As you probably know from your own experience using Google search, you’re always searching for ‘X Near Me’. Whether you’re in your home town looking for a bakery or you’re abroad on holiday searching for the most luxurious restaurants to eat at.
This search term for online local products or services has become increasingly popular, as you can see from the uptrend over time below:
Essentially, according to Google’s API, 4 in 5 consumers use search engines to find local information, and 18% of local searches on smartphones lead to a purchase within a day, so you can see the value and importance of ranking for local search terms if you want to be a successful business within your area.
That’s why today we’re going to look at how you can get your website ranking for ‘Near Me’ searches, so you can reap the benefits of what these other companies are thriving from.
The true impact of ‘near me’ searches
- From just September 2019 to August 2020 and September 2020 to August 2021, the “Open now near me” search term increased by 400% in both years.
- There has been a
150%+ growth in mobile searches for “near me now,” e.g., “restaurants near me now” - The map app on Google drives 30-40% of local business discovery
- 46% of all search users are looking for local businesses.
Now, we have 90% of all smartphone owners using their phones to get directions, recommendations, or other information related to their location, up from 74% in 2013, so almost everyone is turning on their GPS and precise location so they can find only the best advice and recommendations from Google search.
Therefore, it doesn’t take much to realise that local search rankings are one of the many reasons why Google has so much success when it gives real-time evidence of what is near the consumer when they’re browsing.
What are the most popular ‘near me’ search categories?
One of the most interesting figures is how brands and industries can really take advantage of the ‘near me’ search terms. And before we show you, you can probably imagine from your own experience using this search query on Google yourself what is going to be up nerf the top. Let’s take a look at the most popular categories and whether or not they align with your industry:
In this survey, completed by Uberall, 82% of smartphone users performed “near me” searches from July 23 to July 27, 2018. This study had the aim of finding the most popular categories within ‘near me’ searches and found that:
- 84% of users searched for ‘Food.’
- 56% of users searched for ‘Entertainment.’
- 50% of users searched for ‘Banking.’
- 41% of users searched for ‘Apparel.’
- 38% of users searched for ‘Personal Care.’
As you can see, the following industries came out as the leaders of the survey, with surprisingly high numbers. Therefore, if you’re a business within any of these niches, you now know the need and desire for your services within your local playing field.
QD’s step-by-step guide to how to rank for ‘near me’ searches
If we were going to come up with a broad formula for your business to start ranking for ‘near me’ searches (of course, your business would need bespoke, tailored attention during each stage), here’s the process and step-by-step guide to how we’d look to get you ranking in your local area:
1. Define your business in that area
One of the most important ways to rank higher locally and within the ‘near me’ searches is by clearly defining that your business operates in the local areas that you want to be found in. Whether this is by implementing it on your home page, within service pages, or creating designated location pages, this will help your customers find you massively.
2. Google My Business (GMB) insertion and optimisation
If your company is not already on Google My Business, then first of all, you will have to list it there in order to reap the benefits of customers finding you in the local search engine.
As you can see, Quirky Digital is ranking at the top of GMB for the search term ‘SEO Agency Near Liverpool’. Here are some of the strategies we used in order to get to the top:
- We made sure our business information, such as NAP (name, address, and phone number), is consistent throughout our site
- We added our services to the Google My Business profile
- We incorporated our social media profiles and links into our GMB
- We added a booking URL so potential clients can speak with us
- We added forms so people can fulfil queries
- We regularly add post updates
- We have images of our business and the surrounding location to show we’re legit
3. Location pages (where relevant)
As we discussed briefly in the first point, location pages are vastly important to ranking for local searches. Having location pages will help users naturally come across your website when searching ‘near me’ or a specific location.
However, if you have too many location pages just to try to rank in specific locations even though you don’t operate in that location, Google will note this, and your website can take huge damage, as it will be viewed as spam.
4. Local SEO analytics
To find out how you can actually boost your performance, find gaps, and outperform your competition, you need to carry out an SEO audit. This can be anything from the website itself, including backlinks, citations, and off-site content—or the on-site content.
The goal is to find areas that you can exploit, areas you can improve on, and areas where you can beat your local competition.
5. Local keywords and local keyword research
Part of the above analysis will be looking at the keywords that you can target if you want to rank for the ‘Near Me’ search terms. This will allow you to find keywords that you can look to rank for and that are actually relevant to your company. For example, if you’re a restaurant owner, you may want to rank for ‘restaurants near me’, but great keyword research goes much deeper than that.
6. Geocode your images
One that you may never have heard of is geocoding your images, which essentially gives the images on your website within pages, or images on GMB, a ‘Place ID’. This helps Google understand exactly where the location of the photo is, which can help your business become more of a relevant figure and option for the query within that local area.
7. Schema markup
By providing search engines with precise information about your company, like your address, phone number, business hours, and more, schema markup can improve your exposure in local searches.
As you can see from our very own GMB, we have the exact hours we work, our phone number, images, etc. We also will provide our audience with holiday hours if our hours differ during that time.
Essentially, if you think of every little detail that you would want as one of your own customers/clients and add it to your website and GMB via schema markup, you will have the best chance of reaching a higher ranking in local search engines.
A quick example of one of our local SEO clients’ results
Although we can tell you how to increase your local visibility via ‘Near Me’ search terms, the only thing that matters is the results. And to show you how all of this can be dissected and formulated into a high-performing local SEO campaign, here’s an example of one of our case studies that entails some of our steps from above.
Their problem: The website was only attracting leads from branded search terms rather than non-branded ones.
Our solution: We started to write new, fresh content to match search intent with location pages and outreach campaigns.
The results:
Take your local website rankings to whole new heights
If you’ve now realised that your business has not been reaching the potential it could be ever since you started, don’t worry, as it’s never too late to build an online presence.
Here at Quirky Digital, we make sure that every client gets a personalised SEO strategy that fits them like a handmade glove – so if you’re interested in taking your local search volume, traffic, and sales to the next level, get in touch with us today below this article.
You’ll be put in contact with one of our SEO experts, who will then ensure that you’re catered for, listened to, and then ultimately put a strategy together to make you one of the most recognised figures in your local area. We look forward to hearing from you!