What is local search and why is it important?

Local search is a very new concept in the world of search, but one that is growing in importance and relevance. Local search refers to the way that websites are rated by users based off of their location. The more specific your keywords are, the more precise your rankings will be.

Local search programs can be used for many different purposes. They can be used to help companies in local markets find people who want to buy their products and services.

They can also be used as a tool for local marketing campaigns. Companies use them to find customers within certain geographic areas and send those customers offers they would not otherwise have access to (for example, a local business could find new customers from all over the US, from New York City to Detroit).

Greater emphasis is being placed on local search in the major search engines.

Local search is one of the most important factors to consider when it comes to site ranking. I don’t think that many people realize how much weight local search has in driving traffic to your website, especially if you are a small business.

A great deal of the success of a local business is determined by how effectively they can optimize their website for local searches and the other areas discussed in this post.

As great as these things may seem, however, you might want to take them a bit more seriously. Local search optimization can be complicated and not all sites are equally good at optimizing their site for local queries or for Google Maps or Yelp or whatever else. Do it well however and you will achieve much higher rankings, more traffic and ultimately, more business.

If you are just starting out with a local business and your only choice is between AdWords and Google Local, choosing the latter might be tempting, but it will probably not work out well for you in the long term. Especially if your company has very little active paid traffic coming from local searches (for example if nearly all of your visitors are coming from social media).

The better option is to focus on building a strong foundation of organic traffic from which you can expand into paid traffic when appropriate (or at least split test different advertising strategies to find which works best). At the very least is is imperative to optimize for local search or you might be invisible to potential traffic.

What are the benefits of ranking higher in local search?

Ranking higher in local search can be a huge boon to your business. It also has a lot of benefits, some of which will be outlined below. But, before we take a look at the benefits, let’s consider why this is important.

The main reason why local search is so important to businesses is that it allows you to reach consumers who are closer to where your products are sold.

Local listings give Google an incentive to rank you higher in local search because when people click on these listings they are going directly towards the product they’re looking for; and if they find what they’re looking for then they are more likely to go back toward the site where the product originated (which means more sales). Local search also helps with brand awareness — as you are likely to be seen more often when someone closer to you is conducting a search.

The benefits from ranking higher in local search include:

• when someone searches using their location they will see you are close to them

• when someone enters their location into Google Maps and searches for products or services from that location they can find you

• when someone searches using their location plus products from their location (e.g., “how does this XYZ product work” ) that might lead them back closer to where their needs are located and thus towards where your products originate – which will help increase sales

Here I mention these benefits because there is an argument that ranking higher in local search actually hurts your conversion rates — but this isn’t the case at all; this sends the wrong message.

4. How can you optimize your website for local search?

Local search is one of the fastest growing marketing trends and the local search engines have been investing a lot of money in this area.

Although there are many ways to search locally such as directories, forums and so forth, there are three main types of local search: 1) Google Local – which includes shopping, travel, weather and jobs, etc. 2) Bing Local 3) Yahoo Local

There are a number of ways you can optimize your website for local search. Most of them are focused on getting better rankings in the top search engines. Properly optimized for local search simply means you get more local traffic (this will ultimately help your website rank higher on the search engines).

One option is to use a tool like Ahrefs to get deeper insights into what keywords your visitors are using in their searches. This is highly recommended because it helps you know how many organic and paid searches your site is getting and it allows you to create more relevant content for your visitors.

You can also use SEO tools like Moz or Optimizely to see additional data on your site’s traffic (which can help you target the right keywords), pages that people are visiting, links they click, etc.

You can get good results from lists of keywords (or even sites, if you are willing to pay for them). You can also use Google’s advanced keyword suggestions for further guidance. And Google analytics provides a lot of tools to help you grow your site such as the Google Analytics Conversion Funnel.

In fact, a very robust method to help you grow more conversions and traffic is to simply use the free Google Analytics tool which provides a lot of data about your website traffic to help you better optimize your content and pages.

In closing, local search is important for a couple of reasons:

First, it’s more effective than global search. It’s often the only way to get your product into people’s lives in the places where you think it will sell best. If you make your site only available locally, even if you have a global audience, you will likely sell more than if you just have a global audience.

Second, if you have a local audience that is passionate about what they’re buying and writing about, they will be more likely to buy your product — and write about it. And that means more traffic to your site.

Lastly, local search has a huge potential to improve your search rankings in the major search engines. Local search is the internet’s shortest path to a page rank of 1 or 2 (the top spot for a site).

If you don’t have any experience with local search, Adtastic offers a comprehensive and very affordable monthly local search program that will quickly get you noticed. Not sure if you need it? Visit this link and get your free report which will analyze your website for local search and provide you with more detail.