If you've worked with Eternity, you know we are evangelists about local search, and about maximizing organic search as much as possible. We know that all search -- particularly on Google -- is local. And it's local whether you are logged in or not. Google and other search engines know where you are, whether or not you have explicitly told them, and will try to show you local results.
Users of mobile devices and many web apps are familiar with geo-locating. They utilize GPS allow Google or Apple or app makers to use your current location to serve you more accurate results. Well, this happens even if you don't enable GPS tracking. The IP addresses of your Internet service providers are used instead to serve you results that match your search term -- within your geography.
Google will show local results first, before expanding its reach to non-local results. So, as we have chorused for some time, to be on page 1 of Google, think locally.
Moreover, the changes in the ways people are using the Internet as a result of mobile devices' ubiquity are driving search. In this excellent article from Local SEO Guide, we see that "near me" searches have increased by 34x (34!) in the past year, again, after doubling the previous year. Especially for services, retail, attractions, dining, and health care, users look for the places they'll go by using the "near me" search appendix. It's so popular that Google returns it as the top search for nearly every retail- and dining-oriented search phrase.
The issue is, though Google knows where the user is by their IP address, they only know where your business is based on your physical address, or the address you utilize in your Google Business profile (if you don't have one, claim yours right away!). To expose your multiple locations, you will either need multiple profiles, or specialized pages on your site that explicitly depict the locales in which you work.
We hear regularly that our marketing can't do it all on their own -- the blogging, social media, search optimization, and content development they need to stay atop their competition in online search. We can help! Call Eternity and we'll make our best recommendations for your 2017 Local Search Marketing strategy.
