Local Search And Why It Matters

Every business benefits from improved local search rankings.

For businesses ranging from law offices to restaurants and retailers, almost everyone has an operation that would benefit from improved local search rankings. A higher ranking helps you get more customers in the door and promotes your click-and-collect/curbside pickup services.

The prevalence of “near me” in online searches — which has experienced over 900% growth — tells us that customers are enthusiastic about finding products and services around them, rather than doing all their business online. Local searches have a high rate of conversion as well. According to a recent LSA (Local Search Association) survey, it was discovered that 75% of local-intent mobile searches resulted in a physical store visit within 24 hours, and over 30% resulted in a purchase.

How can you make sure that your business has strong rankings in local search results? It’s not just a matter of optimizing your website, where you’ll still want to build out a comprehensive store locator to assist those customers who are already on the site. For local search rankings, Google uses what it calls “relevance, distance and prominence” to determine which locations rank highly. Your locations are fixed, but your relevance and prominence can be bolstered by complete data.

Establishing that relevance and prominence, and ranking highly in local search requires a strong focus on providing the most up-to-date and comprehensive information for all of your store locations in a way that makes it accessible to all the search products your customers might use, like Google Maps, Apple Maps, Facebook and in-car navigation platforms.

One way to do this is with a location management platform that simplifies the process for you, rather than manually making updates for multiple stores on multiple platforms. With an all-in-one solution for location management and marketing, you can simplify how you manage all your locations’ data on these important channels. This includes opening hours, addresses, your location photos, incoming reviews and more. A platform such as Mobilosoft can help you ensure accuracy and optimize your location listings to improve your relevance in local searches.

If you’re ready to learn more about optimizing your business presence to gain more traffic from local search as well as all other searches, contact us to learn more.

Photo by henry perks on Unsplash