Whenever you log into the internet and enter the online domain, chances are very high that you will start off your journey on a search engine. In fact, a lot of studies have been able to determine that most of the online sessions people engage in starts off at Google, Bing, or many other search engines. Therefore, it is a very fortunate thing for businesses that they are able to make use of SEO (search engine optimization) in order to ensure that the people who are searching for your products or services are much more likely to find you in these crowded online spaces. This would only apply to you if you actively worked on making sure that you are a competitor in your particular market. There are, in general, two types of seo that you can engage in in order to optimize your online presence. One is known as traditional seo and the other is known as local seo. The purpose of this article is to take a look at both of these things and to give you a clear understanding of both.
How Exactly Do Search Engines Work?
Before we really delve into the world of seo, we really need to understand exactly how search engines operate. Typically there are three basic functions that a search engine is responsible for taking care of. Search engines index, crawl, and also retrieve information. By the means of crawling, a search engine can better identify and also examine a lot of different sites and also particular web pages. This is done in order to properly categorize the content that is available in that particular page. These pages are then grouped together with other types of pages with similar content. It is then indexed so that it can be found later when the engine looks for it.
Whenever any user on the internet searches for a particular topic, the search engine can then quickly go back to the indexed pages it has that is relevant to that topic and hence, retrieve content that is the most relevant. The results which seem to make the most sense to the search engine are then given out onto the search engine results page (SERP). This is displayed in order of how relevant the content is.
Local seo
The key differences between local and traditional seo
Whenever an internet user enters a query into a search engine, the search engine is responsible for determining whether the query deserves results that are relevant to the user’s search location or if it is not. For example, if you were to look up movie theaters, then the search engine will make the assumption that you are looking for movie theaters near to where you are. The search engine will then look up the location you are in and display results according to how close they are to you. This particular example is a kind of local search and therefore local strategies of SEO will be used in order to make sure that your business ranks high in these categories.
On the other hand, let’s say you searched for marketing strategies. The search engine will, in this case, make the assumption that the results it has to display are not contingent upon the location of the user. In this case, the search engine will display results that have the appropriate keywords.
Why Local SEO Is So Important
Businesses of the brick and mortar type will really have to depend quite heavily on local SEO. These kind of seo strategies are used in order to make sure that your business ranks as highly as possible in the search engine results page and thus, ensure that traffic is being driven to your site at a very rapid pace. If, for instance, you happen to be on the third or the fourth page of the search engine results page, then the chances that people will be able to find your business drops by close to a 100 percent. Making sure that your local seo is set up properly will help you ensure that your business is displayed prominently on local search engines where it needs to be.
There is another huge benefit of ranking high in your local search engine results page that has to be mentioned here. When you rank high in local seo, the chances of being able to cross-promote with other businesses that are in the vicinity of yours, increases dramatically. This is a major benefit as getting mentions on the pages of other businesses nearby will really help to solidify your reputation and credibility within that market. It will also give you the chance to do the same for the businesses who are helping you.
When you use local SEO, it also makes whatever business you have much more accessible to all potential visitors. When someone is not properly familiar with the area you business operates in, they will rely quite heavily on what the search engines tell them. Therefore, the higher your business ranks in local seo, the higher the chances of getting actual proper traffic into your pages.
The last thing that we want to mention here is that when you invest in your local seo, you are, in essence, pumping money back into the local economy in which you operate. You are making sure that this happens by giving your business the opportunity to compete with the really “big boys.” It is true that the larger brands will have a much higher budget but that does not necessarily mean that they will be able to dominate all of the search engine results pages. This is the beauty of the internet. If local seo is implemented properly, then small businesses will have the ability to compete with just about any global brand.
