and on-page optimization, but in a more specific way that’s catered to location and the local customer. These strategies affect not only your customer but also each other..