Instant SEO Score Audit Free Estimate
Instant SEO Score Audit Free Estimate

What is Local SEO, and How Does It Work?

Want to learn more about Google and local SEO? Check out this guide and optimize your website for local search results to grow your business. Any business with a physical location or serving a geographic area can benefit from local SEO. If you search Google for any important keyword related to your business, and an image with 3 listings appears underneath it, you may be able to take advantage of local SEO for your business.

How did search engines evolve?

In the early days of the internet, there were few websites that dominated the World Wide Web. You would use a search engine to find these sites and navigate through the internet. Google was one of the first search engines to help users find what they were looking for. They did this by matching your search phrase to websites that include keywords in your search phrase. Because Google used links between webpages as an indication of authority, it quickly became the dominate search engine. In today’s world, Google looks at hundreds of factors in order to understand if you’re relevant for a search result. Factors from your “digital footprint” determine whether or not you will be shown as a top result to a user who is searching for something on Google.

So how does Google work?

When you search for something on Google, the search engine uses “ranking factors” to return appropriate results. One of these ranking factors is whether your site is relevant to the search. Another is how often Google has crawled your site. The more frequently the search engine visits your site, the quicker it can detect if your site changes in any way. This is done by using what’s called a spider to crawl your site. The crawler starts at one page and then follows all of the links on the page (and all of the other pages that are linked to by that page). As the crawler moves through web pages, it stores them in Google’s servers and builds a data file called the Google index. Google spiders work at a mind-blowing scale and crawl trillions of sites at an incredibly fast pace, ensuring that the index is up-to-date and new sites and connections are discovered quickly.

How Google ranks search results

In the blink of an eye, Google reads your search query, queries their index, and tells you what they think is best. These processes are called algorithms. When you Google something, the algorithm checks the index, determines which websites have something related to your search, and ranks them by relevance. No surprise that it looks at various on-site and off-site factors with each search for more relevant results, but take heart—link popularity does come into play. However, just because your site is popular doesn’t mean it’s relevant. Optimizing the right elements of your site’s digital footprint can help improve the relevancy, prominence and link popularity for your website to get higher search results.

Local SEO is a different pattern

What about local organic search results? The Google local algorithm factors in proximity, which is a fancy way of saying that Google will show you results from your region when you search for a query. This happens even if you’re on the go and don’t include “near me” in your query. For example, if you want to get a pizza delivered for lunch, the search engine will offer local sites that deliver. But, if you do the same search at home, the search results are different. This makes sense because you need a pizza delivered from someone close by. Local search has been around for years but it has been limited due to people only using their computers.

What matters for local SEO

Here’s what the Local Pack means for SEO experts: It’s is a separate Google search engine for local results, which means you can show up in Google’s main search results and the Local Pack at the same time. Marketing can be difficult, especially if you’re new to it and have no idea what to focus on. However, each year, Moz posts their annual Local Search Ranking Factors survey, where it includes the top 35 or 40 worldwide experts in local SEO. This survey has the best insights on what factors affect local search rankings. So do localized content and your local link popularity. If you’re a company with multiple locations, it’s important to build a local landing page for each of your locations.

Start harnessing SEO

Here’s what the Local Pack means for SEO experts: It’s is a separate Google search engine for local results, which means you can show up in Google’s main search results and the Local Pack at the same time. Marketing can be difficult, especially if you’re new to it and have no idea what to focus on. However, each year, Moz posts their annual Local Search Ranking Factors survey, where it includes the top 35 or 40 worldwide experts in local SEO. This survey has the best insights on what factors affect local search rankings. So do localized content and your local link popularity. If you’re a company with multiple locations, it’s important to build a local landing page for each of your locations.

SEO Services from Proximate Solutions

Looking for an affordable SEO solution that doesn’t skimp on quality? Look no further than Proximate Solutions. We offer a full range of SEO services designed to help your website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), drive more traffic to your site, and improve your online visibility. Our team of SEO experts will work with you to develop a customized SEO strategy that meets your specific needs and budget. We’ll help you choose the right keywords, optimize your website for better search engine ranking, and track your progress over time.

Portfolio

Recent Projects

chat-icon