What Are Local SEO Services, And How Important Are They?

With the help of local SEO, you can put your business in front of people when they’re most likely to spend money with you.

If you want to benefit from local SEO, you have the option of doing things your own way – or enlisting the help of a company that provides local SEO services.

If you don’t know which option is right for you – that’s okay.

Keep reading and you’ll learn how local SEO works and how you can implement your own campaigns. You’ll also learn how to find a reputable company that provides local SEO services.

Let’s begin!

What is Local SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization and relates to the practice of making your website visible in the search engines. Using local SEO you can rank your business in Google, for specific key terms that are relevant to your location.

Suppose you run a window cleaning business based in Seattle. You can set things up so that people find your business when they search the query ‘window cleaning Seattle.’

SEO is different from Google AdWords. With AdWords, you have to pay each and every time someone is going to click your website link. With an SEO optimized website, you don’t pay when people click on links to your website, within the search engines.

As you might’ve guessed, your website is going to be up against some competition, when it comes to ranking in the local search results. Because of this, if you’re going to do local SEO on your own, you need to know how everything works and how you can get the best results.

Even if you’re not going to run your own SEO campaigns, it’s important you know the ins and outs of local SEO. This will help make it so you don’t get ripped off by a company that is misleading you.

With that being said, let’s take a look at one of the main components of an effective local SEO strategy.

The Importance of Keywords

If you want great results with local SEO, you need to know how to pick the right keywords. You can use the Google Keyword Planner to help you figure this all out.

This tool is actually designed for people who are going to be using the AdWords platform. However, the information it provides is very helpful when trying to formulate a local SEO strategy.

To use this tool, provide it with a basic keyword related to your niche. Be sure to select a relevant location too, within the locations setting section.

An example of a basic keyword might be ‘window cleaning Seattle.’

When you click on the ‘Get Ideas’ button, the tool will return a list of relevant keywords, based on your initial keyword. Alongside each of these keywords, you will see the monthly search volume for a keyword. You’ll also be able to see something known as the ‘Suggested Bid.’

The ‘Suggested Bid’ figure is what people would have to pay, per click, if they are going to use AdWords to promote their website. Each keyword tends to have a different Suggested Bid figure.

The Suggested Bid per keyword is going to vary. In general, the keywords that have the highest Suggested Bid, are often the keywords that are the best at producing customers. Advertisers would not be willing to pay so much per click if they would not be able to generate a return on investment.

If you can rank using SEO, for a keyword that has a high suggested bid, you will be able to generate a good number of customers.

Other businesses will likely have caught onto this. Therefore, if you want to get results with local SEO, make sure you are targeting a wide variety of keywords. More specifically, make sure you are targeting keywords of varying difficulty.

This will help shorten the amount of time it takes to get results from local SEO.
Aside from how high the Suggested Bid is for a keyword, there are other ways you can predict how difficult it is going to be to rank for a keyword.

One of the best ways you can predict ranking difficulty is by reviewing the quality of the content for a specific keyword…

Content and How it Relates to Local SEO

If you want to rank for a certain keyword, you need to know how to create content based on that keyword. The better your content is, the more likely it will be that you’re able to rank. This is especially important when trying to rank for a competitive keyword.

If you spot a local keyword you want to rank for – look at how good the content is for that keyword. If the content is poor, it should not be too hard to rank your website, by creating content better than what already exists. Generally, poor content is content that doesn’t answer the ‘search query’ properly.

You can create better content by producing something more in-depth. You could also create content that utilizes video or audio. You might even want to create content that makes use of better formatting.

Creating high-quality content can be a lot of work. You may need to speak to a freelance writer to help you take care of this, if you’re already very busy.

What Else Can You Do to Optimize for Local SEO?

If you want to improve the visibility of your website in the search engines, think about setting up a ‘Google My Business‘ profile.

This will increase the odds your business appears in the search results, when people are performing a local search. When you create such a profile, you’re also able to keep information about your business, up to date.

On top of that, it becomes easier for you to collect and showcase reviews. This is especially helpful as reviews can help you stand out in the search listings.

You also need to think about building links to your content. One of the best ways to build links, is by promoting your website. You can do this by emailing people who’ve shared content, similar to what can be found on your site.

How to Find a Company that Provides Local SEO Services

You now know how local SEO works, and the associated benefits of implementing a local SEO strategy. However, you might not have the time to do everything that has been discussed. In this situation, you might want to work with a company that provides local SEO services, such as The Gallas Company.

So how can you make sure you’re going to be working with a reliable company?

Well now that you know how local SEO works, you’ll be able to spot how credible a company, when they’re telling you what their strategy will involve.

When consulting with a company, it can be a good idea to ask them for testimonials from past customers. Ideally, these testimonials should come from customers who had similar needs to your own.

If the SEO company has been able to provide results for them – they should be able to provide results for you too. If possible, see if they’ll let you contact these customers, so that you can learn more about how their experience went.

A lot of SEO companies are going to tell you that it will take awhile before you begin to see results. This is generally true, as Google often doesn’t make changes to the search results quickly. Needless to say, if you do not see any results within 4-6 months, you might want to think about working with another SEO company.

As with many things, you will tend to get what you pay for when working with an SEO company. Remember that the best companies will generally be more expensive.

You may be tempted to work with an SEO company that is cheaper than everyone else you have spoken too. This might sound like a good idea initially, but following through with this can lead to disastrous results. Odds are they are cutting corners somewhere, which is why they’re charging so low.

They might also be using tactics that go against Google’s rules. This is especially bad, as their work could lead to your website going down in the rankings – and not up. The lost revenue you might experience from such an event can often amount to more than what you have ‘saved’ by working with them.

Local SEO – Yes or No?

If done the right way, local SEO has the power to transform your business and bring you more clients than you can handle.

In this post, we’ve taken a look at what local SEO is and how it works. Using this knowledge, you’re free to run your own local SEO campaigns. However, if you’re short on time, you might need the help of a company that provides local SEO services – a topic we also touched upon.

Whatever route you take, make sure none of the local SEO campaigns associated with your business, go against Google’s rules. Failure to keep this in mind could lead to more harm than good when it comes to promoting your website, using local SEO.

Want to read more marketing content? Check out our marketing section to see our latest content!