Local search is any search aimed at finding something within a specific geographic area and local search marketing is a way of promoting your physical business online that lets the audience find out the store easily and makes them visit your store. The local search queries include certain geo qualifiers such as city, state, or ‘near me’, where Google picks up the geo-location of the user and provides search results from the area.
Some examples can be ‘hotels in dubai’ or ‘car washing center near airport mumbai’. Local searches typically trigger search engines to answer a 3 – pack result and the other details can be seen when you click on places under the 3-pack results.
The search engines and the directories are supported by the advertising of the businesses that wish to be featured on the top when the Google users search for a specific product, service or location. Local search advertising can be highly successful because it allows advertisements to be targeted very accurately to the search terms and location given by the user.
Local search is easily available on the tip of smartphones, like Google, for instance, that gives the result of user search from the Google Maps directories and also in the search engine result page. Alternately, one can also find details of specific businesses in Apple maps. Search engines offer local businesses the opportunity to upload their business data to their respective local search databases.
A term named recovery search comes into the picture – for example, a person knows the name of the shop he/she wants to go but doesn’t know the street name or location around hence in the recovery search it gives the details and phone number of the shop.
Why is Local Search Important for businesses?
Local SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ) is very important if the business is set – up in a locality, by various studies it has been recorded that 95% of smartphone users use their phones to perform a local search. SearchEngineWatch researched that 70% of mobile users click to call a business directly from Google search results using their smartphones.
Local businesses must figure out how to get in Google’s local 3 – pack search as there is a lot of competition getting through the 3 – pack search result which can create huge traffic and turns conversions.
Through various local searches, it is seen that 44% of the users clicked on the local 3 – pack search result and less than 8% went to search of ‘more results’.
Some reasons why Local SEO is important are:
- Local SEO helps potential customers to discover your business. When local SEO is done right, your business can capture more audience.
- Local SEO ranks your website higher in local search engine results like Google, Bing which many people use.
- Local SEO works for the benefits of the customers – if your business is on the top search result it is more probable that the customer will come to your business first.
- Local SEO and search engines are free of cost advertisements – it is not as expensive as the other advertisements and start by searching for the keywords that can relate to your business.
- Even if you don’t have a website, local SEO helps your business stand out in local searches and drive more calls and conversions.
Courtesy: AdmitKard
