Local SEO Services to Improve Rankings and Leads in 2024 (2024)

Want to Rank Above Your Competitors in the Local Pack and Organically in Your Area? We Can Help

As a local business or franchise, it takes more than just a little bit of marketing here and there in order to reach your target audience. You need a special set of search engine optimization tactics to help improve your online presence locally. Welcome to local SEO.

What Is Local SEO?

Local search engine optimization is a set of strategies implemented for businesses that serve customers or other companies in a set region, all designed to help them gain better visibility online and get more leads.

“The team at Sixth City was so wonderful to work with! They helped our bar and restaurant set and surpass SEO goals and develop a better marketing plan for our business. They’re incredibly responsive and helped us understand the importance of SEO for our business.” – Tristen Phipps, Eclipse Company Store

Dive into Local SEO with Some Frequently Asked Questions

We are often asked various questions during our free strategy sessions, and to help you understand local marketing and our process better, here are a few answers.

Who Can Use Local SEO?

Local SEO can be used by any company that has a physical location in a specific area. Unfortunately, companies that are purely online cannot utilize local SEO properly.Google can be strict about this, penalizing businesses that create fake or borrowed addresses to achieve better rankings in a particular city.

But for those businesses with a dedicated physical location – whether it’s a warehouse, distribution facility, brick-and-mortar retail store, office, or anything else – local SEO services can go a long way in bringing potential customers in your area to your site.

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How Does Local SEO Differ from Non-Local SEO?

Non-local or “regular SEO” covers national or global traffic, which means you are targeting users anywhere in the world with your content. This is great if you can sell your product or service globally, but not so helpful for companies that only serve certain cities, such as florists, waste management companies, dentists, landscaping companies, and more.

Local SEO was developed to start attracting local customers, and when implemented properly, it will help your business rank higher in more relevant, locally focused search results.

For example, lets say you are an orthodontist in Boston, you wouldn’t waste time trying to gain patients in Orlando! Your focus should be on getting more roots around Boston to improve your presence where your office is located.

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How Will Local SEO Help My Business?

The goal of local SEO marketing is to assist you in getting clicks from people making searches such as “pest control near me” or “local pest help,” for example. Through our work in making changes to your website’s keywords, your content, your local citations, and more, we can help you rank better for those queries and others, leading to more business.

While national markets can be a challenge for businesses, we know that local and regional focuses can often pose their own difficulties. That’s why our local SEO company’s approach is tailored to the specific needs of a client, factoring in their goals, operations, competition, and total industry. After we have assessed these factors, we can get to work delivering proven local SEO tactics that get results in hopes that your website can be found easier by your target audience. Here are some provoking statistics to prove how much it is worth to invest in SEO strategies:

• 46% of all searches done online have local intent (Search Engine Roundtable)
• As of 2022, ‘open near me’ searches has increased by 400% (Think With Google)
• 76% of users read online reviews for local businesses on a regular basis (OnTheMap)
• 60% of searchers will contact a businesses directly from local search results (Semrush)
• And 76% of searchers will end up visiting a business within a day of searching (Semrush)

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What Is the Local Pack on Google?

Marketing your business using the Google Local Map Pack can significantly help your company improve traffic, as it increases the visibility you receive on the Google platform. The Local Pack is a function of Google Maps that is built around local companies that Google thinks will match a user’s search query, in addition to taking the proximity of the searcher’s location into account.

Moz recently conducted a case study on the Google Local Pack and found the following results:

• 44% of people clicked on the Local Pack
• 29% clicked on organic results
• 19% clicked on paid results

This study illustrates how being featured in the Local Pack can dramatically increase traffic to your site, likely more than PPC and typical organic search results can. If you can increase your local company’s presence in the Local Pack, it can result in more leads and revenue for your business over time.

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What Are Some Tips for Optimizing for Local SEO?

As a local business, there are multiple ways you can leverage SEO to work in your favor. Try the following tactics to grow your business exposure locally:

• Claim your Google Business Profile and add photos, acquire reviews, add services, post updates, and more. Google values complete profiles, which can ultimately help your rankings when competition is high.
• Create location-focused landing pages on your website that include keywords relevant to your business. For example, if you are a horse and carriage business in NYC, you’ll want to optimize for terms like “NYC horse carriage” and others on key pages of your website to garner the most traffic.
• Try to build local links back to your website. Examples of links to look for include other local businesses you work with, sponsorship opportunities, partners, local directories, your local Chamber of Commerce, and more. So, for example, if you are a Chicago business looking to improve your website rankings, it may be important to look for links in proximity to the Chicago area.

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Are Google Business Profiles Important?

A Google Business Profile is extremely important because it helps gain exposure for your company locally. Let’s use the same example as above. If you were a florist in Cincinnati and someone searched for “Cincinnati floral shop,” you would certainly want your business to show up prominently in Google search results.

With a properly claimed and optimized Google Business Profile – especially one where customers are leaving reviews – you would be giving yourself the opportunity to rank in the vaunted Google Local Pack, which is an essential aspect of driving quality local organic traffic to your site. Here is an example of how the Local Pack appears, using nail salons in Raleigh:

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Should Every Business Have A Google Business Profiles?

Yes, the good news is that any and all local businesses can take advantage of having a Google Business Profile. However, you do need to qualify for a profile in order to make this happen, but the requirements are reasonable. All your business needs to qualify for a Google Business Profile is an actual physical address and the authority to represent the location you are listing. Here are some examples of niches that qualify:

Other types of businesses that may not have a physical location, but still serve local customers, such as those in the home services sector, can still utilize local SEO via a service-area business listing on Google Maps, such as:

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How Do You Track Results for SEO?

We use different sets of tools, such as Google Analytics and keyword-tracking software, to set up goals for conversions on your website, phone calls, keyword position changes, and more. However, we emphasize the leads you acquire that turn into customers or purchases on your site, incorporating this into the ROI data we share regarding our efforts.

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Does Local SEO Really Work?

Yes! On our case studies page, you can find a host of information about clients we have worked with, their campaigns, and our results. Some of our local SEO clients have included the following.

National Church Residences

We oversaw a local campaign for this national chain of senior living facilities, with Water’s Edge of Lake Wales seeing the following results:

• An overall increase in traffic of 138%
• An increase in organic search traffic of 96%
• An increase in conversions of 295%

University Commons

For this apartment rental company in Athens, Ohio, we were able to deliver the following through our local SEO services:

• An increase in site traffic of 28%
• An increase in page views of 21%
• An increase in contact form submissions per month of 117%
• An increase in conversion rate of 90%

M/I Homes

This nationwide homebuilder chose our local SEO agency to increase their site traffic in numerous key markets, and our team supplied the following:

• An increase in organic traffic of 12% and an increase in overall website traffic of 48%
• An increase in new users on the website of 58%

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How Is SEO Different from PPC?

Search engine optimization is the natural, free way to obtain visitors to your website who will likely become customers, while pay-per-click is a paid form of online advertising that allows you to pay for your top position on search engines and placement on social media sites based on how many clicks you receive on your ads. PPC also allows you to pay for unique targeting that SEO can only gain through the value of the work.

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“Sixth City Marketing has provided consulting, SEO and many other services to National Church Residences. The team has excellent advice and is very easy to work with.” – Karen Twinem, National Church Residences

Services We Offer Beyond Local SEO

At Sixth City Marketing, we are equipped to assist you in your pursuit of a well-rounded digital marketing campaign. From SEO to PPC and everything in between, we have everything you need to keep your content optimized and ads running smoothly. Check out the range of services we offer below:

• Nationally-Focused SEO– Standard search engine optimization utilizes a range of tactics to drive more traffic to your website and generate leads, and is most standard for B2B types of companies. Our team can oversee on-page, off-page, and technical SEO alongside our local SEO services for B2C companies. Common practices include keyword research, competitor analysis, content creation, link building, design for conversion and mobile-friendliness optimization, and more.
• Pay-Per-Click – As we discussed a bit above, PPC is another worthwhile option for acquiring new customers and sales, though its methods differ somewhat from SEO. In PPC, ads are targeted directly to the users who are most interested in the services you are offering, helping to ensure qualified leads. So matter if you work with other businesses or are direct-to-consumer, our team can oversee PPC ad and landing page creation, monitor accounts and progress, find new opportunities for targeting, and more.
• Website Design – The design of your website can have a sizable impact on the effectiveness of both your SEO efforts and users’ opinions of your company and its services. Our local SEO company may make recommendations for changes to your site that will improve its functionality, or we could engage in a total site redesign. Both options can help your site be at its best, increasing its visibility on search engines and effortlessly moving visitors through your sales funnel.
• WordPress Development – One of the best content management systems out there is WordPress, as its user-friendliness, clean designs, and customizability make it a true asset for businesses. That’s why it’s one of our platforms of choice for website creation, and we’ve proudly helped many clients improve the look and functionality of their sites though the use of WordPress. Visit our link to see examples of some completed projects!
• Conversion Rate Optimization – Turing site visitors into customers is the name of the game, and conversion rate optimization can help you make strides in doing just that. We can use CRO tactics alongside local SEO services to reduce bounce and exit rates, increase site loading times, and drive conversions.
• Social Media Marketing – Looking to more effectively get the word out about your company and its offerings? Social media is a great option, as you can connect with users, promote your products and services, share industry news, announce changes to your business and trade show appearances, and much more. Our local SEO company is adept at crafting engaging content, creating posting schedules, and managing accounts, all to help showcase your business in the best light.
• Paid Social Media Marketing – Paid social media is another way you can use social platforms to their full advantage, with ads being able to generate many impressions, feature low costs per click, utilize an expansive targeting range, and more. Best yet, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, X (Twitter), YouTube, and Pinterest are all options available to you, and our team can work with any combination of those that are relevant to your audience.
• Consulting and Auditing – Sometimes you may just need a little guidance for how to improve your marketing efforts, and our local SEO agency can provide exactly that. We’re experts at assessing where your website is currently at, weighing its strengths and weaknesses, and delivering an actionable plan to move forward. We’re also able to then begin an ongoing SEO campaign if you prefer to implement our recommendations, something many customers find incredibly valuable.

Most importantly, we have experience serving a wide variety of industries, especially from a local perspective. This includes dental practices, senior living communities, construction companies, schools with a local focus, legal firms, regional banks, home service companies, roofers, landscapers, and many more. Learn more about the different types of SEO on our blog!

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