Blab #21: Local SEO Strategies

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Welcome to Marketing Labs. This podcast is brought to you by Marketing Labs, an expert digital marketing agency based in Nottinghamshire. If you're a business owner or marketing professional looking for straightforward non-salesy tips and advice to help grow your business online, then this podcast is for you. Strap in because we're about to reveal the things that other agencies would rather you didn't know. Hello and welcome to episode 21 of Marketing Labs. I'm your host, Tom, and today we're diving into local SEO. Local SEO is essential for businesses that want to be found by customers in their geographic area, whether you're a small business owner looking to attract local clients or a marketer aiming to boost a company's presence in local search results. This episode is for you. We'll discuss techniques, strategies, and best practises to help you optimise your local SEO efforts. On today's podcast I have with me our head of digital Nick Janway. I are you doing Nick?

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Alright, Tom,

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Are you ready for this?

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Yeah,

Tom Haslam - (Host):

You look like you are already.

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Yeah, fully. I'm

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Excited. Yeah, I'm as well. We also have alongside myself and Nick Tilly Hayes at SEO Executive. How are you doing? Til

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Good. Thanks. You Tom?

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Yeah, just had a bit of a laughing fit earlier, didn't you? Yeah. Let's see if we can edit that snort out

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Now.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Keep in chala. Keep it in please. Yeah, keep the snorting, everyone needs to understand the real authentic snort of till.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Okay.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Okay.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Of till.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Right. Let's get started. We'll talk about local seo. So who wants to go first on this one? What is local SEO and why is it important for businesses? I'll let you start til.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Okay. So the most basic definition of local SEO is optimising your site to be recognisable in local search. So if someone's searching for a particular service or business in your area, you would hope that you'd be ranking highly for that search, whereas traditional SEO is on a nationwide basis or a global basis.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Yeah, so it's either international or national

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Not.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Where does the geographic area end now? Do you think it's like in a specific radius or,

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Yeah, it depends on lots of things, to be honest. It's too dynamic, but broadly speaking, when you're looking for something with a local intent, you might be looking for a map, for example, or a listing or a business listing or a contact number of a business, or you might be looking for something that can only be used locally. So you might be searching for a local cafe, for example. So in those instances where you are looking for food or whatever it might be, you don't want somewhere that's 30 or 40 miles away and you want somewhere that's pretty close, obviously within whatever range you're looking in. So yeah, it's just about how you handle that information and make sure that you place yourself in the best position to kind of answer that query when someone's looking for something relevant.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Yeah, everyone is conscious of having a local search every now and again, like pizza restaurant in

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

All the time. Yeah, all the time. Yeah, it could be anything. It could be opening hours of your local business or it could be a takeaway, it could be anything. Yeah, so you probably do it five or 10 times a day without even thinking about it.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Would you say that businesses with specific locations are going to be more benefited from performing local SEO? So let's say we've obviously got an office in Redford, so we want potentially people to find us in Redford, but we're not restricted to just working in Redford, like a sandwich shop down the road would be. So how's that differ?

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

It depends on the market to be honest with you and what industry your business sits within. So some businesses are only local, like say a cafe is just going to get local clientele unless you are a nationwide business and have lots of different local cafes. Florist for example, is another one. You're probably going to go to your local florist. You might occasionally do it online. There might be a national service that can deliver flowers for you, but you're probably going to go somewhere local. So it depends on your type of business. Lots of businesses can have both. Lots of businesses can have a local presence and a national presence depending on what it is that they offer. But certainly some businesses will overly rely on local more than others.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

I was going to say as well that it's not always the location name itself that will make someone rank. I saw an interesting stat, which is the near me searches have increased by 250%.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Oh really?

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Over the past six or seven years.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

That's interesting.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

But I think it comes down to IP addresses as well, doesn't it? Sometimes can be a bit volatile, can't they? Which is not that accurate sometimes.

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Yeah, yeah. I mean there's lots of signals that go into it and I suppose ultimately it is kind of a qualifier for trust as well. If you know somewhere's local, even if you're ordering online or doing something online, if you know they're local, you can get to them, probably friends that might've used that service. It's a way of understanding whether you can validate and verify that business is trustworthy and usable, and if you can do that, a local qualifier usually is a good way to get that feedback.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Alright, nice. So you mentioned local SEO and traditional SEO been quite different. Would you say that local SEO just basically forms as one pillar of SEO?

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Yes, they do differ, but the way that it differs is mostly in the intent. So someone looking for a local query will be looking for something that's very close to them

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

SEO broadly speaking is looking for something that is relevant to them still, but it doesn't necessarily have to be local. So as long as you can answer that query for somebody, you've potentially got a good opportunity to rank well for them. Whereas if you're looking for something local, realistically only a local business or a service locally will fulfil that criteria. Does that make sense? In terms of the process of optimising for it? It is broadly similar. You'll do fairly similar things in terms of your marketing. You might want to, for example, maximise your opportunity across local keywords as Tilly mentioned earlier. So make sure that you have content on your website, for example, for X, Y, Z service or product, whatever it is in your local area, and make sure you mention your area, make sure you talk about why you're situated in that area, how long you've been present in the area, what your address is, what your contact information is. There'll be lots that you could talk about that kind of localises your business and making sure that you really emphasise that within the content and make sure your content is high quality and answering people's questions in and around that you've got a great opportunity to rank for what it is that your business offers and your locality.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

I know you spoke quite recently till, didn't you, about Google My business and how that's probably the best way of getting a local presence and it's free as well. Obviously anyone can create some local pages and put the content together, but probably working with an agency is going to be better for optimising it, but just talk through some of the steps of how easy it is to set up a Google My Business and what does that entail really?

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Yeah, so Google my Business is definitely the easiest way that anyone with the business or services can help promote it locally. I think when it gets into trying to do your own content, it can get quite difficult and people can slip up. But with Google My Business, it basically talks you through the entire process. So you start adding your business name website, URL, the correct address, so that you are going to come up in Google Maps results. Choose things like your primary business category, add up-to-date images, opening hours, contact details. You can also add a description about your business as well.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

You can also add photos as well, just to give people an idea. If you're a store or you've got a shop, you can take a photo of the front so that if someone's going to come and visit you, they sort of have an idea of what it looks like straight away, so then they're going to get to you quicker.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Especially things like products or team photos. We've got a good team photo on ours, haven't we? And it

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Really

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Sort of invites people into your business.

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

It's trust signals as well, isn't it? Some ways a legitimate business images so they can see what your business looks like, where they can find you on the map, what street view might look like, what the inside of your premises looks like. So if that's something that's relevant, it might even be how you navigate in and around the business. If it's quite a big location, you might have certain products or somewhere that you can kind of help almost waypoint people to 360 tours and that sort of thing. It used to be a bit bigger, I suppose that did, but it's not so much of a thing now, but obviously it's still available in certain places. So there's lots that you can do with that in order to demonstrate your business and show people that you are a trustworthy option for somebody.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Speaking of trust as well, it's also the place where you see the reviews immediately when you're searching for a business and also if you short term reviews, there's a section where you can ask for reviews as well when someone's used a product or service, which is really helpful.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Yeah, that's quite helpful actually. I think just using ours as an example, Google my business profile, like you said, it's good for us to add photos of the team, photos of our offices so that people can see what we've got a physical office, but who works there, what we do and things like that. But like you say, a restaurant might show some pictures of the food. It's just a placeholder straight away so people can see it without even maybe having to click on the website.

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

I mean, they get a feel for the business, don't they? Especially for restaurants. If you're not sure, if you've never been there, you don't know anyone that's been there, you get a feel for a place, you look to understand what the food might look like, what the decor might look like, whether it's quite fancy. You might have a link to the menu, for example, so you can understand pricing. You might have information on there about how to book a table, what the opening times are. There's so much information that you can put in there that's relevant to people that will aid people inquiring, I suppose depending on what the services that you offer

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Is the verification process quite simple. It used to be that they'd send you a letter out or something, wouldn't it? And then you had to put a code in to verify that you were there. Is it still the same

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Now or in theory it's quite simple. You just have to add evidence of tax certificate

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Or proof registration.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Proof operations. Yeah, yeah.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Oh, that's fair enough. And then you could just upload that to the portal.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Yeah, yeah. Usually it takes about seven working days to come through,

Tom Haslam - (Host):

So it's quite a simple platform to manage as well. Can you add multiple locations?

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Usually the best way to do it will be to have a dedicated listing for each location. Then because of that, the relevant one will be served when someone's looking for that local

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Intent. That makes sense. I'm just trying to think for anyone who's listening who might have multiple shops or locations that they can do that. Yeah,

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

I can think of one of the clients, to be fair

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Cloud Tech is a good example actually. They've got Dubai, London, I think they've even got a couple more. I

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Think they've got four profiles. I think something like that on there.

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Nice. I mean it is especially important if your customer has to travel to you to make sure that you maximise your presence. So not only so people can find you in search, but also find you when they need to navigate to that location. So if you are a physical outlet that requires your customers to come to you, you definitely need to make sure you have all of your businesses listed on Google. My business also, Bing, we didn't talk about that earlier, but there's lots of these places or platforms that you should be registering and make sure your information's verified on.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

No, that makes sense. It's definitely worthwhile any business setting up a Google My Business profile. Then you actually did a short on that, didn't you?

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Yeah,

Tom Haslam - (Host):

You just started recently. Short number 32, Google My Business Tips.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Yeah, full processes on there.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Nice. So if anyone wants to go and listen to that, go ahead. So I guess businesses could conduct local keyword research to create local pages, but they might not understand the whole process of what needs to go into that process. So if they did want to expand the content on the website for more local keyword based searches, what would the best approach for that be do you think?

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

It can be quite complex and it can be quite straightforward depending on the business. So if it's quite a simple service that your business offers and it's in one location, for example, conducting that research will be quite straightforward. You might go to Google Ads for example. They do a free keyword research tool in there that you might search for whatever your business is relevant for whatever product or service, and then look at location based terms around that. So it might be that can bring up a lot of keywords potentially for you, but obviously there's potentially a much more complex, more thorough requirement as well. So if your business is quite complex and has lots of different services and your business has lots of different locations on top of that, mapping out that content can be quite difficult because you've potentially got hundreds or thousands of iterations of how do you map this against this and where does that sit within the site hierarchy or architecture.

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

So depending on where your business sits within that, it might be okay for you, but actually it might be quite complex and pulling together a detailed strategy around that can be quite helpful at times. So you really get to understand what the requirements are, what the demand for that opportunity is, and how you're going to tackle that, what content's required, whether that's going to be cannibalised by anything else that you're also looking to produce, and you potentially could end up with quite a messy architecture if you don't do it properly, which ultimately probably won't work very well. So yeah, you do definitely need to think about how you're going to position your content and what service or how you're going to answer those questions that people have. Yeah,

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

It can be quite difficult as well if you've not got specific location pages already set up, so you might need an agency to help you with that. Or I guess a starting place could be that you've got location-based content on things like the contact us page and about us page rather than just stuffing it here, there and everywhere across the whole site.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Yeah, I guess that's the main problem is people might start keyword stuff in certain locations. For example, let's just use London as example. I know traditionally people have created a template page as a post type and just created loads of different locations, but every page has the same content apart from just the location word. That's not great, is it? No,

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

That's a bad idea.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Don't do that. Yeah, don't do that. The best way is to create multiple pages with unique content on each.

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

You need to be able to answer people's questions. So as long as you're answering people's questions in a way that makes sense and offers genuine answers to whatever that query is, then you're probably going to fare quite well. So that's the best way to start. But as you described there, it's offering no value to people. It's just boilerplate information that's probably not very valuable. Even if it's done very well, it's still probably not as good as a bespoke answer to whatever solutions that you need to offer for that query. But there are ways around that without getting into the details of it, but you really need to think about how your content exists on the site and what kind of purpose it has and how you answer people's questions and what value it has in answering people's questions. And as long as you feel you're doing that in a positive way, you've probably got a decent chance of ranking.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Yeah, I was going to say as well, if you're thinking about how you can sort of formulate your keywords on a page a good way that you can, that is start by identifying the core terms that you might want to merge with these location keywords. So for example, the core term could be something like hairdresser or hairstylist. From there there's something called a modify phrase we can add in the location, but sometimes people make the mistake of making them sound quite unnatural, so they would just add near me when it doesn't really fit in a sentence. So you've got to make sure it's as seamless as possible as with all content, really,

Tom Haslam - (Host):

I think that's the hardest part is getting the keywords into a naturally readable form of text rather than just saying, like you said, hairdressing near me, not just crammed in.

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Yeah, I mean near me in that context just doesn't work. You don't know where that customer is to start.

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

And also near me kind of irrelevant, it's meaningless. So in those types of queries, you really want to let Google my business or being places kind of answer those queries and they'll provide a listing of all the local hairdressers. And then obviously you might need to compete with a few in terms of either who's the closest or who's the best, or it might be reviews for example, or it might be that actually one profile has better information in there, more convenient opening hours, whatever it might be. But there'll be things that you need to compete with for those listings. But typically when someone's searching for a near me thing, you just need to let Google answer that question for you because just adding near me content on the website's not going to do any good. It is meaningless,

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Essentially. Yeah, I've seen it so many times before as well, and it's just scattered all over the page and it's

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Just near me, near me. It's like,

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

What does that even mean? Yeah.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Let's say there's an example, I'll give an example now. Let's say we've got a tyre fitting company and they've got location in Baying Stoke and Darby, for example, just come off the top of my head. Let's say you were going to conduct some keyword research for the client, for them to write the content. How would you go about that process?

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Start by using keyword tool like Nick mentioned, Google ads, keyword planner or hfs or SEMrush or whatever it is. Start by building up a list of location keywords surrounding that. So I would put in core terms into the planner, maybe like basing stoke tyre companies, tyre repairs, things like that all associated with the area and see what's got good volume. It's not too difficult to rank. They've got a difficulty score on there. And then think about how I can integrate that into the page. So something like we are a tyre company in Baying Stoke or something like that. Something that sounds as natural as possible.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

I guess that's where the beauty of working with a content writer who can take those keywords and make them sound natural. But I was just trying to paint a picture for people in terms of what sort of process we take.

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Yeah, I mean there's lots of ways of trying to achieve that. You need to find a process I suppose that works for you in your business because each business will have a unique, to some degree set of keywords, but you could also look at competitors for example. You could check the maps, for example, to see how many, or even search for different locations that might exist, towns and cities in around your area or county, just to understand what the population density is, whether it's worthwhile targeting, and then you can build those into your keyword list as well. So it might be that if people are searching for tyres X, Y, Z in the highest density populations in and around your county, that might be a good way of building them out. But there's lots of ways of doing that and getting to the list. But I suppose the most important qualifier really is making sure that ultimately the service is the most relevant to what it is that you're offering. The location obviously will be relevant as well, but it will only be relevant to people in your location anyway. So as long as you offer your core service and that's the most valuable part of your business, a lot of the time Google will kind of recognise that and then just a case of enhancing based on those location qualifiers like Till said.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Nice. And it just reminded me as well how say if you are in bathing Stoke, which I think a town, you don't have to limit yourself to that on a keyword wise, you could say Southeast or the county that you're in, you could incorporate that onto the site as well.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Yeah, interesting. Nice. So we've talked about link building form. This pod isn't specifically about link building, but question I've got is does Google rank you higher in the local searches if you have more local link building strategies, for example? So let's just say there's not a tyre fitting company, but you've got other businesses around basing stoke that's linking to the tyre fitting company. Is that going to help or not?

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Yeah, it depends. Obviously the most important thing is relevancy again. But yeah, local link building can definitely be an advantage. It's better to do that in a natural way, rather. It is better to have that than not have that, for example. So there's lots of ways of doing that as well. It might be charities, it might be events, it might be just broad networking. You might have other business partners or associates that offer a different thing, a different industry, but you support them depending on your service. There's loads and loads of ways of trying to create links for your business, and it's just a case of more so I suppose networking,

Speaker 4 (19:58):

Engagement

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

With the right people, engaging with the right people. There might be charity events or you might do something for a particular local charity or whatever it might be. And there's opportunities there where you can showcase your business ultimately is what you're doing. Trying to do that in a positive way. And very often that will come with links, and the more you do that locally, the more kind of famous you are locally if you like. That's going to have an impact. Definitely.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

I guess it's like partnerships as well, using the tie fitting example. If they don't do MOT testing for example, they could find a local partner that they can then link to and from each other within that area.

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Exactly. Yeah, referrals like normal business activity really, if you think of how you would normally operate a business and how you speak to people and build relationships with people, it's a similar thing for link building. And obviously the more you do that, the more renowned you are if you like locally and there's opportunity to link across there. And then Google and search engines aren't perfect at that, but they kind of do understand that to a degree. And obviously that can help if you are doing that sort of activity. And if you aren't doing that activity, if you start, you probably will start to see a benefit of better rankings.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Online directories are a good one as well, so you can reach out to them, get your business details on there. It's a good way for Google to be able to verify the NAP details of your business. So name, address, phone number as well. But as long as the directories aren't spammy or low quality

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Could be newspapers. There's lots of things there just to verify your business in your presence locally. Think about ways of doing that, really

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Guest posting as well on local websites or people in your industry that you may want them to link back to you.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Always good. Yeah, reach out. Nice. So we talked a little bit about Google My business best practises, local keyword research and things like that. Do we think that social media has an impact on local SEO or not?

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Yeah, I mean it definitely can do. I don't think it's a direct impact necessarily on rankings, but for example, it can definitely help your brand locally. You can grow your presence locally and that will help rankings in terms of people searching for either your brand or similar things. If it's like a compounded brand slash product or service, if you've got local listings, that will take up a large amount of real estate in search as well. So that can be a good trust signal if you've got all of your social profiles there that are verified, that link back

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

People that might be doing some research about you, your business, what it is you offer, how people rate you and review you, and then looking at your offering across different social channels. So it might be Instagram or whatever, even if it's a visual thing, it might be Pinterest or it could be just Facebook activity or it could even be Google activity on business posts or that sort of information can be really key if people are undecided about using your service and whether or not they want to research further or actually get in contact with you. That can be vital really to a lot of businesses. Just making sure that you update those different profiles with the relevant information.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Correct me if I'm wrong, Tom, but you can also geotarget you on things like Facebook with ads.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Yeah, social ads, you can target specific areas. So obviously I use plumbing and heating company we work with in Kent, we've targeted Pacific Radius around Kent and Maidstone, which is where their headquarters is, and also branching out into East or six as well. They want to reach there and they can actually service that area.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

It's a good point in making that if they can't service that area, maybe don't think about advertising in that area because they're just going to create a bad name for themselves. Not saying that this company does do that, but I'm just saying beyond that it's because they can service in those areas. So yeah, you can geo-target up to 50 miles of a specific location or locally, or like you say, if you've got multiple locations, you could have just coming back to the tyre fitting one. If you've got Stoke and Derby, they could have two different ad campaigns running ad set level with a derby base campaign and a basing stoke and monitor that. So yeah, there's lots of ways that you can do that. You can do that in Google Ads as well, and that just supports the organic activity that people are going to do.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Does Instagram work the same as that being meta or not?

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Yeah, it's both the same. Facebook and Instagram is all meta now, so it's just promoted on both pages, definitely. Same with LinkedIn. You can geotarget on LinkedIn ads as well. Most advertising, whether it's Google ads being ads, meta ads, LinkedIn ads are all geotargeting.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Yeah, I mean it sounds obvious as well, but to mention that how important consistency is across all the channels. So if you've got, for example, a phone number on one site, you want it to be the same on everything, as obvious as it sounds.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

So from a mobile perspective, from a crawlability perspective, are there any areas within that way coming back to your nap? I know people can put that into the metadata of images and things like that. Is there any impact that that's going to have or

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

When it comes to Crawlability, it's definitely going to be easier for search engines to crawl your details if it's in the text rather than in an image, it doesn't work quite the same way, so make sure you've got it on a webpage or in the photo or anything like that.

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

And another point actually on that, that we've not spoke about yet is schema markup. There's a lot of local schema markup. They'll be very useful, obviously it depends on what it is that you need to mark up, but there'll be things that you could have in and around your business name, your address, and your phone number, for example. But there'll be locality things. There'll be things around employees, for example, if that's relevant. If you've got different employees, different employee teams in different locations, different services in different locations, you can all mark all of that up in schema, which will make it more available to pull into search if somebody's searching for that information.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Given how many people use mobiles these days kind of goes hand in hand with local SEO, especially with the Google My Business stuff, you want to make sure everything's fully optimised to make it as easy as possible for mobile users primarily.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Absolutely.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Over anything else.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

That's just setting a scenario. If you're walking through, I dunno, it's city centre, you're just shopping around and you just want to find, I dunno, a coffee shop or something, you'd type that straight into Google or Google Maps, you'd find it. You might then just check that they do the kind of food that you like. If not, then you'll have a look somewhere else. And if they're not relevant to you, then it comes back to that relevancy of all being optimised in one sort of platform. Yeah,

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

Click straight on. They get directions or the map and you're straight there, aren't you?

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Photos of nice coffees, ants.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

You're not going to follow the directions on your laptop, are you? It's all on your phone. So

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

Exactly. It is not just for kind of restaurants either. They could be products that you might look for. You might think, oh, I'm just going to head into town and I need to find this thing, or can I just search for it to see who does it locally? Are there any stores that have this in stock or whatever it might be. There's lots of different cases for mobile and making sure that you are well optimised for mobile in search because that's somebody ultimately that's looking to buy something there. And if you're not in that space, then you've missed out on a sale. So it can have a massive impact on your revenue.

Speaker 4 (26:55):

Yeah,

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Nice. Just to wrap up then, do we think we've like AI coming into play that local SEO in search is going to change at all, or do we think that it's pretty much going to be consistent to what it is now or

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

In the future? It might change. I don't see it replacing anything in the short term. I don't think AI has that capability yet. And ultimately, I don't think it's going to offer a huge amount of value for local queries anyway, because you are looking for something that's very specific.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Specific, yeah.

Nick Janaway - (Head of Digital):

So AI, for example, is not going to be beneficial for restaurants. I wouldn't have thought there might be some odd quirks of where it might be useful that I can't think of off the top of my head. But broadly, AI is to help with technology, I think, and can help users of technology, but isn't necessarily providing a service for somebody that's required locally. So maybe that'll change in the future 10, 15 years. It might be very AI driven, but I think in the next one or two years, I don't think you'll have a huge impact.

Tilly Hayes - (SEO Executive):

I wonder if in the future there'll be an AI tool where it can essentially match the details on your website on two other channels.

Tom Haslam - (Host):

Interesting though. Well, thank you guys. Have you enjoyed this pod? Yeah,

Speaker 4 (28:05):

Yeah,

Tom Haslam - (Host):

I have fun. Yeah. Yeah. So that wraps up our episode on local SEO. In this episode, we explored all the important parts of local SEO, optimising Google my business, and conducting local keyword research. We've also discussed some local link building strategies and the role of social media in local search. Thank you to Nick and Tilly for sharing their valuable insights and to our listeners for tuning in. If you found this episode helpful, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who you think might benefit from it. Until next time, this is Tom signing off from Marketing Blobs. Bye.