Why Local SEO Matters (Infographic)

We’ve often talked about the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in our blog. In this post we will cover another aspect of the optimization process of your website – Local SEO, particularly the importance of optimizating your website for local searches. This is especially important for businesses that run physical locations, such as shops, restaurants, etc.

What is Local SEO?

Let’s start with a definition first. Local SEO means optimizing your website to appear on searches by local customers. For example, a user from London will get different results for the query pizza shop then a user in New York.

The importance of Local SEO comes from the fact that more and more poeple are looking for businesses online. This gives companies that operate physical locations a great visibility and a good chance of attricting customers.

Local SEO consists of many techniques that include bath on-page optimization and listing on directories, review sites, etc. You can read more about the way to optimize your website locally, in the Moz Local Learning Center.

Why is Local SEO important

There are many reasons why Local SEO is essential for companies that are looking for ways to attract customers to their physical locations. In the infographic by Go-Globe below you can find out some pretty interesting statistics that show why you should optimize your website for local search results. We’ve summed up some of the most important ones:

1. 50% of people that conduct a local search using their smartphone visit a physical store within the same day. Having in mind the increasing number of mobile users worldwide, this means there is a huge amount of potential customers. Note also that 87% of smartphone owners use a search engine at least once every day.

2. 18% of local mobile searches lead to a sale withing the same day. This means that almost 2 out of every 10 people that conduct a search buy something every day. Appearing higher in the local results increases the chance of you being the seller.

3. 78% of local mobile searches lead to an offline purchase. This means that local SEO will be especially beneficial if you are not depending only on online sales.

You can see more interesting statistics in the infographic below: