Local SEO

Local business for local customers!

Let's get in front of the local competition

Local SEO is one of those jobs you would like your company to be able to do in house. Trevor from Sales said he had a bit of experience doing it , but then Trevor also thought Trump would win a second term...

If you are that business owner who knows that ranking in search engines for local searches corresponds to more business, more leads and more sales, please read on and use our tool to run your Local SEO Audit for a comprehensive health check.

Don't just leave it to Trevor. Let's do some SEO, not Guess-EO...

Get your FREE Local SEO Audit report and get in front of the competition

Don't just leave it to Trevor. Let's do some SEO, not Guess-EO...

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If you've read some of our articles, you will know we frequently drone on about local customers for local business. This is mostly to do with e-commerce and trying to get local people to stop assuming that the only place they can get the products they need is Amazon.

But it's not always about competition. If you are anything like Island Web Design owner, Koo Janzen, you are proud of the service or product you provide and how you look after your customers. You know that anyone who has done business with you, is a happy and returning customer and you also know that the next new customer you win, will feel exactly the same. You just need a way to show them, a foot in the door so to speak. And to get your message in front of the right people, you need to make sure you are on top of your Local SEO game.

Local Search Engine Optimisation is the collective name for a series of disciplines that all tie in to make your business stand out when potential customers search for your products or services. There are essentially 5 main components to this:

Claim, optimise and manage your Google Business Profile (as well the Bing equivalent)
On-site SEO content (keyword research, content building)
Business listings or citations (clean up, create and monitor)
Reputation Management (Get reviews, monitor and answer reviews, manage review platforms)
Competitor Analysis and Ranking Analysis (Reverse engineer success, get in front of the competition)

Google Business Profile

By far one of the biggest weapons in your arsenal to dominate the Local SEO battleground is your Google Business profile. Correctly configured and optimised, it is responsible for 33% of the ranking signals that determine your place in the Local Map Pack (for more about optimising your local GBP platform and what a map-pack is, check out our article Higher rankings and more customers for local business.

On-site SEO and content creation

In order to rank for your most desired keywords and key phrases, Google needs to be able to find them on your website. This means your content needs to reflect this and be structured correctly. But that is not all. Your website needs to build authority for those keywords to rank well and customers must want to spend time on that website.

Domain authority is how Google regards your website as a thought leader, a trusted source. It uses your Domain Authority to ensure you are providing the highest quality content about your subject. Domain Authority is calculated by evaluating multiple factors, including linking root domains and the number of total links, into a single DA score. A high DA score and Google will boost your content’s rankings. A low score means you have bad domain authority and they won’t rank your content.

Business Listings (citations)

Citations are online business listings that contain practical information about a business. This can usually include (but is not limited to) your NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) as well as a description, list of services, opening hours and a link to your website.

The types of sites these listings can appear on are online directories, review sites, event sites and News and blog sites (also known as ‘citation sites’).

As citations have local SEO value, they can improve ranking in local search engines such as Google Local / Maps.

Search engines like Google compare the data displayed on citation sites with the business data it holds. When there is a high level of data confirmation, it builds confidence in the business's location and services offered — this can boost the business ranking in local search results.

But be careful, listings in the wrong places, or differences in the NAP between citations, can be hugely damaging to your rankings.

Reputation management

Any local search strategy has to take online reviews very seriously. Extensive research has shown that there 3 key benefits to running a pro-active reputation management campaign:

Improve Consumer Trust: Search engine users have said they feel more confident in a business's ability to deliver a great service if they have a high review score and a good number of reviews. 57% of customers will only use a business that has '4 or more' stars.

Improve Click-through Rate: Google will show a business's star ratings and review counts in their local search results. Searchers are more likely to click through to a business with a higher star rating and review count. Interestingly, a business gets 25% more clicks from Google’s Local Pack by going from a 3-star rating to a 5-star rating.

Improve Rankings: More positive reviews than your competitors will help greatly in getting you ranked on the local 3-pack, and higher up in organic results. Local SEO experts believe that reviews make up 16% of all local ranking signals.

Competitor Analysis and Ranking Analysis

Flying blind is never a good idea and so it is too with SEO. There is little point in trying to optimise your presence on the internet, if you do not get an overview of the results of your efforts. A ranking report will show how you rank for a series of keywords and, equally importantly, how your most immediate competitors rank as well.

Local SEO package for Local Business

SEO of any kind is a multi-level effort and not something you do once and then forget about. Sure, optimising your website for SEO is about making sure the site is correctly structured, the right use of headers and lay-out, making sure page titles and descriptions are properly used etc. But those are just the basics and something any web designer worth his or her salt should be doing right out of the box.

But it is only after you've done your local audit that you know where the weak spots are, and what the keywords are that you need to target and create content for. Also, what work needs to be done to start to elevate your domain authority and which review platforms to target, and much more.

SEO is not a quick fix and it will take several months before you start to see results. It is probably best compared to the newspaper or magazine advertising we all used to do. Your marketing budget would allow for several hundred pounds per month for print advertising, but now that fewer people read local newspapers anymore, part of this budget needs to be allocated to other efforts. And a Local SEO service is one of these.

Island Web Design will work with you to create a package that is affordable and sustainable. Below are our standard packages but these can be tailored to suit, depending on your business type, results of your SEO Audit and how much of the work we take on for you. The minimum contract length is 6 months.

Interested to find out more? Then why not get in touch or use the button at the bottom right of your screen to schedule a call, meeting or Zoom video call? Let's have a chat and see if Island Web Design is a good fit for your Local SEO strategy!