Local SEO for Retailers: How to Reach a Ready-to-Buy Audience

[shammis606]

Their lower prices and affordable shipping make it difficult to compete, which for some time created a challenging environment for local community stores.

Enter the "Buy Local" movement
In a surprising turn of events, local retail business owners are suddenly benefiting self employeed database from customers' renewed desire to support their local community.

Customers want to shop in stores in their area. The already growing “Buy Local” movement has greatly increased in popularity during the pandemic.

Prior to 2020, shopping local was a priority for over 46% of U.S. consumers due to the convenience, necessity, and appreciation of local commerce.

With the pandemic, 53% of Americans say their consumer behavior has changed and they have started making daily purchases online, in local stores.

At the same time, 57% of consumers throughout 2021 gave preference to local businesses, and 34% said they began doing so more frequently after the start of the pandemic.

More customers want to support local businesses online. Your next step in 2022 is to make sure you capture the benefit of “Buy Local.”

How can SEO help local retailers?
Local SEO can bring retailers closer to their target audience, creating a connection that directly influences the purchasing decision. It consists of a series of website optimization strategies that highlight a business in local searches.

A local business can become the first choice in the SERPs in its region!

For retailers like you, local SEO helps you in two ways at the same time:

boost your online product sales;
increases physical purchases in a city, region, or even a specific neighborhood.
Some examples of businesses that can benefit from optimizing their website for a local audience include:

a physical store that sells fishing supplies in a lake region;
a frozen vegan food producer that delivers to only a small group of neighborhoods;
a fashion ecommerce brand that only ships to a specific city.
Can you relate? Then read on to learn more about the topic!

Achieve high-impact results with reduced budget expenditures
Companies that serve specific regions can impact their entire audience in a very targeted way, on a small budget .

Imagine a small shop that sells fishing supplies in one area of ​​a lake. Its audience is much more restricted than a large e-commerce that distributes nationwide. This makes the budget expenditure more contained.

Another plus point for small businesses, especially retailers, is the ability to more easily segment their audience and avoid wasting budget by reaching out to people in other regions.

Attract the most qualified buyers
Imagine you sell only in Mexico City. With a well-structured local SEO strategy, you prevent your marketing investment from attracting Guadalajara consumers interested in the same product and wasting time on your site without converting.

You can effectively increase your ROI by incorporating local SEO into your marketing strategy.

How is local SEO different from traditional SEO for brick-and-mortar stores?
Traditional SEO can reach any user , anywhere in the world, as long as they perform an online search. Local SEO, on the other hand, helps highlight a business in local searches , specifically targeting the audience that has a nearby geolocation of that business's stores.

You'll attract more of the right consumers by using the right keywords, phrases, and intents that are customized to reach more people in your local area. 46% of all Google searches come from users looking for local information.

These local searches are typically for products, services, or businesses in a specific area, and are mostly from consumers who are close to the moment of conversion, as local searches are typically done at the bottom of the funnel .

Why is SEO important for local retailers and who should invest?
Local SEO brings many advantages, some of them are:

better positions in Google;
increase in visits from a segmented audience with strong conversion potential.
more brand awareness to attract new customers;
budget optimization.
When done right, local SEO allows people to find information about your business easily, bringing them one step closer to a transaction .

This strategy allows businesses to create touchpoints with their ideal customers literally where they are. It's a cost-effective and precise way to attract potential converting customers.

You should invest in local SEO if your goal is online sales to specific regions or operating a physical location!

Online sales of products for specific regions
Although most ecommerce companies currently deliver worldwide, there are some companies that choose to work only in specific regions due to:

specificity of its products;
validity (food and drinks, for example);
audience that shares the same cultural and community values.
If this is your type of business, local SEO is very important because you need to be very assertive with your strategies to ensure the expected ROI.

After all, any investment has a huge impact on a small business’s cash flow, right? Because local SEO is more targeted, it attracts the right audience without wasting this investment.

The goal is to drive Google users from the SERPs directly to pages where they can make purchases from local businesses.

Physically operating stores
If you have a physical location, local SEO is also extremely important to you, as over 74% of shoppers conduct research on the store closest to them, items in stock near them, hours, and directions before heading out to make a purchase.

Therefore, the goal is to make sure you appear in these searches by taking advantage of local SEO techniques.

You should have a corporate website to concentrate all the information related to your company and your offerings. One page per product category will do the trick. In addition, you should use or update your Google Business Profile, making sure to include:

address of your business;
references of your location;
user ratings and comments.
How to Build Your Local Retail SEO Strategy
A local SEO strategy can have different facets, but these are the areas you are most likely to focus on:

keyword research with local terms;
study of local behavior;
inclusion of local elements in the domain structure;
create pages that meet search intent;
on-page optimization ( SEO On-Page );
use the Google business profile.
Next, let’s dive into each of these practical steps for creating a local SEO strategy for retail. Read on!

Step 1: Be clear about your target location
The first step in structuring your content strategy with local SEO in mind is to be clear about which location will be affected. More than 50% of “near me” searches result in a visit to a physical store .

Getting your business to appear in a “near me” search is the goal. That’s why your business location needs special attention. Make a list of the locations where your business delivers. The entire city? A set of cities? Just a few neighborhoods? Which ones are they?

Use this checklist for next steps.

Step 2 - Map the products you sell
The next step is to map out all the items your store offers. If you're an ecommerce business, you've already done this step. You'll now have a list of pages for each item, so you can move on to the next step.

If you own a physical store, your next step is to transfer the items from your sales catalog to a spreadsheet and identify categories by following these steps:

understand how your audience might want to bundle and purchase items;
understand how your products fit into related groups, such as "beachwear" or "surfing accessories."
sort your products into categories that you create from these related groups.
Let's say you own a brick-and-mortar summer beach sports supplies business. Since you don't plan to sell products online, it wouldn't be appropriate to create a page for each product since buyers will be shopping in a brick-and-mortar store.

Instead, you should create a page just for categories, such as " beachwear " or " surfing accessories ," and display your products grouped on those category pages.

Step 3: Create pages that meet the search intent "Location + Product"
After you've compiled all of your product or category pages, you'll need to make sure that your new pages contain location information. You can easily do this by using the "product + location" formula and adding the resulting phrase to your page.

For example:

Acapulco beachwear
surfboards Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca
beach accessories Costa Esmeralda, Veracruz
These search intent examples show us that the user is very close to the time of purchase and is actually looking to buy these products in that region.

As a reminder:

E-commerce sites must create or update their individual product-specific pages;
Brick-and-mortar stores, alternatively, should only develop general product category pages (boots, gloves, etc.), describing the items within that group.
Step 4: Perform local on-page optimizations
Now it's time to apply on-page SEO. Just like in traditional SEO strategies, you should:

create SEO titles for all pages using product name + business location;
put the keyword in the meta tags (H1, H2, etc.) when describing the product or company;
optimize images (alt text, file name, etc.) taking into account target keywords;
Write at least 300 words on each page, exploring key phrases naturally throughout the content;
create meta descriptions that capture the user's attention and reinforce the location of the business.
After all, the essential difference between local SEO and traditional SEO strategies is location-based search intent, where users consider physical locations to make a purchase.

Step 5: Optimize your entire website
Once you've updated your product or category pages, it's time to update the rest of your website. To help Google crawlers understand the localization of your pages, you should:

Place a Google Maps widget in the footer with your business location. If you only sell online, use your headquarters address;
create a page describing each store and its location;
use location-related terms in home page meta tags whenever possible;
create a blog with product and placement related tips.
Step 6 - Don't forget to use your Google business profile
Despite not being an actual part of your website, Google Business Profiles are 100% integrated with your domain and should be used to drive traffic to brick-and-mortar businesses.

Keep your Google Business Profile up to date with the following information and optimize it for local searches:

opening hours;
establishment photography;
address;
contact telephone number(s);
website link(s);
responses to comments and ratings.
How it all comes together: a real-life example from Rock Content
Rock Content is a global leader in content and has over 2,500 clients, many in the US, Brazil and Mexico, comprising companies large and small.

To help you understand how an SEO strategy works for a local retailer, check out this example of a real small business. For contractual reasons, we can't mention their name.

A traditional fabric brand needed to reinvent itself to reach its online audience in Rio de Janeiro, one of the largest cities in Brazil. This company invested in local SEO and applied each step of the process described above and targeted relevant keywords.

They opened physical stores in the neighboring cities of Rio de Janeiro, Niterói and Itaipava. In addition to that, their online store shipped to the entire state.

The ecommerce business underwent several optimizations. They updated all product descriptions to mention the cities where the store delivered. Additionally, store locations were included in the footer.

Some keywords used on the product pages were:

silk rio de janeiro;
niterói jacquard;
linen itaipava.
Some examples of ecommerce homepage terms:

fabric store rio de janeiro;
niteroi fabric store;
itaipava fabric store.
Examples of planned content for the brand's blog:

5 Rio de Janeiro Interior Design Trends You Can Look Forward To;
Fabrics in Rio de Janeiro: Where to find good shops?
Fashion and heat: which fabrics work best in Rio?
Now, you know how to achieve a local SEO strategy in retail, so you can help your community in this "buy local" movement.