SEO and Local SEO use a lot of the same strategies, and help to improve your rankings, attract more users, and shine during relevant searches. Most people refer to the internet while looking for any of their requirements, and these methods help bring their attention to your brand and business.

Most people, in fact almost 70% of internet users tend to refer to the first 3 options on their screen post an internet search.

SEO uses relevant key words, google ads, paid ads, content optimisation, speeding up your website load time, and so much more to attract these users to your website.

Local SEO does the exact same thing, however, uses strategies so that your website appears in local searches. Users can activate their location and browse through websites, businesses and brands based on where they are located. This helps them go through only the relevant information, and find brands that are the closest to them and that are easier to access.

Thus, using local SEO helps you attract all these users and turn them into customers.

As mentioned previously, it targets the audience based on your geographical area. This helps your brand to grow both online and offline, as local users would tend to visit your establishment as well. It helps you be featured in the list of local business listings, and get featured in the area you matter the most.

It also helps your brand by targeting the important users who would most likely become customers due to your proximity & location.

For example, if someone looks for “best restaurants in Mumbai”, using Local SEO would help you to feature in the top three listings and would help increase the frequency of your customers.

Some factors that help increase your local ranking are:

- Gaining and sorting reviews on Google.

- Getting back links from important and relevant websites.

- Adding your contact details, like your phone, address and more to your website.

- Using appropriate and relevant local keywords.

- Claiming profiles on Google My Business, Google maps, and more.

These largely help you become more relevant in your area, and get featured during a search.

Post a search result, your business can be featured in a box, portfolio or a directory site. This is local business listing, where your business and its contact details are featured on the internet after a user searches for relevant information.

Using the right Local SEO strategies, and adding more information about your business like address, email, and phone number helps in getting featured as they appear to be more credible.

Google My Business is a business listing website that helps your business get featured after a search. It is free and available to use for everyone. You can get your business verified, add more information, attract more users, and tell them your story. It is extremely necessary for your brand and business.

You can measure local SEO for your business through these following methods.

- Monitoring your average page load time, making sure it is speedy to sustain the attention of a user and not lose out to competition.

- Checking your local rankings on Google, Yahoo, and all relevant search portals.

- Seeing the number and content of reviews as per location.

- Keeping a tab on the traffic you receive through different engines and sites, and the conversion rate.

- Monitoring backlinks, bounce rate, citations and links.

It can cost anywhere between 10,000-30,000, depending on factors like your brand status, keyword research, your competitors, your niche, your requirements, how you wish to grow your brand and how much, which browsers you wish to target, and of course, your locality.

This again, is totally subjective based on your brand and whether or not you already have a claimed Google listing. It can take anywhere between 2 to 6 Month, more or less depending on several factors. Your niche, your brand categories, your site development, and your already established factors.