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Online shopping has increased dramatically during the Covid-19 pandemic, and even now the world is emerging from lockdown, every indication is that shopping habits have changed for good. If you’re late to the party in setting up an online shop, the prospects of taking on the large, established online shops can be daunting.

When you’re starting out though, there’s no need to try to compete on a national level. Often a more successful strategy is to concentrate on becoming a success in your local market only. Having a local SEO strategy will ensure that your business ranks highly when local people search for your particular products and services.

Main Benefits of a Local SEO Optimisation Strategy

There are lots of benefits to a business of investing some time and effort in getting your website noticed by local consumers. These are:

• Increased traffic to your physical store – local people who visit your website and see which products and services you have to offer are more likely to pay a visit to you in person, and buy from you.
• Revenue – local SEO is all about targeting your effort into a particular geographic region where you are located. Hopefully, if you’ve targeted your ads properly, this should result in increased revenue. It also means you’re not wasting money advertising to people who are a long way from your location.
• Community Outreach – appearing regularly at the top of search engine rankings for your local area can help to increase your company’s profile locally, and help build your reputation.
• Deal with the Competition – if you’re in a competitive business market locally, you could be losing out to your competitors who are investing more time and effort in SEO.

Google My Business (GMB)

My Business is Google’s portal for small and medium businesses, designed to improve your online visibility and get better local rankings. It’s easy to create a GMB profile for your business by giving them the name, address and operating hours. Google will then verify your business, and encourage customers to leave reviews. Make sure you add your business logo and tell search engine users what products and services you offer.

Encourage Reviews

One of the best ways of getting further up those Google rankings is to encourage customers to leave a positive comment or review on your business website. Send an email or text to customers asking them to leave a review, and remember to address any negative comments as well as responding to the positive reviews.

Local Content

Quality of content on your website will also help boost your ranking and it’s easy to create content which is specifically relevant to the consumers in your city or town. Being active on social media will help, as you can link your tweets or Facebook posts into your website, encouraging more people to visit your website. Remember also to think about how to design your site so it displays well on mobile devices as the number of people searching on their smartphones is increasing each month.