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What is Local SEO?

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What is Local SEO? What’s the difference between Local SEO and regular SEO?

Local SEO basically means all the work done by the agency (such as nowucme.co.uk) to optimise a business’s rankings on a local SEO search.

When someone searches, let’s say for a “dentist near me” or just “dentist”, Google is intuitive and smart enough to know that you are not just looking for a dentist closest to you, but also a very good and reliable service.

There are 3 main factors that a local google algorithm focuses on:

  • Relevance
  • Proximity
  • Prominence

Relevance

When a consumer searches for a certain service, Google will consider the business that is most relevant to the query. One factor that will be considered is what description you wrote about your business in your Google Business Profile (assuming you have one, and if not, then you really should! Click here for a link to GBP) and then seeing if it fits the search. Google will also crawl you’re website to view your content to see what services you offer.

Proximity

Considering the name local SEO, it was always obvious that proximity plays a big factor. Google works out where the searcher is based and consequently provide services nearby or near enough. Google will not likely provide you with a dentist based in London if you are living in Liverpool, unless of course Google figures out that you’re not looking for local.

Prominence

A searcher living, for example, in London will surely have numerous dentist practices in relatively close proximity. So relevance and proximity is applicable to perhaps numerous dentists. Google will give precedence and a higher ranking to a dentist that seems to be more reputable and competent. What is this based on? A number of factors, such as customer reviews, social media presence, citations, links to the website and so on.

So to summarise, some of these tasks are easy to execute, like setting up a Google Business Profile (GBP) and writing a business profile. But other factors need consistent input, such as review management and link building.