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Post Published on November 5, 2022
Last Updated on by Sharat Nair
As more people are searching online for local businesses, local SEO acquires immense importance for small businesses. With a tremendous surge in ‘near me’ searches, SEO has become the livewire for sustaining and growing local businesses facing stiff competition. Local searches focus more on the customer’s experience with stress on the impact of mobile optimization and voice searches on customer experience.
The following trends are going to dominate local SEO in 2026 and beyond.
User experience is the last word
Since May 2020, Google has been factoring user experience as a ranking factor. Faster page loading times, ease of navigation, and the impact of this experience on ranking are factors that will highly impact website ranking. Finding ways to improve user experience (UX) has become the top goal for marketers. Meeting user expectations holds key to improving the user experience which includes removing annoying and intruding ads, intuitive website navigation, and creating speedy websites.
The changing ways of Google My Business
Appropriate listing of your business on Google My Business has become even more important because Google is now providing search results based on user intent and not according to keywords only. What users are looking for is more important as Google is looking at what’s underneath the keywords. Google’s shift is critically important for local businesses as 49% of the listed businesses will have more than a thousand views every month. Therefore, ensuring that your listing performs well can make a huge difference in the business outcome.
No need to click for information
Although it might sound strange, the fact is that the way Google is displaying information in search results, users can readily get the information they are looking for without clicking on business websites. In 2019, more than 50% of Google searches belonged to this category. Since business information is now showing up on the search page you should keep all your business information updated on Google My Business so that people get all information about your business on the SERP.
Create rich website content to supplement the information not available forthwith in search results.
Take care of your website
Despite information being readily available on the search result pages, websites are still important for gaining consumers’ trust. The result from a Brightlocal study shows that 56% of consumers depend heavily on websites to get the most accurate information. For any vital information such as business hours, contact information, and location they rely more on the website that can provide a strong user experience.
Mobile optimization for websites
As majority (52.2%) of website traffic originates from mobile devices, it underscores the importance of optimizing your web design for mobile devices. Moreover, Google’s mobile-first indexing makes it almost mandatory to optimize websites for mobile devices. It means Google pays more attention to mobile design over desktop design when evaluating websites with due importance to user experience. Good text visibility, ease of navigation, and prompt spotting of crucial links are the hallmarks of a well-optimized website design for mobile devices.
Voice search is important for local SEO
As voice searches are increasing, you must understand the nature of voice searchers structured on natural spoken language that is different from text searches and are longer too. When creating content for your website. Bear in mind the way people talk naturally which would increase the chances of showing up in local voice searches.
Embrace video content
Just in the way, Google My Business or Google Maps provides information on the SERP that eliminates the need to click on business websites, and YouTube videos appearing on the page provide more information.
Video content has 50 times higher chances of appearing on the search results page. As videos are easy to consume and generate higher trust, almost 84% of searchers rely on video content.
Text is still important
The better and more content your website has, the more will it appeal to consumers looking for exhaustive information. Therefore, having a good mix of text and other types of content is essential to serve consumers with the information and solutions they are looking for. Long-form content of 1142 words on average is the pick of consumers.
Search intent is paramount
Align your content with search intent to gain more mileage from it as Google uses search intent as the basis for presenting search results. The better the content matches the search intent higher the chances of it showing up in search results with a high ranking.
Finally, since 87% of consumers rely on online reviews to make decisions, you must safeguard your online reputation through careful responses to reviews that improve consumer engagement.
Stay engaged with utmost attention to user experience to leverage local SEO for better business gains.
