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Local SEO Stats and Trends for 2023

James Vanderzee

AKA “How important is Local SEO in 2023?”

As local SEO experts, it's important for us to keep abreast of relevant statistics and trends. These help inform as well as remind us, and our lovely clients, of the importance of local SEO.

Before we get into the detail, here’s a brief overview of local SEO…

An intro to Local SEO

SEO, or 'Search Engine Optimisation', is often thought of as one of the most challenging digital marketing disciplines. This is not only because of its complexity, scope, and more importantly because SEO is constantly evolving, but also because the search engines won’t give away all their secrets. SEO  is the process of optimising a website for organic or unpaid search results. 

Local SEO is the process of optimising a website for local search results, in other words where a location is included or implied within a Google search. As such, local SEO is vital for any local business that serves a geographical area. Its aim is for your business to rank number 1, or at least in the top 3 of the local pack, in the search result pages (SERPs) of Google, Bing and so on.

Historically, local searches used a location modifier such as “Oxted restaurants.” However, location modifiers are no longer necessary as search engines can now help consumers find local businesses serving products or services near their current geographic location. As Google understands more about search behaviour and user intent, implicit searches have become hugely important to local SEO. Searches for products and services such as “haircut” and “restaurants' ', will now return those hairdressers and restaurants near your current location when searching. After all, Google understands it is less likely that you would be searching for a haircut in Newcastle, if you were at home in Exeter. 

Ultimately, as a local business, by skipping local SEO, you’re missing out on one of the primary channels by which consumers discover and buy from local businesses. Find out more in our beginner’s guide to local SEO.

The benefits of local SEO

Along with increased visibility In local search results, here a few additional ways that local SEO can benefit your business.

  • Better ROI Than Advertising

  • Increased Traffic From Social Media Sites

  • Greater Engagement With Local Customers

  • Improved Mobile Search Rankings

How does local SEO work?

As we flagged back in our Local SEO statistics report for 2022, there are many factors that contribute to ranking in local search results. These factors can be broadly divided into two categories: On-page factors and off-page factors. 

On-page factors are elements of your website that you have control over, such as the content, title tags, and meta descriptions. Off-page factors are external signals that tell Google your website is relevant and trustworthy, such as your Google Business Profile, backlinks and reviews. SEO factors include:

Local SEO trends & statistics 2023

Without further ado, here are our top local SEO statistics for 2023. Please let us know if you spot any interesting stats or trends that may be worth adding to our compendium.

1. LOCAL SEARCHES ARE ESSENTIAL FOR THE SUCCESS OF ANY LOCAL BUSINESS

There’s no denying the strength of implementing local SEO as part of your local business’ marketing strategy. While social media often steals the limelight, there’s no doubt that local SEO converts local customers on a much higher scale. There are an incredible 37k local searches each second. And the monthly number of google local searches is a mind boggling 97 billion. 

With 46% of Google queries containing local search intent, this is almost half of all search queries.  On top of this figure, local and organic searches together make up 69% of overall digital traffic

And with a staggering 93% of consumers who use online searches to find a local business, if you’re not capitalising on local search for your local business, you’re missing out. And, as 75% of people will never go past the first page of Google which means if you are not ranking locally, your business will never even be found!

2. LOCAL SEARCH IS GREAT FOR DRIVING IN-STORE VISITS, ENQUIRIES AND SALES

Did you know that 78% of people want to shop locally after looking on Google? Local Organic Google searchers are among the most motivated of potential customers, and as a result are highly likely to convert to visitor, lead and even new customer. 

Consumers are conducting “near me” searches on Google more than ever, with a 500% growth in "near me" mobile searches which have a variant of "can I buy" or "to buy" over the last two years [Hubspot].

Considering the vast majority of local searches result in conversions, SEO for local business has become one of the most powerful ways to market in the past 10 years, completely overtaking paid advertising. In fact organic traffic is responsible for 53% of total website traffic as of 2023 [Demandsage] whereas paid traffic accounts for just 15% [Demandsage].

In fact 50% of users visit a store within a day of a local search, and that 72% of people went to a store within 8 kilometers of where they were looking. 

Local search is having an impact on offline and online purchases alike. Over half of all “Near Me” searches lead to offline conversion, while approximately 45% of customers globally will make a purchase online and subsequently pick up the item in-store. 

3. CREATE POSITIVE ONLINE EXPERIENCES TO KEEP LOCAL CUSTOMERS COMING BACK

Last year Google released an update to its algorithm focused on “User Experience.” The user experience update requires that websites load rapidly, and provide a seamless experience for customers.  

In 2023, local search will become even more focused on providing the best user experience, a customer-first approach to content, with the aim of making users stay engaged for as long as they need to. This means providing the most relevant information from the customer, whether this means a longer more detailed article (a theatre review for example) or a shorter more to the point piece of content (instructions for example).

Because high quality end user experience is the aim, Google wants to think like a person in order to understand the searcher’s intent. This by-passes the countless possibilities and irrelevant results, and only provides the most relevant search listings, or pieces of content. Google no longer wishes to act as an intermediary in the search equation. Whereas before SEO meant optimising for a search engine, nowadays it means to optimise for the end user. 

Really there are only two simple but fundamental ingredients when thinking of the user. 

  • The quality and relevance of the content, i.e. is the content you provide relevant to the searcher?

  • The quality of their overall experience, i.e. could your website visitor quickly and easily find the information that they wanted?

A high quality user experience means offering great content that users want, combined with a great experience whilst consuming that content. Focus on this, and it is more likely your page will earn greater visibility. And of course, greater visibility along with greater relevance to the user’s search query tends to follow with higher quality traffic and conversions.

Improving your user experience in terms of speed is also important, especially now everyone is on their mobiles! People want information quickly on whatever device they’re using. 

According to Hubspot, a 0-4 second load time is best for conversion rates, and the first five seconds of page-load time have the highest impact on conversion rates.  

Check your website’s page loading speed to see how it scores using Google’s own PageSpeed checker, the sweet spot is below two seconds. 

4. OPTIMISE YOUR WEBSITE FOR A MOBILE AUDIENCE FIRST

With 92.1% of internet users accessing the internet through a mobile phone, and 64% of the combined data traffic worldwide comes from mobile devices, we can see that every day, more people access the internet or search for local businesses on their mobile devices.

Did you also know that 76% of consumers who look for anything local on their smartphone visit the shop within one day and that mobile results have 85% more click-through rate than desktop results?

Mobile-first indexing is a pivotal step in the importance of mobile use and mobile SEO strategy. Google will now index websites depending on the mobile version. This makes it one of the most important trends this year.

In order to make the most out of mobile-first indexing, think about the following: 

  • Is my website responsive? 

  • Is my website simple and intuitive to navigate?

  • Does my website load fast enough? 

If you answered ‘no’ or ‘not sure’ to any of the above, it could be time you made changes and optimised your site for mobile. Again Google’s PageSpeed checker is a great way to keep on top of this.

5. YOUR GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE IS A TOP PRIORITY 

As of 2021, 42% of local searches involve clicks on the Google Map Pack so it’s essential that you invest in optimising and maintaining your Google Business Profile.

Another big local SEO trend in 2023 is maintaining your business’ details keeping them complete and accurate. According to The Media Captain, around 64% of consumers use Google Business Profiles to find contact information (source: Gitnux).

Studies show that 49% of local businesses generate over a thousand views on their Google Business Profile listings each month. 

93% of consumers read online reviews before buying a product or service and in 2021, 81% of consumers said they read these reviews on Google.

For any local business, your Google Business Profile will matter even more in 2023. We share several tips on how to optimise your Google Business Profile in our blog, 

6. REPUTATION IS EVERYTHING FOR LOCAL BUSINESSES

Simply sharing service or product information with customers is no longer enough. Customers are now demanding knowledge from first-hand customer experiences. In fact, a huge 93% of consumers will read online reviews before making a purchase. And, more than 90% of all customers use online reviews as part of their research at a local level

While 94% of online consumers say a negative online review has convinced them to avoid a business, it’s worth noting that reviews not only have the power to influence consumer decisions, but can also strengthen your company’s credibility. 

Reviews provide a great opportunity for businesses and customers to create and build a relationship. Establishing an emotional connection with customers provides 23% more revenue than with a non-engaged customer. Reviews have the power to earn customer trust, and encourage people to interact with your business. And customer interaction ultimately leads to increased profits for your business.

7. THE RISE OF VOICE SEARCH FOR LOCAL SEO 

A huge 58% of consumers use voice search to find a local store. With over half of people using voice search devices to find local businesses, you can’t miss the opportunity to capture these customers.

People use voice search differently from text searches. To reach these leads, you must allow them to find the relevant information they need and fast! This comes back to how Google wants to provide the cleanest, fastest and most useful service to end users. 

A major part of this is LaMDA, a language model which helps search engines understand natural language.  Google is now able to converse with customers when trying to find what they need and deliver results faster and more efficiently.  

With 75% of people who have smart speakers using them to search for local businesses weekly. It’s important to optimise how you rank in the search results for verbal searches.

8. LOCAL BUSINESSES CAN BENEFIT FROM VIDEO

Audiovisual content is extremely powerful, creating a strong connection with viewers and influencing customers to purchase something. Wyzowl says that 66% of consumers prefer watching a video to reading about a product.

Blogs, white-papers and other forms of text content still add value, but there’s no doubt that videos are far more popular with audiences and customers. 96% of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service. This means that potential customers are watching you and learning how you provide the solution to their needs.

For example, if you own a local camera store, you can create a YouTube channel that not only promotes your products but also shows your customers how to use their camera more professionally. Or if you’re a local pizzeria, you can upload videos about the origins of the dishes on your menu – adding value to what you serve. This content can also be shared on social media and embedded on your website. Bite-sized versions of the video can even be published to your Google Business Profile.

9. CREATE CONTENT FOR MULTI-SEARCH USING TEXT AND IMAGES

Whilst video is the favourite this year where content is concerned, this doesn’t mean there are not other forms of communication. Multisearch is making visual search one of the key local SEO trends for next year. Customers can now really envisage what they are about to buy.

Multi-search is a user friendly and intuitive way of searching – combining visual and textual searches. In 2019, according to an article by The Intent Lab, around 36% of consumers conducted a visual search. This number is expected to increase as more people adopt the use of Google Lens. In 2022 the app was used 8 billion times per month.

10. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) WILL IMPACT LOCAL SEO PERFORMANCE

While AI is still in its nascency, tools including ChatGPT and IBM's Watson are rapidly proving its worth to industry by automating tasks and boosting productivity across a range of sectors and departments, from answering FAQ and fielding customer service enquiries to collecting and analysing data for insights.

According to Deloitte 73% of AI adopters believe AI is “very” or “critically” important to their business today, and 64% say AI technologies enable them to establish a lead over competitors.

As a marketing function, AI can help with analysing and understanding trends in marketing data and customer feedback, quickly and efficiently generating new content (text, images and audio) for use on websites, social media, email and even within ad content. It can even be used to rapidly test and update landing pages, improve deliverability and response rates of email, and automate ad campaigns. 

Google and other search engines rely on extremely complex AI to determine how content gets ranked, and work out what product or content a uses is most likely to wants next. But their stance on AI doesn't necessarily cut both ways. 

So what about using AI to generate content? Will Google penalise it as spam? 

Remember quality of content is key. As such, Google's search engine rewards content based on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (or "E-E-A-T"), and their "Helpful Content Update" in August 2022 was launched specifically to ensure that their users see more original, helpful content written BY people FOR people. 

Final thoughts…

Some parting thoughts from our resident local SEO expert, James Vanderzee.

Local SEO continues to be an important marketing channel for any business that needs to attract nearby customers in 2023, and the ROI we're delivering for our clients is testament to that. 

I'm personally excited by the opportunities that AI offers for helping to improve local SEO, and we'll continue to explore these in 2023, but my strong suggestion would be to tread cautiously.

We're continuing to test a few AI tools to support us, our agency partners and our local business clients with keyword research, producing content ideas and even checking grammar. However, if you're using - or planning to use - AI to generate blog and landing page content for your business, don't rely too heavily on it. We don't want to risk any penalties from Google so use AI for brainstorming ideas and structure more than for entire posts and pages, and - most importantly - make sure that each and every output is run through a very human filter for originality, creativity, fact-checking and editing before you publish it.

Ultimately, getting the basics right - from getting your website in order to optimising your Google business profile - certainly helps. What's most evident from our findings is that focusing on delivering a great user experience - from your potential customers' choice of device (be it mobile or voice search) to ensuring the quality and relevance of content on your website - is key to getting those ranking results, clicks and conversions in 2023.

Is your local business looking for more customers from Google?

LocalMark is a London-based local SEO agency working with local businesses and their agencies across the UK. Our Local SEO service delivers highly-motivated local customers to businesses just like yours. If you'd like to build a steady stream of high-converting enquiries, in-store visits and sales, book a free consultation with our local SEO experts.