The past year has been a real turning point for digital, which in turn has changed significantly in order to better meet the needs of users. Among the most interesting trends that have emerged and strengthened is Local SEO. Let’s see together what it is and why it is important to invest in this activity in the Covid post.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is a process of optimizing for local search engine results: using this strategic tool you can position (or improve the positioning) of your company in search results so as to be more visible to customers or potential customers. Among the advantages of this marketing approach is the ability to intervene in an extremely targeted manner, especially when using local advertising.
In order for local SEO to be effective, it is necessary that a local keyword search be carried out in advance, i.e. an analysis of the keywords for which your project could be positioned online. Then, the local keywords considered most interesting are used not only in the technical optimization of the site, but also in the SEO Copywriting activity of the texts of the pages and in the Google Ads campaigns.
Local SEO post Covid-19 crisis
Local SEO has taken on a fundamental role, especially in the so-called “post covid” because of the numerous advantages that this activity – when carried out by an SEO expert – can bring to the company, including
- increased visibility through user location: if your site is displayed in Google Maps search results, users will be more enticed to contact you or purchase your products in person (if possible) or online.
local SEO is particularly well suited to those retail businesses that have been penalized by forced closures during the lockdown. - booking via proprietary site while avoiding booking sites: in the case of hotels and restaurants, localseo positioning is essential as it allows users to make their reservation directly on the brand’s site, without having to pay commission to booking sites. Similarly, it also applies to food delivery services that users request through smartphone applications but that could be performed by contacting the structure directly.
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In addition to these purely practical aspects, it is worth remembering how Local SEO responds perfectly to the needs of today’s users: they, in fact, prefer to buy from smartphones in a quick and fast way. At the same time, however, do not underestimate how the need to favor local stores and businesses is growing: an increasingly significant number of users prefer to buy from merchants and restaurants that are located near their home rather than having to resort to those more distant. From this point of view, therefore, Local SEO is an excellent response to the desires of users.
Local Seo and web vitals: how do they help each other?
Once we’ve clarified the three core web vitals incentivized by Google, we need to understand how these parameters affect SEO. User experience has become an increasingly important factor in the fruition of a website: although content remains king, Google has shown how attention to the user will also be rewarded in terms of SEO positioning.
Obviously, together with the web vitals, Google will still take into account the usual parameters aimed at improving the user’s browsing experience such as the ability of the site to adapt to use from mobile devices and the HTTPS protocol. Although the information contained in the site still remains the most important SEO ranking factor, therefore, the UX is an increasingly decisive parameter for the creation of Google’s ranking.
What does optimizing content mean?
The contents of a website are decisive both in the eyes of the user and in those of the search engine: the positioning of the site, in fact, starts from the drafting of a text in SEO. But how do you optimize a content? It is necessary to follow some decisive steps:
Keyword research: the research of the keywords to insert in the contents is the first step to obtain the best SEO positioning. Doing this step is not only important to know which keywords to put in the content, but also to know the needs of the audience, what they are looking for and what they prefer.
Title tag: once the keywords are chosen, it is essential to distribute them correctly in the content. First of all, it is necessary to start from the titletag, that is the title of a given web page and that appears in the SERP snippet: it is therefore the first element of the website that a user sees when browsing the web and providing it with the main keywords exponentially increases the possibility that it is clicked by the potential customer.
Meta description: this is a fundamental marker to attract users because it provides the site with a short description that summarizes the content of the web page. Optimizing this section with the main keyword is therefore very important. Moreover, it is advisable to draft a short description, consisting of 1 or 2 sentences that perfectly summarize the content of the web page.
Structure: finally, it is necessary that the structure of the content is easily navigable through a clear and precise structure. In case the text is very long, it is advisable to provide it with a summary through which the user can freely navigate within the content. Moreover, the summary must contain the main and secondary keywords, but always in a natural way, so that the text is written in a correct and precise way: the user, in fact, must not notice which are the keywords for which the content has been optimized.