Local SEO Explained

Having a website that has no visitors is not helpful for the business. The question is, where do you get the visitors from? How do people find your business online?

The source of good website traffic (also known as website visitors) can come from many places. The most common are Social Media Ads (such as Facebook), Google Ads or organic Search Engine Results.

As experts in Search Engine Optimisation, we are big fans of traffic from search engines, primarily organic search results. Let’s look at how a person converts into a lead or client when they land on the website from different sources. It explains why we find search engines the best place to grow your visitors.

Traffic from social Media Ads: Somebody that is just thumb scrolling on Facebook might see an ad for a solution of a problem they have. Clicks on the ad, fill out name and email to get access to a downloadable pdf the explains for free how to solve the problem, goes to their email clicks on the link to agree to the GDPR conditions, then reads it the pdf and after tht has to take further action to still buy a product or service that helps them solve the real problem they have.
This process has many steps and a lot of people will not continue all the way through, after all they were not actively trying to solve the problem.

Traffic from Google AdWords A person is searching on Google for a solution to an urgent problem. They most likely will click on the first few Ads without scroll down to the organic results. The Ads will lead to a landing webpage that explains a solution to their problem with easy access to a phone number, a web form, or a booking form. A person will take further action within minutes or move on to another service or product provider.
People that click on Ads want quick results. The downside of Ads is that only 5% of people on average click on them. Plus, when 12 competitors bid for the same Ads, each of them will not show up all the time, causing an advertiser to miss a lot of opportunities.

Traffic from Local Map SEO A person is searching on Google for a solution to a problem. Since it is not urgent, they scroll past the first four Google Ads and stop at the Local Map Listing (also called the the Snack Pack or 3-Pack). They check the review scores and other details of the businesses, such as closing times. If they see that a business closes in 30 minutes, they may click to call straight away and directly from the Map listing.
The Snack Pack has the most people clicking on one or all three businesses, often as much as 30-40% will click on the listings. We as Local SEO Experts, love them.

Traffic from Organic Search Results A person is searching for a solution to a problem, and since it is not urgent, they scroll past Google Ads, might not see any Snack Pack listing, or cannot find a reputable business in the map listing and continues down to the organic search results. They look through a few website titles and descriptions and click on one that they believe will bring them closer to the solution they are looking for.
Most people click on the top three results; websites on position one can expect 25-35% of the visitors, while websites on position 10 get around 2-3% of the visitors for the same search result.

Why do we love Search

Let’s compare 100 visitors from search results to 100 visitors from social media ads. The former can expect 4 to 5 times more results (such as leads, bookings, or sales). That is simply because visitors from organic search are actively searching to solve a problem and do not require convincing that they need a product or a service.

automotive industry - Alex was looking for a one stop solution and went for our Website + SEO package. We built a website, wrote all content, create the sales funnel then started an SEO campaign. The competition was fierce, and we knew it would take about nine months before most keywords reach page one of Google. We started with the Google My Business listing to speed up this process, even before the web design was complete. Within five weeks, the Maps listing was on the first page of Google for a few keywords. Calls started to come in, which helped Alex to trust our process.
Results after 12 months: from £ 0 to £ 50k Turnover (newly established business).
Results after second year: £ 170k Turnover.

Property industry - Estate agent Paul approached us as his business website was on page three for the main keyword and had around 120 visitors a month. We offered our Full Local SEO package where we would also improve his google My Business listing. Within 6 weeks we improved rankings of keywords that were stuck on page 2 this already doubled the traffic to his website. Within 3 Months his main keywords was on page and after a total of 5 months the website was ranking position 1 for the main keyword.
Results after 4 months: from 120 visitors to 500 visitors a month.
Results after 6 months: a stable 1100 visitors a month and 5 times more clients then before.

Our proven SEO system allows us to take on any SEO campaign with confidence. SEO evolves and changes constantly, and so does our system. We run over 120 websites purely for testing purposes. We will never experiment with our clients’ websites. We keep our SEO system adaptive to changes in the Google algorithm while making sure our clients’ websites continue to rank.

Waiting for the results is the hardest part of SEO. To minimise the wait time, we set up a tiered approach to SEO campaigns. It allows our clients to see quicker results. We start with the easier keywords while building the power to the more competitive keywords.

All SEO Campaigns that we run are strong enough to beat the competition and flexible to fit the client’s budget. Use our pricing tool below to calculate the effort needed to beat your local competition and rank your website on page one.

If our pricing tool results are not within your budget? Get in touch, and we will manually create a smaller campaign for you that will still give you good results while fitting in with your existing budget.
Do you have a bigger budget and are keen to expand? Get in touch, and we will create a bespoke SEO campaign that fits your needs. Whether it is going after a bigger area (i.e. plumber london); or ranking multiple pages for the same keywords on page one and basically forcing many of your competitors down to page two.
We only work with one business type in one region. If we already work with your local competitor, sadly we won’t be able to work with you. Working with two businesses and getting them both to the same position (no. 1) doesn’t align with our values.

Our Local SEO system works to rank businesses in the snack pack and the organic listings. Targeting only one or the other will result in missed opportunities.

During the strategy session and at the start of the SEO campaign, we set the baseline to measure the performance of the SEO campaign in the future against the client’s goals. We are a result-orientated business and understand that our client’s primary concern is the business growth and not rankings or backlinks. After all, who wants to find out after four months that ranking no. 1 will only get them two more clients a month?

Although we are an agency, we never lost that personal touch. All our Local SEO clients get a Dedicated Campaign Manager who gets to know the client needs, monitors monthly the campaign’s performance, and can act quickly if any issues like a Google update or a competition increased activity.

To ensure we have the best engagement and communications with our clients, we also ask them for regular feedback and sales numbers to measure the progress. In some cases, it helped find website problems such as web forms not arriving, emails ending up in spam folders, or even malfunctioning the shopping carts.

Investing in SEO makes sense only if a business gets more business from it. For example, after a year of SEO, if your website rankings are still stuck on page two (or worse) of Google, it might not be the best investment to continue with this campaign.

All our SEO Campaigns are targeting the top 5 of the search results for the main keyword. We work hard to get our clients there and do not accept the bottom of page one as a good result.

Choosing the right keyword We specialise in SEO for high competition keywords that offer high monthly search results and believe going for the big keywords is the best strategy. Suppose the client's budget is not big enough to aim at the most competitive keywords. Years of experience in advanced keyword research help us select smaller keywords with high search volume and low competition, resulting in excellent performance within the budget.

If the client has a small budget, the best step will be to avoid the high competition keywords at the start of an SEO campaign. Betting everything on one big keyword will result in disappointment and lost opportunities, as it might be impossible to get it beyond page two.

Our Local SEO Campaigns have one main keyword. The main keyword of the SEO campaign is usually the most competitive and often is the most obvious search phrase as a combination of the business service+location (e.g., plumber oxford, osteopath canary wharf, campervan rental devon, etc.). The search phrases have the most people searching for them. However, while high search volume gives a lot of SEO potential, it also has more established competition.

The rest of the keywords that are included in a Local SEO campaign are often fall into one of two categories:
Smaller locations: These keywords are a mix of "service + local boroughs or a district"
Service variant: This can be the main keyword with add service-specificity.

Generic SEO Pricing Packages are not effective. Although, less and less SEO Agencies use packaged pricing. Some still claim that they can achieve page one rankings for the same price regardless of the keyword or industry. Most SEO providers that offer SEO packages at a fixed price do not report on rankings or check for rank improvements. They will usually only report on the number of links they build or posts they created, which in reality does not increase the website performance or boost the business growth.

From an SEO perspective, you can’t give a price before you know how much effort is required to beat the competition. That is like claiming you can win a race before you know if you will be running against someone in a Rhino suit or if you are up against Usain Bolt. Some industries are far more competitive than others (for example, solicitors vs a man and van business). Even in the same industry, ranking high on page one for a city like London will require more effort and resources than Oxford.

After years of tailoring and tweaking the quoting process, we developed a fully automated quoting system. Once the form is completed with the required details, the pricing tool will compare your local competitors, the strength of your website and check for some long-tail keywords that can make some quick wins in the SEO campaign.

We try to keep things simple and transparent and do not require your email to find out what the price for an SEO Campaign could be. However, if your industry or location is not on our list yet, or you require a bespoke quote that fits your needs, we will manually create a quote within 48 hours.

Our SEO campaigns are all targeted to get a website to page one of Google. We aim for high rankings (top 5), as there is a big difference between being at the bottom of page one or number one. Being number one will generate at least ten times more visitors and a better quality of visitors that tend to buy the services or products quicker.