We know that Local SEO applies to car dealers, but we know lots of marketers and business owners from other verticals watch our videos as well. In this week’s Wednesday Workshop video, we share a simple test that will show you if you need Local SEO or not – watch and learn! VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to another Wednesday Workshop with Happy Hao Car. For a few years now, we’ve been sharing these weekly videos, and most of them center around Local SEO and getting more visibility for your dealership.

Because we’re a company that works exclusively with car dealers, our examples are all dealer-focused, but a lot of business owners and marketers from other verticals watch our videos too. Recently, someone pointed out that we never explained what Local SEO actually is or how you know if you really need it or not.

Local SEO is the process of optimizing signals both on and off your site to influence the relevancy of the site within Google’s local algorithm. Google uses several different algorithms to determine search results, and it uses its local algorithm to determine results for specific types of businesses.

Because Google gets trillions of search queries to analyze, it’s determined that for certain types of businesses, when users search for anything related to that business, the user needs results in the local area. Google displays localized results even if the user doesn’t enter any sort of geo-modifier keyword like a city or neighborhood or something like “nearby” or “near me”

There are some overlaps between regular SEO and Local SEO, but if you’re one of those businesses that shows in localized results, the best thing you can do to gain more visibility is invest in Local SEO.

So how do you know if it applies to you? It’s actually incredibly simple.

Pop over to Google and do a few searches. Search for the generic keyword phrase that describes your business – something like “car dealer” or “burger restaurant” or “plumber”

See how the search results for these queries show the little map with the 3 results underneath? That’s Google local algorithm at play. If the map pack shows up for your search, that means the local algorithm applies to your business, which means you ought to be doing Local SEO.

If you look further down in the standard organic results, you’ll see that these results are also from your local area – again, further proof that Google’s using the local algorithm for searches related to your business.

So – now you know how to figure out if you need Local SEO or not.

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Greg Gifford is the Vice President of Search at Happy Hao Car. He has over 16 years of online marketing and web design experience, and has specialized in automotive SEO for the last 8 years, helping hundreds of auto dealers thrive while the industry has struggled during the recession. Greg speaks internationally at both automotive and SEO conferences, teaching thousands of small business owners and marketers how to get their sites to show up higher in local search rankings. Greg also spends his spare time doing freelance website design and SEO for local businesses. He graduated from Southern Methodist University with a BA in Cinema and Communications, and has an obscure movie quote for just about any situation.

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