Best Local SEO Companies for September 2024

Local SEO (local search engine optimization) is a significant part of SEO aiming to optimize your Google My Business listing and core website pages to be found in local search results when people close to your physical business location perform a search or when a search includes a specific location.

For example, local SEO tactics help your business show on the map or search results when someone is searching for ‘best pizza New York’ or ‘Pizza near me’ on their phone.

Google My Business, customer reviews, localized content, on-page optimizations, and link building, all focusing on localized intent, are part of the efforts to increase your business visibility.

Optimizing for local search is important, especially for brick-and-mortar businesses serving specific towns, cities, regions, and even states.

When done right, local SEO allows people to find information about your business quickly and easily, and you will see an increase in web visits, phone calls, and store visits.

Any business with a physical location that serves local customers can benefit from restaurants, bars, laundromats, doctors’ surgeries, law offices, grocery stores, etc.

Investing in local SEO is your chance to get found by local consumers who are ready and willing to invest in your business.

What’s more, local SEO favors smaller businesses over giants like Amazon and Walmart. So, you don’t have to worry about competing against big international chains to get your local business in front of relevant nearby consumers.

Well-optimized local presence will:

• drive footfall to your store
• increase traffic to your website
• increase the number of phone calls, bookings, and leads
• build trust, loyalty, and engagement with searchers

You won’t find an accurate answer to this question, but most local SEO experts agree that it typically takes four to six months.

You might begin seeing an increase in traffic for keywords with little competition in just a few weeks. However, it might take months for moderately competitive topics, while highly competitive phrases could even take a year or more.

How to rank for local SEO?

There are several factors that you should take into consideration in your local SEO efforts:

• Having a well-optimized business listing in Google My Business
• Local citations from data aggregators
• Reviews published by your local customers
• Website localized content - it's important to build local landing pages for each of your locations - especially if you're a multiple location business, where you should include your business name, address, and phone as well as optimized titles tags, meta descriptions
• Link popularity – this factor is as important as in Google's traditional search algorithm

If you are serious about ranking in local search results, you’d better hire an SEO professional for your website. This will guarantee a high return on investment. Every dollar you spend on optimizing your local listings, you get it back in a higher number of visitors to your website and your local store, more phone calls, leads, and last but not least, a better reputation.

If you decide to hire a top-level SEO company to plan and execute a local campaign, you will have to pay $300.00+ per month. Usually, a national campaign will require a budget of $2,500 to $5,000 a month.