Local SEO

97% of your customers are searching for you online!

If your business does not rank on the first page of Google you are missing out on all of these potential customers.

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Storyteller Design specialises in local search engine optimization*. This is called local SEO and refers to area specific Google searches. We help to rank our client’s websites on the 1st page and top 3 results of Google for location based searches such as “Cape Town Electrician”. If your company is not on the first page of the search rankings and in the Map pack your website might as well be invisible.

1st Page Google Rankings = More Leads = More Business

Through crafted content and powerful link building strategies we provide the highest quality SEO and online marketing for your business to dominate the competition in your industry and appear at the top of the Google search results.
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Proven results to get you to number 1.

We will only work with clients who we believe will gain substantially from ranking high in the search results and who operate in an industry where we know we can beat the competition to the top of the page in Google.

“My bookings have increased 300%”_{Ian Thomas}

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is where the location of the searcher or service/product being searched for determines the results that are shown in Google. An example of a location based search would be:

yourbusiness + city/area
yourservice + city/area

Local SEO is a great way to increase the leads and sales generated by your business as it connects you to people search for your products and services in your area. Local searches are also less competitive than international searches as there are less companies vying for the same space.

How are local search results different to normal search results?

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When Google shows the results for a location based search they will often show what is called a Map Pack near the top of the page which shows where the businesses can be found along with a link to the companies website and a telephone number to call them.

To get the most benefit from local searches your business needs to be in the top 3 of the map pack as well as in the top three for the organic search results which appear just below the map.

Is Local SEO for me?

Any business with a physical location or services customers within a specific geographical location absolutely needs to be using Local SEO.

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What affects local SEO?

Local SEO is affected by three main things:

1. Onsite Signals ( 20.29% ) – This is where Google learns what your website is about from the content and keywords it finds on your site. A local SEO audit is the best way to find out what areas you are storing in and which need to be improved in order to rank well.
2. Local Citations ( 13.55% )  – These are listings of your website on service listing websites or authority sites. These are similar to the Yellow Pages, but in a website. Your citations often include your address, website url and phone number.
3. Google My Business ( 14.72 % ) – This is your Google Plus page and the information available on it, as well as the reviews you receive from your customers. The more positive reviews you have the better your ranking.
4. Link Signals ( 20.01 % ) – Relevant websites linking to your page showing you are an authority regarding the product or service you offer in your area.

Doesn’t add up to 100%? The rest is made up of a number of other factors. To learn more, add your email in the form and we will send you a link to our full blog post on local SEO.

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The first step in getting to number one is to access your website’s structure, content and links to see how it is constructed so we can optimise the way it is put together and the words used in the best way for the keywords being targeted. This is called a website SEO Audit.

Start your website’s local SEO audit now.

Speed.

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One of the easiest ways to optimise your website and get a boost in your SEO is to increase your website’s speed. In 2010 Google stated that page speed would now influence their search rankings. What they actually mean is that the time a visitor has to wait until your page is completely loaded is a deciding factor in your Google ranking.

The first thing to do when trying to optimise your websites speed is to test how fast it loads and get a list of items that may be slowing it down. Add your email in the block to the left to find out how you can do this yourself.
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Still not sure why you need SEO?

Check out our frequently asked questions section.

[toggle title_open=”Why do I need SEO and Google Rankings?” title_closed=”Why do I need SEO and Google Rankings?” hide=”yes” border=”no” style=”white” excerpt_length=”0″ read_more_text=”Read More” read_less_text=”Read Less” include_excerpt_html=”no”]We live in a digital age. This means that people turn to their computers, tablets and smartphones to solve their problems, learn, discover and search for products and services.

A decade ago, people would turn to their physical yellow pages directory if they were looking for a specific type of product or service. They may even have called up a friend to ask for recommendations.

These days people do their own research on the internet usually using Google.

So, if a potential customer is looking for a specific kind of service (plumber, lawyer, accountant and so on) in Google, your website needs to appear at the top of those results. 54% of the volume of clicks goes to the top 3 results. If you are not in those top 3 results you are losing out on a huge amount of potential new clients, and if you are not on the first page you can forget about people finding your website.

SEO (or search engine optimization) is the process of optimizing your website by having the correct structure, pages and backlink profile so that you appear at the top of the results for specific keywords related to your business.

a backlink is a link pointing to your website from another website – Google sees this as a “referral” or “vote” that your site is worthy of visiting and having valuable information about that keyword. Thus, the more high quality backlinks you have from relevant sites to your industry, the higher you will rank).

To sum up, your website needs to be at the top of the Google results for as many keywords related to your industry as possible, e.g.:

yourbusiness + city/area
yourservice + city/area

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Organic search is (still in 2015) the biggest source of traffic and lead generation. As long as Google exists (and as long as it dominates market share), it will continue to drive highly targeted users to billions of search queries every single day.

With the number of internet users growing at an enormous rate, every business should spend a portion of their marketing budget on obtaining top search results for keywords related to their business (because if your customers can’t find you, you’re losing business to your competition).

The more keywords you rank for, the more traffic you will receive. (Unless you are an incredibly well-known brand like Coca Cola), there is a good chance many people have never even heard of your existence. And what happens when they search for a product or service that you offer but you don’t appear in the search engine (or your competitor outranks you)…?

That’s right, you just lost a potential sale that clicked right into your competitor’s site.

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If you’re still on the fence about needing to rank, here are some quick facts about SEO:

• 61% of global Internet users research products online. (Interconnected World: Shopping and Personal Finance, 2012)
• 44% of online shoppers begin by using a search engine. (Interconnected World: Shopping and Personal Finance, 2012)
• Worldwide, we conduct 131 billion searches per month on the web. (Comscore, January 2010)
• 57% of TV viewers use the web simultaneously. (Nielson, 2009)
• 70% of the links search users click on are organic, not paid. (Marketing Sherpa, February 2007)
• 60% of all organic clicks go to the top three organic search results. (MarketingSherpa, February 2007)
• 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results. (MarketShareHitsLink.com, October 2010)
• The average click-through rate for paid search in 2010 (worldwide) was
  2%. (Convario, January 2011)
• Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links. (HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Report, 2010)
• Businesses with websites of 401-1000 pages get 6x more leads than those with 51-100 pages. (HubSpot Lead Generation Lessons from 4,000 Businesses, 2011)

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