You’ve probably been hammered by a ton of requests from shady people offering to do local SEO to get you customers. The fact that these people seem so shady probably makes you question the entire SEO industry as a whole. You shouldn’t. These extra resources will help you realize that local SEO is a thing and it’s something you need to be aware of.
What is local SEO?
Local SEO is optimizing your website so that people in your area see it when they type a search phrase in Google. A great example of this is if someone types in plumbers near me in Google. Google knows where the person is located, and they will display only plumbers in their area.
People also type in things such as Mexican restaurants in Cleveland if they’re from out of town and they’re going to Cleveland to visit someone. You want your business to show up in Google when someone is looking for something similar in an area. People no longer use the phone book to find local businesses; instead, they almost always use Google.
Your industry is far more competitive than you realize
Some of you might think just because you live in a smaller town that, there isn’t a lot of competition in your industry, but you might be surprised. Other small businesses might have already jumped on the local SEO bandwagon, so their sites are listed in the top results. They know how valuable it can be to have their site listed in the first position in Google, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get there.
You can all but guarantee that if you live in a large city, no matter what niche your small business is in, you’ll find that they’re doing local SEO. It’s almost unthinkable that a highly profitable small business wouldn’t, at the very least, do something to make its site more visible to potential customers.
The level of competition can depend on many factors, such as the number of people who live in your city, how profitable the small business is, and how many businesses have sites. It’s surprising, but there are still small businesses out there that don’t have a website. Unless you’re ultra-lucky, you’re going to be competing against several small and maybe even large businesses for the same customers.
Should you do local SEO yourself?
Did you know that you can do the SEO for your local small business? Yes, you can, but that doesn’t mean you should. As a small business owner, you hire people to perform all kinds of tasks for you. SEO is one of those things that you might want to leave to the professionals.
Sure, you can set up your own Google My Business and do the small things that everyone talks about. You can even submit your business to directories so you can get some important backlinks pointing to your site. All of that is good, but it will only get you so far.
The real benefit of hiring an expert is that they know the SEO game inside and out. They will study your competition to see exactly what they’re doing to get their site to rank. After they reverse engineer your competitor’s site, they can do the same thing for you.
You can do some of the work yourself, but if you’re serious about getting your site to rank, you need to outsource your SEO to a professional. If you live in a major city with lots of people, let’s get real: you’re never going to be able to rank anywhere near the top three without the help of a professional.
Final thoughts
Local SEO is something that scares people because it’s hard to know who is a professional and who is a scammer. It’s true that there are lots of scammers in this field, but it’s also true that you need to hire someone to do this for you. Unless you live in a one-pony town with very few people, your site will face a ton of competition, which will drown out the possibility of you ever ranking in the top spot.