The Benefits of Local SEO for Ecommerce Stores

---

Ecommerce has been a fast-growing industry over the last few years. Most people prefer the ease of use it offers along with convenience. But an aftereffect of this is the increased competition in the market. 

It has become challenging for ecommerce brands to stand out from the rest of the competition. This is where local SEO can make a huge difference. It can improve your brand reach and image over several platforms.

Let's take a look at why local SEO is critical to the success of ecommerce today. 

10 Reasons Why Local SEO is Important for Ecommerce Sites

---

1. Increase Conversion Rate

Conversions are critical for an ecommerce business. Conversion rates need to be high to get the highest revenue possible. Unfortunately, this can be a problem if you don't attract the right traffic. 

Local-focused SEO ensures that you get the right people looking at your ecommerce website. 

Tools To Improve Conversion Rates

With so many ecommerce businesses vying for the same slice of the market, things are competitive. You need to ensure that you have the edge against your competitors. Improving your conversion rates can be a huge step in the right direction. 

Conversion rates are an ecommerce business' lifeline. The fewer time people spend on your marketing pipeline, the more money you save. The best way to do this is through conversion rate optimization (CRO).

• HotJar is a user behavior analysis tool. It can help you understand the decisions taken by your audience. 
• Google Optimize can help you test changes that you make to your website. 
• Heap is a detailed web analytics tool that delivers real-time data about user interactions.

Here’s a screenshot of Google Optimize:

2. Drive Organic Traffic

One thing that you can always improve on is the local SEO of your ecommerce website. This means improved organic traffic for your website. The more visible you are on Google's search results page, the more likely people will find you.

Strategies To Increase Organic Traffic

Clicks from people who come through your organic SEO pipeline are organic traffic. This doesn't include ads or other paid forms of SEO. This is an important part of the ecommerce business. 

One important reason is that paid ads for ecommerce can become expensive quickly. To cut down on spending and improve ROI, they need to invest in local SEO. it can drive relevant traffic to your ecommerce website. 

• Focus on long-tail keywords for your SEO campaign. Tools like Google Keyword Planner can help.
• On-page SEO is an important part of the process. You can audit your website with Ahrefs.
• Guest posting can draw traffic from other related sources in your niche. 

Here’s a screenshot of an SEO audit by Ahrefs:

3. Boost Sales On Website

Local SEO can help increase the traffic you receive from searches made within a certain radius of a specific city. This isn't just for brick-and-mortar shops. Local SEO can be applied to any kind of business, including ecommerce. 

It can improve sales for your brand considerably by getting relevant people to your website.

Improving Sales For Ecommerce With Local SEO

Local search is important. It's the most popular search type for consumers when shopping. But it's also one of the most challenging for ecommerce businesses. It's not easy to rank for local keywords. But if you don't, you can easily lose out on traffic and customers.

Today, consumers use their mobile devices to shop online more than ever before. In fact, according to Google, over 50% of web searches are done from mobile devices. So if your business is looking to sell online, you will need a plan to get noticed. 

• Optimize your call-to-action phrases with tools from Hubspot and Wishpond.
• Research everything about a specific location you're targeting with Google Analytics.
• Conduct a lot of A/B testing to choose between styles and colors for your website. 

Here’s a screenshot of Hubspot showing CTA analytics:

Read: Importance of Creating an Ecommerce Sales Strategy for Black Friday

4. Target The Local Market

An obvious but important aspect of local SEO is that it allows powerful local audience targeting. For an ecommerce company, it's not all about national results. The reason is that they are competing with more local vendors than national. 

Improving your local presence can get you improved sales and ROI. It is a prime reason to invest in local SEO programs. 

Strategies To Improve Local Targeting

A bulk of sales for ecommerce websites usually come from the local audience. Local SEO has enabled businesses to achieve accurate local audience targeting. This is one of the most critical parts of the pipeline. 

As a business owner, you should note that local markets are more competitive than national ones. Keeping this in mind, ecommerce brands are now more focused on local SEO benefits. This ranges from lower cost per click to improved revenue over time. 

• Sponsor or create local events and content that appeal to your audience. 
• Approach relevant local influencers who can improve your brand image. 
• Hyper-local content creation and ads are a huge advantage for your ecommerce business. 

Here’s a screenshot of an influencer on Instagram promoting a brand:

5. Improve Ranking On Searches

Search rankings are critical for a business and even more so for ecommerce. People have moved on to a mobile-based technological lifestyle. They also adopt a much more dynamic approach to shopping. This means that ranking on top is the difference between doing well and failure. 

Impact Of Search Rankings For Ecommerce

The ecommerce market is dynamic and volatile for most brands. The need to rank high is paramount to the success of the business. Search engines use a complex algorithm to determine which sites get listed in their results. 

Your rankings impact how much sales you generate in today's market. Studies show that the first three ranks get over 60% of total clicks. This huge number is impossible to ignore for the ecommerce business. 

• One of the most popular platforms for search ranking information is SEMrush.
• Moz Pro is another powerful tool that can help you improve rankings.
• You can also use incognito Google Search for ranking information about a specific keyword.

Here’s a screenshot of SEMrush showing the ranking information about various keywords:

Read: 30 Best Local SEO Tools To Improve Your Search Rankings

6. Increase Brand Awareness

Local SEO helps brands grow their visibility locally. This kind of SEO, which involves creating content in a certain city or region, has grown tremendously. It's also become more important than ever for ecommerce businesses that rely on local traffic. 

Tips For Tracking Brand Awareness

Local SEO is the lifeblood of any online business. It can help build traffic and sales, increase conversions and even provide a competitive advantage. It's the best way to drive people to your website and keep them there. 

Brand awareness is important for an ecommerce business as it builds trust and credibility. Another aspect is that the more people are aware of your brand, the more they will engage. 

• A good way to analyze brand awareness is through surveys. Something that can help is Survey Monkey.
• Reviews and social listening tools are also great ways to keep track of your brand awareness.
• Hootsuite and Sprout Social have great awareness analysis tools. 

Here’s a screenshot of Survey Monkey:

7. Generate More Qualified Leads

Lead generation is vital for any business, more so for ecommerce websites. It brings in fresh customers to your business regularly. Local SEO can considerably improve the quality of your lead generation funnel. 

It can bring better-qualified leads to your funnel and at significantly less cost. 

Improved Lead Generation With Local SEO

For a generation of qualified leads, create localized copy for your website. Focus on the right keywords and ensure they're relevant. Local SEO can deliver much better leads organically. This means lower spending for your business resulting in larger margins. 

Local SEO can help customers search for and buy what they're looking for. It makes getting quality leads a much easier prospect for ecommerce businesses. People can find what they want on your ecommerce platform much easier with local SEO. 

• Work on your landing pages with Unbounce for even better leads.
• ClickFunnels can help you get the right audience for your business.
• You can also grow your leads through prospecting with Growbots.

Here’s a screenshot of Growbots:

8. Drive Social Media Traffic

Local SEO is not just about getting more people to your website. A large part of the ecommerce business is dependent on social media. Opting for local SEO enables better traffic on your social media feed. This allows you to build engagement with your audience. 

Strategy To Get More Social Traffic

It is important to get your brand message out on social media. People don't just use searches but also their favorite social media platforms. The strategy to get more social media traffic is to have the right local SEO marketing approach. 

Curate a good local SEO campaign that generates more interest for your social media page. It can bring more people to your brand through comments and other interactions. 

• BuzzSumo is the premier social media toolkit used for many campaigns. 
• TweetDeck is an all-inclusive platform for Twitter that you can leverage for your needs.
• Improve your social visuals with tools like Canva, which can make it more colorful. 

Here’s a screenshot of Canva:

9. Get Authority Backlinks

Backlinking is critical for any type of SEO and even more so with local SEO. The more authority your links have, the more chances to rank higher on searches. Local SEO can help audit your backlink profile and enable you to reach the right businesses. 

Drawing Authority Backlinks For Ecommerce

Ecommerce needs a steady stream of authority backlinks to survive against competition. Local SEO focuses on getting powerful brands to connect back to the ecommerce website. Referral traffic is the most important part of the ecommerce backlink pipeline. 

Referral traffic can elevate the number of sales an ecommerce website can make. Another area of focus is content. Relevant content can add authority to the page making gathering links easier. 

• Linkody is a great tool for getting and tracking links from authority sources.
• Moz Link Explorer can help you categorize and scale your link-building process.
• Getting links can be difficult, but with Link Prospector, it's a lot easier. 

Here’s a screenshot of Linkody:

Read: Best Practices to Earn High-Authority Backlinks for Your Website

10. Increase Social Media Presence

Local SEO can improve an ecommerce business' social media presence. And this is important because social media is a powerful engagement tool for brands. Almost all businesses use social media platforms to improve their reach.

Getting Better Social Media Reach

Today, all businesses focus on social media as their platform of choice for communication. It has more than three billion people and offers powerful business metrics and built-in audit tools. Opting for social media campaigns today makes a lot of sense.

• Select a goal to achieve on social media and work towards it. 
• Choose the right platform for your niche. Facebook and Instagram offer a more visual component for ecommerce brands. 
• Use tools like Falcon.io and Loomly to automate your social media posting. 

Here’s a screenshot of Nike’s profile on Instagram:

Local SEO Importance for Ecommerce Sites - FAQs

---

1. What Is Local SEO?

Local search is about finding local businesses and services, not consumers on the search engines. It focuses on hyperlocal relevance and getting the right leads for your ecommerce business.

2. How Can I Optimize My Local SEO?

If you want people to click on your business and view your website when searching for it online, you must optimize your local SEO. 

You should start by doing your keyword research. That means finding the most popular search terms your target audience uses to find businesses like yours. Finally, look at where customers can find these search terms. 

3. How Important Is Local SEO To Ecommerce?

Ecommerce SEO is more than just about the product title, keywords, and description. It's also about creating a great site experience and understanding what it takes to rank. You also need to understand what kind of content you should create. Find the purpose of local SEO and how to integrate local SEO into your site.

4. What Are The Benefits Of Local SEO?

There are numerous benefits to local SEO, but perhaps the biggest is targeting your audience more effectively. The local audience is often much more specific than the national one. And this is invaluable to ecommerce businesses.

Key Takeaways

---

• Opting for local SEO as an ecommerce business has become critical to success.
• Allows you to reach more niche domains and demographics.
• Improve your keyword rankings and compete with local businesses.
• It adds to your brand reach and your ability to attract relevant clientele.
• Ensures that you're able to communicate better with your audience.
• Ranks for keywords that are relevant to your niche.
• Get better reviews of your services through better social media outreach.