According to a report by Hubspot , 46% of searches on Google are local searches and 71% of users search before going to a new location. According to research, 56% of local businesses are still not listed on Google My Business .
The Evolution of Local SEO
In February 2005, Google Maps was introduced, so Business Center data began to be transferred to Maps and we were able to see businesses on maps. In January 2007, the triple structure called “3 Pack” was adopted. In May 2007, Universal Search was launched. Before Universal Search, when users searched, only organic search came up. Images and videos were not visible, now we can see all of them, which negatively affected local results. In June 2007, a comment section was created in Google Maps. In January 2008, Local One Box changed to a ten-box structure, which led to more competition for business owners. In March 2008, Google made an improvement in user experience, and a feature was created to give suggestions for businesses.
In April 2010, Google Places emerged and a Search section business owner database was created with Places, thanks to this, only location-based searches can be made. In March 2012, a location-based search update was created, and now we see results according to city or even location. In May 2012, local search was integrated into Google Plus, which provided an easy area for commenting and reading. In June 2014, Google My Business was launched. With My Business, a cleaner dashboard was created and an area where we could enter long explanations was created, but the Q&A section was removed. In July 2014, classic SEO signals became very important for local searches. This update negatively affected business owners' page structures if they were not optimized for SEO signals.
What is Local SEO?
We can call any search that will show us geographic results as local search. Local SEO refers to the process of “optimizing” your website to attract more users from relevant local searches. These searches can be made on Google and other search engines. It is also a set of studies that help you promote your products and services in search results made instantly by location-based users. Google local SEO services are the system that organizes all basic information about the business as name, address, website, contact number, working hours, services, social media profiles, local directories and your business page on Google. In addition, this is not only done on Google, users now search from different platforms.
For example; Bing, Yelp, Apple Maps etc. When we search on Bing, we encounter a result like the following:
According to a study conducted in America , Google's market share is 88%. For this reason, local SEO optimization on Google is of great importance to us. For example, when you search for “cafes in Kadıköy” on Google, the first search results that appear are as follows:
As seen above, we see two different types of results, “snack pack” and “organic results”. Snack Pack is the area that displays the 3 most relevant local business listings for the search query on the Google search button and appears at the top. You can access the relevant article here . According to a study, 33% of users click on snack pack results, while 40% click on organic results. Today, such searches are made from phones, voice assistants and map applications, so we need to think about all of them at once to optimize. Google Maps also provides help with directions. When your business is searched, it adds a box to the right of the search results that shows all the necessary details. This box is called the “My Business” field. You can see the My Business field shown for ZEO Agency below: Local SEO ensures that your site is shown on Google Maps and visible in advanced search rankings. With the increase in competition and businesses, the need to have information about businesses in the region is increasing. With these updates, Google allows us to see the businesses near us. With Google Local optimization, you can show users your business information, services and that you are a reliable business.
