business data on screen

SEO Design Chicago offers a variety of local SEO packages. Local SEO goes beyond using the right keywords. Simply listing your business details identically across all platforms will improve your search results. Search engines are a frequent resource for reviews, so the more positive reviews you compile, the more visible your business. Additionally, your website must be both presentable and mobile-friendly. SEO Design Chicago will help you improve your local SEO by performing a free local SEO analysis. Our experts will develop a strategy with you to maximize your local presence.

What Is Local SEO?

Local search engine optimization is the process of improving search engine visibility for local businesses, primarily those with brick-and-mortar locations. Following local best practices helps your business enhance organic traffic from customers searching in nearby areas. SEO Design Chicago can help you improve your local SEO strategy!

web optimization


A robust local SEO strategy is key to driving more people to your business. Local SEO statistics from Ahrefs show that 76% of people who search on their smartphones for something nearby visit a company within a day. Furthermore, 28% of those searches for something nearby result in a purchase. Therefore, if you serve customers locally, you should improve your local search presence so more people can find you.

Once you have decided that you are, in fact, a local SEO business, it is time to understand what a local search marketing plan can do for you. Your business must rank higher in search engine results when compared to the competition. Local SEO depends heavily on your potential customers’ keywords in their search queries. At SEO Design Chicago, we perform keyword research to take advantage of the primary and more nuanced keywords related to your local business.

Local SEO focuses on a more specific target. Instead of competing with the major companies in your market, you’ll be working on standing out in your community. SEO Design Chicago includes location-specific terms in keywords and backlinks to local events pages. These strategies boost your presence in a more relevant area and increase your rank when nearby searchers look for your product or services.

Benefits of Local SEO

Most small businesses rely on local customers to grow their business. Therefore, the benefits of local SEO are undeniable. Here are seven benefits of local SEO:

Improve Online Visibility

If your business doesn’t appear on the first page of search results, chances are audiences don’t even know you exist. Your business needs customers to be successful, so you need to put yourself in front of them. Use local SEO techniques to reach the top organic search results and improve your online visibility.

Build a Community

Both businesses and consumers understand the importance of building a community and supporting their local economy. If your business makes an effort to link to and connect with other local companies, you’ll see the effects online and in real life. Backlinks boost your online ranking and create supportive working relationships. Customers also appreciate and trust referrals from reputable businesses.

Increase Relevant Traffic

When you’ve got a local business, you need local customers. Sure, broad reach feels good, but the chances of people overseas becoming paying customers are pretty slim. When you focus on local targets, you encourage web visits from people who may actually come and visit your store.

Local Return Customers

More and more people are finding value in supporting the local economy. They also enjoy the convenience of doing business in their local area. Local SEO focuses on two key areas. One, people discover your business and stop by. Your business can provide people with incredible experience and win them over as loyal customers. And two, when they need these services in the future, your name will appear at the top of the search results and trigger their memory.

Build Trust and Authority

Appearing high on the search engine results pages will encourage your audience to trust your business and respect you. When you rank high on search engines, you appear as an authority in your field, making customers and clients more interested in working with you.

Reduce Ad Costs

Local SEO reduces your need for paying for ads as organic traffic has become the most valuable audience for your business. You get free advertising and gain more valuable clicks when you rank high on search engines.

Increase Sales

Increasing relevant traffic will boost your sales. Showing up as an authority in your area will increase the likelihood that local customers will choose your business when they’re ready to make a purchase. Even if they aren’t quite ready to buy, they’ll appreciate your proximity and availability.

Using GMB for Local SEO

Google my Business

SEO Design Chicago uses Google My Business for local SEO. GMB is now known as Google Business Profile, but its function is the same. It’s Google’s way of managing how your business looks and performs in the search engine. Google Business Profile continues to be the biggest driver of local SEO success.

SEO Design Chicago will optimize your Google Business Profile so that you succeed in the three most important ranking factors: relevance, distance, and prominence.

  • Relevance determines how well your business fits the customer’s search intent.
  • Proximity focuses on the searcher’s location to provide the most relevant local businesses.
  • Prominence evaluates the activity around your business listing, including reviews, events, local content, etc.

At SEO Design Chicago, we recognize the importance of updating your Business Profile as your business changes. We keep everything active, monitor reviews, and stay on top of your business’s activity so your local SEO improves.

Using Bing for Local SEO

Microsoft Bing logo

Bing Places is Microsoft’s version of Google’s Business Profile. Both platforms have different algorithms and focus, but they provide quality results. Bing focuses on social sites, while Google focuses on informative sites. Using Bing for local SEO and Google’s Business Profile allows your business to reach a wider audience.

SEO Design Chicago can help you improve your business’s listing on Bing by doing the following:

  • Fill out your profile entirely and correctly.
  • Add images to your listing.
  • Add reviews to enhance your business’s credibility.
  • Optimize your business’s website and attach the URL to your Bing profile.

If you need help optimizing your website, SEO Design Chicago offers various web design and development services and search engine optimization services.

Manual vs. Automated Local SEO

In manual SEO, our SEO experts implement various on-page and off-page SEO strategies into your website by hand. Our experts use software to implement SEO strategies into your website with automated SEO.

For local SEO, both strategies have pros and cons.

Pros of Manual Local SEO

  • Total control over search engine optimization strategies
  • Certify SEO tasks are handled according to plan
  • Improve off-page SEO by handpicking backlinks
  • Evaluate the quality of the backlinks content

Cons of Manual Local SEO

  • Time-consuming
  • Involves dedication and effort
  • Takes time to implement

Pros of Automated Local SEO

  • Cheaper and faster
  • Easily handle tedious and time-consuming tasks
  • Get accurate, up-to-date information on keyword rankings
  • Easily analyze the competition 
  • Schedule SEO tasks to save time

Cons of Automated Local SEO

  • Has the potential to get low-quality backlinks
  • Focuses on quantity over quality

SEO Design Chicago uses a mixture of automated and manual SEO to benefit your business in the short and long term. We build successful SEO campaigns over time because we know these decisions pay off in the long run.

Schedule a review of your Local Search presence,
or learn about other Digital Marketing Services that we provide!

Benchmarking for Local SEO

When we create benchmarks for local SEO, we compare your company against others in your industry or the broader marketplace. With this competitive analysis, we can understand your business’s performance relative to your competitors and help you set growth goals, and discover industry trends.

To create benchmarks for local SEO, we define keywords appropriate to your business and analyze them for their effectiveness. Then, we check the technical differences between your site and your competitors’ sites to find areas of improvement. Next, we evaluate content opportunities such as category or product pages and your blog. Finally, we compare the user experience on each site because great UX makes for a better time on site, more pages views, and a lower bounce rate.

seo competitor analysis group working

Once we know the main differences between your website and your competitors’ websites, we can prioritize optimizations and get to work. We’ll fix easy things quickly and determine what issues might have the most significant impact on your rankings, and improve those as well.

Ongoing Content for Local SEO

Ongoing, fresh content is critical for local SEO success. Your website is a living, breathing entity on the internet. If you don’t update it regularly, people and search engines may believe it is dead and has nothing new to offer. 

If you update your website frequently with high-quality content, people and search engines will recognize it and appreciate your business.

Here are five other reasons why updating your website frequently with new content is essential.

New content means your website gets indexed frequently.

Every time you update your website, search engines notice and re-evaluate your site’s ranking. Therefore, if you want to increase the chances of your website getting a higher ranking, update the content frequently so that search engines reassess your position on their index. Remember that high-quality content is key here, not just the sheer quantity of content.

Google loves frequent updates.

Google has a tremendous influence on webmasters and how people build websites. When Google shows its love for websites that update frequently, this is a sure sign that you should add fresh content to your website regularly. If you update your content often with reliable and valuable information, you have a better chance of ranking your site higher with each update.

More content allows you to include more keywords.

Frequently added content, such as blog or article postings, allows you to optimize the article with pertinent keywords to attract visitors to your site. Write content that answers questions, explains how to do something for the reader, or provides quality information that they want while including keywords naturally.

Fresh content increases your authority in your industry.

Everyone strives to become an industry authority in Google’s eyes. If you publish informative, valuable content that pertains to your industry, Google will view your website as an authority and you as a thought leader. Your positive reputation will grow when you consistently write high-quality content, and your readers will become loyal to your business.

New content keeps your audience engaged and informed.

When you write new content regularly, you keep current subscribers updated and provide further information to convert new visitors into customers. Keeping your audience engaged develops long-term loyalty, creating returning traffic that adds value to your website. 

Local SEO Packages Cost

Local business listings and business citations are essential for local SEO strategy. We provide several local search optimization packages that focus on the most critical local citations and directories to get you found in local searches.

SEO Design Chicago offers local SEO packages for new businesses and advanced businesses. We also provide monthly local optimization packages and monthly ongoing local content creation packages.

New Business Local Listings Package

Local business listings are online listings that display information about your business, including your name, address, business hours, phone number, and other data.Initial manual push to disperse important business details across the web in local directories

  • Local listings creation, adjustments on listing issues, and verification of current listings
  • A monthly report highlighting changes in monthly listings
  • Business citations data provided to hundreds of sites simultaneously
  • Data supplied to mobile applications and map services
  • Data updates included for one year
  • Optimized for maps, navigation, and GPS
  • Setup and optimization of Google My Business
  • Setup and optimization of Bing Local

Advanced Local Listings Package

Great for current businesses that need to supercharge their local presence and local listings.

  • Manual submission for additional top 50 sites
  • Listings creation, adjustments, and verification
  • We provide login details for all accounts
  • Toxic duplicate listings removed
  • Business data provided to hundreds of online business listings simultaneously
  • Data provided to mobile applications and map services
  • Data updates included for one year on online business directories
  • Continuous scanning of backlinks
  • Setup and/or optimization of Google My Business
  • Setup and/or optimization of Bing Local
  • Optimized for maps, navigation, and GPS

Monthly Local Optimization Package

  • Ensure that business data is provided in online directories and remains current
  • Maintain the appearance of the business on Facebook, Google, Yelp along with search engines, online business directories, apps, and maps
  • Basic business listings information provided such as name, phone number, and address
  • Major data provider monthly submissions
  • Claim, verification, and publication of top 20 local listings
  • Creation of Yellow Pages and 411 online business listings
  • Submission of local business listings to over 200 business directories

Monthly Ongoing Local Content Creation Plans

  • Ongoing custom content creation for Google My Business
  • Ongoing local updates for citations and local listings
  • Content created exclusively for social media with regular posting by our marketing team
  • Niche-related content creation

Select a social media package:

  • Facebook (Daily M-F)
  • LinkedIn (Daily M-F)
  • Twitter (Daily M-F)
  • Instagram (10 per month)

Or select a bundled social media package that includes the following:

  • Facebook; two posts per week
  • Google My Business; one post per week

You can also choose a custom-created social media package specific to your business.

Schedule a review of your local search presence and learn more about our local SEO packages today!

Schedule a review of your Local Search presence,
or learn about other Digital Marketing Services that we provide!