Why Bother With Local SEO?

How would you go about finding somebody to make a cake for your sister’s 30th, or take-in that dress you love but it’s just too big, or find the nearest place for you to grab a quick lunch on a busy day? You Google it.

Your customers are no different! They have a need for an aesthetic treatment whether it be lip fillers or botox, and that is what they will search for. However, you must also consider that it’s unlikely for someone living in Leeds to be willing to travel to Cornwall for a 30-minute treatment, so they narrow their search by adding their town/ city at the end of the keyword treatment they desire.

46% of Google searches are looking for local information which has seen ‘near me’ or ‘close by’ searches increasing 900% across 2 years*! If your business does not have an optimised local SEO strategy you could be missing out on all these potential clients.

Local SEO is a search engine optimisation strategy that helps your business appear in local search results that appear on Google and in Google maps. This is a vital strategy for any business that has a physical location and/ or offers a service to people in their surrounding area.

If you search any keyword related to your business, e.g. ‘tear trough treatment’, the search results will display a map with 3 listings known as Google’s ‘3 pack’.

When your brand is optimised for local SEO, your website will appear in this 3 pack and be visible to people in your local service area, this will increase search appearances and generate qualified leads for your clinic.

Why does this matter? Because 92% of searchers will pick businesses on the first page of local search results and not look any further*.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of maximising visitors to your website by ensuring it appears high in organic search results. Local SEO is one step further and can be more effective as appearing in Google’s 3 pack means your business is not only relevant to the searcher but appears above organic search results without the extra cost of Pay-Per-Click (PPC).

Local search results are also great for those searching via the Google Maps app via a mobile device or using voice search such as Siri, Google Assistant, or Alexa. 78% of location-based mobile searches result in an offline purchase*.

As excellent as new leads are, the ultimate goal on your website is to boost bookings and revenue, local marketing can help here too.

Research has shown that 72% of computer users and 67% of smartphone users actually want to see ads that are relevant and customised to their local city or postcode*. Perhaps the most impressive figure is that using location-based offers/ vouchers on mobile can lead to an increase of 9916% in incremental mobile revenue*.

The best way to improve your local ranking on Google is to continuously update your GMB listing - this is the profile that appears when somebody clicks on your map location or searches your business name on Google. 

It’s vital to include a complete data profile of your business including physical address, phone number, category and attributes. On top of this, you can improve rankings by verifying your location, keeping up-to-date business hours, uploading photos often, and responding to customer reviews.

See more on improving your local ranking on Google here.

Being experts in local SEO, we can rank your business in Google's top '3 pack' on maps, typically within 90 days. We optimise and maintain your GMB listing, continuously post updates to keep your business relevant and add local listings to relevant directories to further boost your local SEO.

We also undertake extensive review management to help your business rank better, as we understand many people use reviews to decide on the top three or four facial aesthetic clinics to speak to and if you have no reviews or too many poor reviews then you may not make it.

Book a consultation with us to see how we can help your business grow.

*Statistics found on HubSpot