Is it just me or does it seem like the American culture is really getting behind small businesses nowadays?
I for one have always loved and supported small businesses. I’ve held 5 jobs in my entire life, and all 5 of them were St. Louis based businesses. 4 of them were mom-and-pop shops. This is why it truly pleases me to write about how people, and search engines, are turning more attention to local businesses.
Jayson Demers of Entreprenuer.com recently said, “Local search engine optimization isn’t just about local mom-and-pop shops anymore. Practically any business can take advantage of local SEO’s benefits. Since Google’s fan-named “Pigeon” update in 2014, the importance of local SEO has grown….local SEO has risen in importance, but the ride isn’t over yet. Over the next few years, I anticipate that local SEO will become even more impactful and more useful for businesses.
I couldn’t agree more.
It’s no secret that as long as you’re logged into a Google account, your search history and your geographic location are both affecting your search results. I’m even starting to notice my own SERPS (search engine results pages) becoming increasingly geo-specific.
Check out this example I ran across while doing keyword research for a client.
EX:
Notice how this completely generic search yielded local results, and those local results dominate the top of the SERP.
Get this: I started to think maybe Google was serving me local results based on the fact that liposuction was a service. Maybe Google assumed people looking for info on services would be looking for St. Louis service providers.
So then I thought of the most general search I could think of… “Sandwich.” I was thinking, “it’s a product,” it’s a service, it’s a noun, it’s a verb… It’s also a transactional and kind of an informational query…what kind of SERP will I get!?
This is what I got:
Another extremely St. Louis oriented SERP!
This is only one example, but it still illustrates my point. A small sandwich shop like Fozzie’s Sandwich Emporium could only dream of being on the first page of such a short tail query 2-3 years ago. Marketing a local business with the help of local SEO is becoming more important as Google moves toward a more custom tailored Internet. Search queries that used to be impossibly competitive are now attainable for small business based on their location and solid local SEO efforts.
