Local business owners may feel there’s little point in optimizing their Google presence when competing against Amazon and Walmart for top rankings. When it comes to organic search results, that may be true, but not for local search. A local search engine optimization campaign allows you to better connect with people in your neighborhood, town, or city whether you have a brick-and-mortar store or serve a specific geographical area. Considering that 81% of consumers now use Google to evaluate local businesses, that’s an important fact.

1.Better Online Visibility

You can improve your online visibility overall through many activities associated with local SEO as well as improve your visibility in local search results. Citation building is one of the key elements of local SEO. Through directory listings, social media profiles, and online review platforms, you should build mentions of your company’s name, address (ideally including zip code), and phone number. Your business will be found by the right people (those interested in your specific product or service in their local area) at the right time (when they’re actively searching for a business like yours) when you do this in as many different places as possible.

2. More In-store Foot Traffic

Your brick-and-mortar location can benefit from greater local visibility, whether you’re a cafe, dry cleaner, or hardware store. A high number of visitors to your store can help you create buzz about your space and make more sales if you have invested heavily in specialist equipment, designed an innovative space, or have a brick-and-mortar location to experience your products in person.

3.Tap Into the Local Shopping Boom

The buying habits of consumers have changed significantly over the past few years. The most notable change is that consumers are increasingly prioritizing local businesses when making purchases. According to research, consumers prefer small, local, independent businesses over bigger, brand name offerings or experiences. According to 56% of consumers, they actively seek out local products and give local stores their business.Over the next year, 76% of consumers plan to shop locally, which means that smaller, independent businesses have an opportunity to grow. The main benefit of local SEO is that it puts your products and services in front of local consumers when they need them. Therefore, you can leverage this shift in buyer behavior to grow your business.

4.Targeted Web Traffic

It’s time-consuming and expensive to deal with unqualified leads or people unlikely to buy or book services.With local SEO, you can weed out irrelevant traffic and eliminate time-suckers from your business, which help to ensure only local searchers will see your business.The fact that 59% of search users use Google to research in-store purchases can be a significant advantage. It allows you to focus your resources on your most likely customers.

5.More Calls and Visits from Maps Users

You can improve your visibility on Google Maps by optimizing your Google Business Profile. As a result, you’ll get more calls and more visits, since Google Maps helps users find local services.If you optimize your Google Business Profile, it will help you get noticed on Google Maps, which will increase your number of calls and in-person visits.

6.Establish a Position of Thought Leadership

Local SEO rankings are based on prominence and relevance, which are achieved through content marketing and link building. It can also help you build a reputation as an expert in your field and as a thought leader.You should naturally involve your local community in local content marketing and talk about your local area. You can also bring your customers closer to your business by doing this, resulting in stronger links, brand loyalty, and increased engagement.Creating local-based evergreen resources also increases the likelihood you’ll receive links from other local businesses back to your site. You can establish authority and credibility by linking to local sources, industry-specific websites (like your local chamber of commerce), or any other sources that contribute to your authority.

7. Enhanced Trust Levels

It’s no secret that reviews play a crucial role in local SEO success and local search rankings. Getting more reviews as part of your reputation management strategy will boost your local search visibility.Also, reviews are crucial to building consumer trust — a crucial trait before any business deal.In a recent study, it was found that more and more consumers read online reviews more frequently. In addition, half say they find it more reliable than personal recommendations to trust online reviews.The secret to local pack prominence is a combination of visibility and top-rated, fresh reviews.

8. More Sales

The majority of consumers depend on online reviews to make their decision when choosing a local business. Almost every week, people use the internet for information about local businesses.Your business can profit from local SEO by giving your customers authentic recommendations from their peers.

9. Improved Conversion Rates

If you ask ‘What are the benefits of local SEO?‘ it’s easy to focus on what’s happening on Google and other platforms, but it can also help you improve your own site’s structure and performance.Optimizing a website for local search engines, adding new localized optimization, reviewing the landing page text, and optimizing page load speed all contribute to conversion rate optimization (CRO). After that, your site should start generating more conversions, such as more contact form submissions, more phone calls, or more sales.

10. Your Business Becomes More Competitive

In order to develop and refine your local SEO strategy, it’s important to benchmark and identify what your competitors are doing better.Your business is much more competitive when it recognizes these opportunities (and when it is able to implement the lessons it has learned without going through the trial-and-error process to arrive at a successful strategy). If you look at their reviews, for example, you can learn what their customers appreciate about their service so you can use that same approach in your own business.