What is local SEO? [SEO for beginners]

Local search engine optimization is about how you can optimize your website to get a better ranking for a local audience. On a website, you can address the entire (online) world. However, if the target audience for your business is actually in or near the city where you have your office or business, you need to practice at least a little local SEO as well. You need to optimize for your city name, optimize your address data. In short, you need to optimize so people know where you are and can find them offline (if necessary). In this post, we try to explain what local SEO is, so you can also optimize your local site!

What is local SEO?

If you have a local business, like a business, or if you often have people in your office, optimizing your website is also about making sure people can find you in real life. But even if you are not actively getting visitors into your building, but targeting a target audience that is in the same geographic area as you, you need to optimize for that area. This is what we call "local SEO"-- Read more.

Basically, it is by far the easiest to optimize today if you have a correct address in a region/city. The thing is, if, for example, you want to optimize for a service area where you are not physically located, your primary tool is to optimize the content. You should just write a lot about this area. We've found that this often leads to enforced pages that have little to do with the particular business. It is clear that these pages are added only for SEO reasons.

Mention of all areas

Just recently I heard someone say that he just mentioned some neighboring cities. And that brought him visitors from these cities.

Depending on what niche you are in, this can, to be honest, have an impact. But I would not call it the right optimization. For the majority of companies, this strategy will not work so well. It's not really optimization. It's just that no one mentions this area and this product on its website. For competitors please use other methods as well.

Local SEO explained in detail

In our local SEO series, David Mihm mentions a number of things you can do to really optimize your site for a specific geographic area:

1. An introduction to the ranking of your local business
2. The meaning of Google My Business
3. How to optimize your website for local search
4. Why incoming links are so important and how to get them
5. Quotes for the local search
6. The impact of ratings on the local ranking
7. Social media and local SEO
8. The influence of behavioral signals

That's a lot to digest, but if you're serious about optimizing for your local audience, read all eight articles.

Local SEO is not just about search engines

Yes, you can do a lot online to optimize your website for a local audience. However, if you run a local business, things like word of mouth and a printed booklet also add to local search engine optimization.

If you also mention your website and social profile in your offline communication/advertising, your Facebook likes may get higher, your Twitter followers may get stronger, and direct traffic to your site will be higher. In one way or another, this will also be visible to Google, perhaps indirectly.

Back to our main question: What is local SEO? Local SEO is a set of factors that will help you reach your local audience through better search engine rankings. It's not just about optimizing your address or social media strategy. All these things together we call local SEO. Good luck optimizing!