When people go online these days, 93% of the time their experience begins with a search engine. People are looking for something, and when people are looking, they are most often looking at the organic results. In fact, 70-80% of people ignore the paid ads and go directly to the top results that their keyword searches bring up.

Local search SEO targets what keywords a person will most often enter into the search engine window when looking for something that your business has to offer. If you want to capitalize on all of the searching, you need a team that is on top of what the most active keyword searches are and will get your online presence top the top of those search results.

There are plenty of affordable SEO companies around that can do just that. At the same time, the more familiar with your market a professional SEO company is the better it will be for you. Local searchers are using keywords that are more familiar to the local population and are targeting a more direct path. If you know the local area such as street names, your search can be more quickly satisfied.

No matter what the local search SEO strategy is, the one thing that is clear is that three-quarters of searchers never scroll beyond that first page of search engine results. Getting in the top 10 search results for select keywords can mean the difference between more sales than you can handle and no sales at all.

To give a very rough example of how this all works, consider Harry’s Hardware Store in Bristol, CT. If someone comes to Bristol Connecticut and needs some hardware, he might google “hardware stores.” It might or might not lead him to Harry’s place. It might give him a hardware store in another town. However, if the searcher types in “hardware stores in Bristol, CT” and Harry has targeted those local keywords, chances are he will show up high in the search results, giving him the best chance to bring in a new customer.

In the average week in the United States, there are over 645 million local page views. Local search SEO is responsible for who shows up on the first page and who shows up 25 pages deep. Targeting for the right local keywords brings the business right to your virtual doorstep. Consumers don’t want to do more work than they have to. And they won’t Making sure that your keywords line up with what’s being searched and when gives you the edge.

Remember, too, that keywords are not like newspaper headlines. They can’t just be catchy titles you think people will find amusing or entertaining. Keywords are science. With analytics, you can find rather quickly what most people type into the search engines when they are looking for stores like yours.