After 2017, Washington DC saw a growth spurt. Currently, there are over 590,900 small businesses in the state of Washington. It poses a stiff competition for all small businesses coming up in the area right now. Almost all small companies and startups have at least one dedicated online presence that is stronger than yesterday’s Facebook profiles and Twitter handles. It is no longer enough to create business profiles on social media to engage your target consumers. You need a website that is present 24/7 to answer the necessities of the visitors. All consumers are using multiple digital channels to inquire about businesses and products. The rudimentary social media presence is not cutting it anymore for most new stores in Washington DC.

A recent Google study showed that more than 70% of all smartphone users visited the brand’s money site before purchasing the product from the brick-and-mortar store. Almost 30% of these purchases began with a simple Google search. That is precisely how vital your web presence is for your conversion rate and sales. Your website needs to be search engine optimized and user-friendly to encourage higher traffic and better conversion rates. That shows that getting a website for your business is not enough; you need to work on your website’s SEO to make it visible during searches. Without SEO any site is as good as non-existent.

Why do you need local SEO?

Your customers are searching for the best products and services online near them. They are likely using their voice assistants to do so. Are you confident that your business will show up on top of that search result list? Are you sure that your website content will make it to the Featured Answers or the multi intent (People also Ask) list? Will they pick your business amidst at least nine others that feature on the SRL? Unless you are confident about your potential customer’s actions, you need a generous slathering of SEO on your web presence. Client Surge SEO Washington DC says that even the brick-and-mortar stores need to establish their local geo-signals all over Google to make their presence prominent.

What we are talking about here is a little different from the typical SEO. It is a method of narrowing the competition down with the help of local signals. You can think of it this way –

Washington DC has 200 gardening and plant trimming services. Say, you operate out of Spokane Valley, and only ten other similar companies are offering similar services. Instead of targeting the entire consumer base in Washington DC, you should think about optimizing your presence for the consumers in and around Spokane Valley. Once you add geographic indicators that limit your business within Spokane Valley, you can eliminate the unnecessary competition that comes from the rest of Washington DC. It also helps with positive reviews since the lion’s share of your service requests will come from serviceable areas only.

Almost all businesses can benefit from local SEO. Even those with multi-city and multi-town offices or storefronts can enjoy a constant flow of traffic by optimizing their geographic presence for Google.

Why does your website need to rank in the Local Pack?

Local businesses rank better with local SEO on their side because –

1. Most potential customers now use mobile devices to look for products and services in their vicinity.

2. Almost all businesses are investing in SEO. Improving just the typical on-page and off-page signals are not as effective as they used to be earlier.

Additionally, the advent of the Google Local Pack has made it even harder for search engine optimized websites to rank above the fold. Every “near me” answer on mobile devices leads to results in the form of the Local Pack. It hosts at least three relevant businesses and additional filtering options for the user. It pushes the first ranked website and all following sites below the fold. Research shows that mobile users rarely scroll down to see the ordinary Google list results when they have the Local Pack in front.

That means if your business is not investing in local SEO, you are not looking at the bigger picture. There is no way a company can make it to the top without the help of local SEO. Google emphasizes user-friendliness more than anything else, and the Local Pack allows all potential customers to find businesses, check their ratings and reviews and call them directly with one touch. Search was never this convenient for the consumers before. Thus, to help your potential customers find you, you need more than excellent content. You need local SEO, and you need a dream of making it to the Local Pack.

What influences local SEO?

So what are the ranking signals that influence the position of the websites on Google Local Pack? It is a great question, but sadly, like SEO the answer to this isn’t as simple as one would think it’d be. We know that Google uses over 200 ranking signals for ranking the websites in the regular Google SRLs with ten results per page. According to the latest updates from Google spokespersons and studies from other SEO experts, there are over 25 different ranking signals that influence the placement of a company or store on the Google Local Pack. These signals include: Google My Business listing and categories, photos on the GMB page, mentions on online directories and citations, Bing Places for Business listing, citations on review sites like Glassdoor, BBB, Angie’s List and yelp, reviews with location and keyword, reviews with responses, Facebook business page, consistent NAP across the web, social media mentions, mobile responsiveness and high-quality localized content.

Yes, although local SEO seems pretty tight and neat, there are tons of factors that can influence the ranking of your website. Without a team of dedicated developers, content managers, digital marketing experts, and social marketers it seems quite impossible to pull off local search engine optimization of a business or brand. That is why you need to check out the best SEO experts in Washington DC, who can help you reclaim your virtual territory and fight off the competition with bespoke local optimization attributes.