I recently read an online article discussing the evolution of the search engine and whether the death of traditional search is right around the corner. The article offered a lot of food for thought. What caught my attention was the relationship between search engine evolution and local SEO. Local SEO services remain relevant even while search engines evolve.
It has been said that all business begins locally. I agree. Even the world’s largest corporations have local roots. Many of them started as small, local businesses targeting customers in the same city or town.
While I could not find exact numbers detailing the percentage of total businesses that are locally-focused, I did find plenty of data demonstrating that the vast majority of businesses in the U.S. employ fewer than 100 people. My guess is that most of them are locally focused.
3 Ways Search Engines Have Evolved
To get a better understanding of the importance of local SEO services, it might be helpful to look at some of the ways search engines have evolved over the years. For my money, here are the three most significant changes:
1. The Panda Update
Since Google drives the search engine world, all three changes pertain to the evolution of their algorithms. The first is the Panda update launched in 2011. It was a major update showcasing Google’s ability to identify low-quality and thin websites and subsequently remove them from search engine results. The Panda update forced SEO providers and content creators to step up their games in terms of quality.
2. The Mobile-First Search Engine
Google shook up the SEO world when it announced its mobile-first search engine. That was back in 2016. By giving preference to mobile friendly sites, Google forced SEO providers and web developers to pay attention to the needs of mobile users.
3. The Helpful Content Update
Finally came Google’s Helpful Content update, first launched in 2022. Seen by many as the biggest thing since Panda, the update was designed to place a heavy emphasis on content quality and relevance over mere keywords alone. Google went out of its way to introduce the update by encouraging content creators to focus on users first, rather than search engine algorithms.
Local SEO Continues to Flourish
All three major updates influenced SEO providers, content creators, and web developers. Interestingly, they also played right into local SEO. How so? By allowing providers to better deploy proven local SEO services in an environment that is both mobile friendly and capable of producing higher quality results.
The thing to understand is that local SEO is highly targeted. As the experts at Salt Lake City’s Webtek Digital Marketing put it, local SEO services are aimed had a comparatively small audience. Local companies are not trying to reach customers on the other side of the country.
The Panda update actually helped improve local SEO by getting rid of a lot of the internet clutter that had previously gotten in the way. Likewise for the Helpful Content update. Because of those updates, content designed around local SEO services can be more effective by focusing on topics important to local users.
Of course, the Mobile First update blew the lid off local search. So often, people running ‘near me’ searches do so on their phones. So having a search engine that prefers mobile friendly sites is a big deal.
Local SEO services are still relevant even though online search has evolved over the years. If your organization targets mainly a local audience, local SEO should be part of your digital marketing toolbox.