For some businesses, the priority for SEO is to reach the largest possible audience, but for more and more businesses, local SEO is becoming increasingly more important. Local SEO, also known as local maps SEO, involves targeting the area local to your business, and while it might not target a large audience, it can target the audience that’s most relevant to you and your business.
By marketing to a local audience that’s more likely to engage with your product or service, incredible results can be achieved, as well as a better return on investment. In this blog post, ZOFELA takes a look at what local SEO is, why local SEO is important, and the local SEO trends in 2022 you should be keeping an eye on.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is a search engine optimisation strategy that involves targeting a local geographical area. This can be achieved in a number of ways, such as the inclusion of local keywords within the content of your website and the management of a local Google My Business profile. Other ways to build local SEO include developing local landing pages (also known as location pages) and building up a local back link database.
One of the main goals of local SEO is to appear in the Google Local Pack, which is a list of three local businesses that appear at the top of search results when searching for a relevant product or service. In order to break into the Google Local Pack, having a local Google My Business profile is essential.
Why Local SEO is Important
With every year that passes, people are searching in new and different ways, and Google has evolved its algorithms to reflect these changing search habits. One trend has been an increase in searches without a suburb or location attached. For instance, a person might search for “plumbing services”. Google will take the user’s location into account and display results for the top three plumbers in their area, which will appear at the top of the results within the Google Local Pack.
What this means is that if you don’t have a local Google My Business profile set up, you could be missing out on capturing the audience that’s local to your business – and leaving the door open for your competitors to benefit instead. Going forward, local SEO in China will become key for businesses wanting to remain competitive within their local area.
Local SEO Trends in 2022
To achieve success with local SEO in China, here are some current trends to take heed of:
- Maintain regular Google My Business activity and engagement to boost search rankings
- Factor in voice search into local SEO efforts (voice keywords are often longer compared to the typical typed-in keyword)
- Encourage positive reviews from happy customers to facilitate positive engagement and build your online reputation
- Write high-quality and relevant content for your website that incorporates local keywords
