SEO Agency

Improve local SEO by creating local content

Improving your search rankings by creating local content may sound obvious but you’d be surprised how many businesses relying on local search haven’t optimised their website for such eventuality.

As an SEO company in Croydon, here’s a brief overview of what to consider for improving local SEO by creating relevant and targeted content to help improve local search rankings.

Local search

Firstly, a little background on local search. Four out of five consumers use search to find local information. That’s a lot of potential business and prospects you could be letting miss your sales funnel. When people search Google, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or local search is a way for businesses to promote their services to local potential customers and clients.

Search engines look for triggers such as content on a website that is tailored for the area you’re targeting that will showcase local business. Social media pages, external links and a Google My Business page, all help to add to your authenticity of serving a local area and it will help your business appear higher up in the search engines which strive to provide the most relevant results.  

Content marketing strategy

When you create a content marketing plan, make sure you include a continuous focus on content for a local audience.

If you’re an accounting firm, you may want to target new businesses that have just arrived in the area. By creating content that would be relevant to them about the area such as useful resources for businesses to tap into from networking groups to social activities can help with search engines locating your website over others in the prize for better ranking in search results.

Don’t forget to revisit your contact details on your website and any other external site where you may have details such as industry bodies or your social channels. In addition, your Google My Business page is a great source for local information. Make sure you constantly add updates to it.

Discover the benefits of SEO for your business

SEO is a long term digital marketing strategy. If you’re looking to improve your local ranking factor, we can help. We’re a digital marketing agency in Croydon serving businesses across London. If you would like to explore SEO for your website, why not get in touch and we can chat about the ways that we can help improve your results in search to generate high quality leads.

Or please take us up on a free website review as this can also highlight areas that need attention that you can implement yourself.

Local SEO resources

Local search for digital marketing croydon

What’s local search?

Industry research has indicated that 78% of local-mobile searches result in offline purchases  This means that almost 8 out of 10 customers will buy the product at a later time all because of SEO (search engine optimisation). In simpler terms, businesses who invest in local SEO, helping to propel their business to one of the top results in a search engine, have the potential to turn these clicks into sales. The digital market is growing and local SEO is showing clear signs of being the way forward for firms wanting to stand out from their competitors.

Why local SEO?

Local SEO is based on finding the best results to an online search in and around the area of the person who is searching. This allows local businesses offering the requested product or service to be accessed faster for the customer, whilst attracting more local customers to a firm. An example of this would be if someone searched ‘digital marketing croydon’ in Croydon, the search engine would offer top results near the location. It’s been found that 40% of all mobile enquiries were relevant to the local area, highlighting the importance of local search and that to not capitalise on this through implementing a local SEO campaign would be to lose a large and active customer base, seen with two in three people taking direct action as a result of a local search.

How can local SEO help?

SEO uses features such as local listings such as Google My Business  in order to rank websites on search engines. Put simply, if you’re searching via Google it will try to find you the best results that you’re looking for. So, if you’re in need of a local plumber, it will look for plumbers on local directory listings, the most relevant being Google My Business, but also includes others such as Check-a-Trade, Yell or Thompson. Therefore, when a firm has very good reviews on these directories, the website listings on search results will be better. So, if you’re an SME wanting to get exposure and build brand awareness adding your details to local listing directories enables your customers to provide reviews to help lift your search ranking.

Local SEO optimises word choice to suit the location, for example if your business is near The Shard, having ‘The Shard’ in your description tag is often an easy way to gain customer interest rather than using up  characters to explain the business function, lowering cost of Pay Per Click campaigns  in this way (read more about PPC here). Other benefits of Local SEO can be found on our website.

If you need any help understanding SEO or wanting to improve your current digital marketing programme by implementing local SEO please get in touch.