Improving Local SEO Strategies for Retailers

As global consumer habits have changed irreversibly during the pandemic, more and more retailers are turning to omnichannel marketing, especially focusing on digitalization. Studies have found that 97% of consumers use search engines to find local businesses, which shows the importance of local SEO. In today's era, it is more important than ever to make your business easy to find both online and offline. Local SEO strategies not only cover top organic search results, but also include "pack" results for local searches, which appear above organic search results.

Package Results

These search results appear above the top organic searches and include local businesses based on the search query. They also appear as markers in the map feature and include business-specific details like address, hours of operation, and contact information. Here are the main factors to keep in mind when optimizing your pack results:

• GMB (Google My Business) Rating
• Verified Location/Business Information
• Respond to online reviews of the company and engage with target audiences
• Photos of the store/products in the listing

Local SEO Organic Search

When it comes to the organic search side of your local SEO strategy, Google considers three main components when determining your ranking: relevance, prominence, and proximity.

Relevance

The first major tactic to improve your local SEO strategy is to improve relevance. This goes hand in hand with your content and its usefulness, similar to global SEO. Ensuring high-quality content should always be the cornerstone of your online strategy, with the key difference between local and global/national SEO being the targeting of local and regional specific keywords. Additionally, ensuring your business is listed in the right local directories and linked to other local websites can help improve online visibility and relevance.

Popularity

Gaining visibility beyond your competitors is a key factor in improving your local SEO strategy. This helps the Google algorithm discover and index your site, while also making the content appear more reliable. Some key strategies that can help boost your business’ visibility include having reviews on third-party sites (like Google, Facebook, etc.), having an active verified profile, and building backlinks from local/region-specific sites. One of the most important factors is reviewers, with 41% of consumers saying that positive reviews are a key factor in determining purchasing habits, as reflected in a study by Shopify.

Proximity

The final metric to consider is proximity, which is undoubtedly the most important differentiator in a local SEO strategy. Many retailers find it difficult to compete with global players such as Amazon, with 89% of retailers believing that their biggest direct competitor is online. Identifying customers who are looking to search for local businesses is more important than ever. There are two main variations of the standard search that consumers use to find local results: geo-modified searches and "nearby" searches. Optimizing your content to accommodate these types of searches should result in a corresponding increase in local SEO performance. Geo-modified searches include a location, city, or region, while "nearby" searches help identify customers who are looking to find specific goods/services around them, so this is a key metric for local SEO.

Keyword Research

To maximize the value of the above methods in boosting local SEO, all of this work must be built on a foundation of excellent keyword research. We’ve written a more in-depth article discussing the importance of keywords in search. This is especially important for local SEO, as large, enterprise retailers often focus on top keywords. As a result, there is less attention to target local SEO terms, which represents a relatively less competitive (and more cost-effective) area where smaller retailers can take advantage of the opportunity to maximize their digital footprint.

If you are interested in learning how Arrow Translation can support your business and improve your local SEO, please feel free to contact us for a no-obligation chat to discuss your options.

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