Sigoti SEO Agency Blog | Local SEO services for Norfolk SME's (1)

The mainstream adoption of smartphone technology has created a world we live in today where we can’t go outside without seeing a person staring at their phone. However, when people consider an online world they often picture huge global businesses like Amazon. What people often overlook is how this change has affected the landscape for local companies. The truth is that the customer journey for local companies has had a massive shake-up in the last few years.

People searching for a local business today will simply type what they’re looking for into Google when it’s most convenient for them, not anyone else.

Personal recommendations are no longer critical. Today’s consumer can now get the opinions of hundreds of people in seconds through online reviews, rather than getting just one person’s opinion. Once a customer has reached out to you, they’re far further down the sales funnel than they would have been 15 years ago. Not only that, but when a company has a great online reputation, customers will be easier and more willing to buy from you.

Today, local businesses are benefiting from their online exposure. Granted, in the past, a recommendation from a friend drove customers to a business but today, customers want to take their time researching a product or service before they make any decisions. It’s not even that much of a surprise that 78% of mobile local searches result in offline purchases. So it’s no longer an option for any business who wants to see revenue growth to ignore online marketing.

For this reason, we support local Norfolk businesses by giving them assistance with their online marketing. We always have your ultimate success in mind, and each project we take on is approached from the standpoint of how to help you generate more leads. Whether that’s by getting more phone calls, emails or walk-ins, we firmly believe that good design leads to success.

At Sigoti, we support local small businesses and charities make that transition. Out goal is to help them generate more leads online. Whether that's by getting more phone calls, emails or walk-ins. These are the kinds of leads that everybody wants because they’re self-qualified and have a genuine need for your services.

We use a practice called local search optimisation or “local SEO” that helps businesses rank higher on Google when people are searching for their services. Any business that serves customers in a specific location needs local SEO. As Google makes up 90% of all search engine traffic we focus on their algorithm. However, Google has a different algorithm to rank local searches vs non local searches. For example:

• A local search is “Roofers in Norwich” or "Electricians near me in Great Yarmouth"
• A non-local search might be “Samsung 43 inch TV” because this is a product that is not tied to a geographic location.

So when we look to improve rankings on Google we first need to understand what Google wants. Put simply, all Google wants to do is give the searcher the best possible result for their query and to achieve this they use a local algorithm to work out which results they think are best. This algorithm is broken up into three simple elements:

1. Proximity - This is how far away the business location is from the person making the search. Proximity is a metric that you can’t control or influence.
2. Relevance - This is how well your business online presence matches what the searcher has searched for.
3. Prominence - This is how Google determines which business has the most trust through a variety of elements such as reviews, links, content, etc.

Google uses different algorithms for the two types of results you see when you make a local search.

• The first is for the local pack results. This is the three Google listings that sit at the top of the SERP, below the paid ads.
• Google has a separate algorithm for the organic results, which are the blue links you see below the local pack. These organic results are still based on the location of the searcher or query, so we call them localised organic results.

We focus on both algorithms to help our clients drive more leads from Google. 

in our next blog we will show you each factor and the actual work we do to build authority for our clients in Google.