In this week’s episode of Local Search Tuesdays, I share a simple math equation that helps to prove why Local SEO is necessary in any market. Most people know about SEO, but it’s not as easy to demonstrate why it’s vital to success.
We used jewelry shops as an example, but the math works for any vertical – simply change out “jewelers” for whatever you do and apply the same equation – you’ll see quickly that Local SEO is an absolute necessity for your business.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back to another episode of Local Search Tuesdays! A lot of people out there still don’t “get” what Local SEO is or why it’s important, so in this week’s video, we’re gonna go back to school and learn some simple math…
We talk to businesses all over the US, and the two most common questions are:
What the heck is Local SEO?
And
Why do I need it?
So this week’s video is for all of you who might be asking the same questions…
So what the heck is Local SEO? It’s the strategy of optimizing signals both on and off your site to help your business get more visibility in local searches. It’s pretty similar to regular SEO, except with regular SEO, there’s no geographic focus.
Any business with a physical location or that serves customers in a particular geographic area needs Local SEO. Attorneys, jewelers, doctors, plumbers, cannabis dispensaries, car dealers… the list is huge. If customers come to your location to do business, or if you go to the customer’s location to do business, then Local SEO is vital for your continued success.
The days of being successful just by having a website online are long gone. If people can’t find you in local searches, you’re not going to get any new customers.Go log in to Google Analytics and check out where all your traffic is coming from. Unless you’ve got a big PPC budget, your largest source of traffic is organic visitors from Google.
If Google search visitors are your largest source of business, why aren’t you growing that channel with SEO?
If you’re still not sure exactly how Local Search works, check out last week’s video for an in-depth walkthrough.
This we’re we’re not talking “how” – we’re talking “why” – and the easiest way to explain why Local SEO is necessary is to use a little back-of-the-napkin math.
This example works for any type of business, but let’s say that you’re a jeweler, and in your town, there are 19 other jewelers, which gives us a total of 20 jewelry shops.
On the first page of Google search results , there are 10 organic results and a map pack with 3 additional results. That’s a total of 13 possible spots for jewelers on page one.
BUT, you’ve got third party sites and aggregators that show up – so you might see a listing from Yelp showing the 10 best jewelry shops in your town. It’s different for every vertical, but most will see 3-5 of these sites on the first page results, so for the example, let’s say there are 4. Let’s take those out of the running. That leaves us with 9 possible spots on page one.
So if there are 20 jewelers in your town and only 9 spots on page one, that means 11 won’t show on page one, and since page 2 only has 10 spots, that means 1 of the 20 will be all the way back on page three, where no one is going to find them.
If you want to be one of the 9 that shows on page one of search results, you’ve got to do Local SEO – it’s that simple.
But in the real world, it’s a lot more complicated. Most businesses are in metro areas, so let’s revisit our little math equation.
Let’s say that in your area, there are 6 suburbs in the metro, and each suburb has 20 jewelers. Now we’re talking about 120 jewelers trying to show up on page one results for the metro. But, we’ve also got the main city in the metro, which is typically larger than the suburb cities. Let’s say that it’s 3 times larger, so the main city alone has 60 jewelers.
Now, if we count all the suburbs and the main city in the metro, we’ve got 180 jewelers fighting for those precious 9 spots on page one search results – that’s 171 jewelers who aren’t going to show on page one, and are much less likely to get those new customers.
If you’re not doing Local SEO, you’re not going to be on page one results. Period.
So now you can use this simple math equation to prove that you need to do Local SEO. Adjust your marketing strategy now and make this an awesome year.
And now it’s that time – put your hand on the screen right here…
We totally just high-fived cause you learned something awesome.
Thanks for watching, and don’t forget to come back next week for another awesome episode of Local Search Tuesdays.
