What is Local SEO?

Local Search Engine Optimization (Local Search Engine Optimization) is a series of actions and strategies designed to improve your visibility on Google and other search engines when people close to your physical location are performing a search or when a search involves a specific location.

For example, local SEO tactics help businesses show up on Maps or in search results when someone types “Best Pizza in Lahore” or “Software House Near Me” on their phone.

It’s the same with people who want to visit your city and search for businesses in your area in advance.

While it may sound daunting, in essence, SEO is just another name for a tactic that improves sales by increasing online awareness.

There are several proven tactics available to increase your online visibility. In general, we want to show Google that your business deserves to be ranked first in search results for certain conditions and queries. In the case of local SEO, this can mean actions such as including your city or city name and zip code in your content, building links from local websites, and getting more online reviews. We’ll go over each of these tactics and more in this guide.

Who is attracted to local SEO?

As the name suggests, local SEO focuses on acquiring customers in more targeted areas (compared to the global reach of online retailers), such as a specific city or town. This is usually practiced by local businesses looking to reach this audience to attract people to their physical location or to develop business in a service area. For many ordinary businesses and service businesses, local customers are the best customers.

Why?

First, they are easier to reach out to, and second, they are more loyal and will come back if they like what they get. Local Search Engine Optimization is the perfect way to get closer to these most valuable customers. Local SEO is all about improving visibility throughout the web, but for this guide, we’ll mainly focus on Google and Google Maps.

We’re not saying you should completely ignore the other search engines, as Apple and Bing are still valuable (which we’ll talk about later), but the vast majority of customers who find you online will be from Google, so we’re going to focus our efforts on that.

Also, given Google’s ubiquity and huge market share, other search engines tend to follow suit in what they want to see to rank your business. So whatever you do for Google can easily be ported to other platforms as well.