Local SEO: City specific SEO campaigns in South Africa
Over 90% of the internet users are searching the web for local services and products. This number grows daily, which is an increasingly important factor for local search engine optimization.
Today hardly anyone buys without “googling” beforehand for a service, shop or company. The relevance for local search terms in the search engines is highly important. To be on page one of the search results suggests to the user more than just a good website. The view and opinion of the majority of Internet users reflects in a good ranking on Google.
For local businesses very often nation-wide or even global search engine optimization is not important because they only serve the local market with their product or services. Therefore very specific localised optimization is the key to more business.
Did you know that the exact term “plumber cape town” is searched for about 260 times every month on Google.co.za? The exact search term “dentist cape town” even reaches 590 times a month. Even in smaller cities such as Bloemfontein for example, these values are 20 and 70.
How nice would it be if all these Internet users find your business at # 1 on Google? Certainly you would love to have all these potential customers.
Local Search Results: SEO for Google Places and local organic rankings
The algorithm which is responsible for issuing the search results on Google is constantly expanding and getting more complex. It is very important for good local search results to be on the Google Places/Business listings, which are linked to the Google Plus company profile. Google knows which websites with relevance are in a certain city or region and places them higher in the search results.
Always go through all the crucial factors for the rankings: Ranging from the setup and optimization of your Google Places page through to external link building and inclusion of external local signals, social signals, and reviews.