The search engine optimization services have evolved greatly over the past decade. Today, there is no generalize SEO strategy that can deliver results to various types of businesses. Businesses need to adopt customized and specific SEO strategy to be able to achieve desired visibility and brand recognition with higher SERPs.

Over the course of few years, a new term has been coined in the industry “Local SEO”. Most businesses have already adapted to this new powerful technique, however, those who aren’t familiar with the term needs to get acquaintances with the technique fast.

Local SEO services are a must for all businesses with a physical presence. It is even more important for small and medium businesses looking to serve the audience of a particular geographical boundary.

But what exactly is Local SEO?

Well, as the name itself implies, local SEO services cater to the geographical presence of the businesses. This is especially beneficial for SMEs as they mainly focus on limited geographical areas. The technique uses your physical presence as an indicator to list you higher in the location-specific searches, which by the way are exceeding ever than before.

Here we will be looking at some potential benefits local SEO brings for small and medium businesses.

– List higher on local searches

Perhaps the most advantageous element of local SEO services is the potential to get higher and better rankings in search engines for local searches. If you aren’t already familiar, search engines are using our IP to trace our location. Well, this might sound scary but our physical locations enable search engines to produce better and more relevant results to our queries. In fact, more and more people are also using local searches like “best SEO service in Auckland” to find the best services/products near them.

So, when you initiate a local SEO campaign, you are actually optimizing your business to align with local searches and since the local competition is always lower than national or international competition (the number of SEO Auckland companies will certainly be lower than the number of SEO companies in New Zealand, right?), you have a better chance to rank higher in SERPs.

–           Customers Trust Local Businesses

According to statistics, nearly 80% of online shoppers prefer to conduct an online research about the product or services they want to purchase before they commit to one company. This means that people more than ever are interested in reading real reviews and testimonials from past clients.

Let’s just understand how things really work here with an example. Let’s assume you are running a small local bakery in Auckland. You are offering delightful bakery items that you want to market to local residents as well as tourists visiting the city. By getting your business a local SEO Auckland service, you will be registering the business over local search online listings, as well as over Google My Business Account. Here people will start sharing their experience about your items and might recommend you for the bakery items. So, when a tourist visits your place and looks for best bakery item “near me” or “in Auckland” your bakery comes right at the first page with great reviews to convince tourists to make a purchase.