Martial Arts World News Magazine - Volume 22 | Issue 1

SOCIAL 411
Understanding Local SEO for
Small Businesses
If you want to grow your martial arts school using the internet, you
have to be ever-conscious about your “Local” SEO.
Your Martial Arts School is a local business, and you want to
reach as many potential customers in your area as possible, that’s
where local SEO comes in.
Did you know that 97% of customers use search engines to find
businesses in their area? They are constantly looking for suggestions
to fulfill a need or desire. That means your potential martial
art students could be looking for you right now, but they won’t find
you if you don’t do anything on your end.
What Is Local SEO?
Local SEO is all about optimizing your website for searches
for your business category in the specific area you’re operating
AND using the tools that Google provides for your local business
profile.
This will increase the visibility of your business and make it easier
for people to find you both online and offline. In other words,
local SEO focuses on catering to the audience that’s “physically”
located in your area, or is specifically searching for solutions in
your specific area.
Is Local SEO Different?
Yes, there are some differences between local SEO and other
kinds of SEO, but they all support your martial arts marketing. For
one, searched on Google and other search engines are ‘localized’
when the search has a “local intent”, such as using “near me” or
specifying the area.
In other cases, Google (and others) will “assume” you have local
intent when you search for terms that Google thinks you would
be best served with local results, and even more granularly, when
you’re using a mobile device or other device that ‘knows’ your
physical location.
For example, if you search for “pizza delivery”, the Google algorithm
will ‘assume’ you’d like to order pizza from a restaurant ‘near’
you, so it will prioritize results to show you those locations that are,
in fact, near you.
Google has created a platform for local business to control
how their local profile looks to local searchers, outside their own
website. These results often provide the name of the business, a
description, images, opening hours, reviews, an address, a phone
number, and the website address. You can (and should) manage
your ‘local’ business profile from Google’s “My Business” system
(formerly Google Places) – www.google.com/business.
Local SEO Factors
As you can imagine, Google will consider many different factors
when it comes to local search ranking. It will consider the
proximity of the business to the searcher’s location to present the
closest options.
It also considers local keywords, like the city name, neighborhood,
or other keywords that indicate the local areas,
because they are essential to search engine ranking. Additionally,
on-page optimization for local SEO (sometime called
“Structured Data” or Schema) needs to provide the business’
name, address, and phone number in the format that Google
indexes most easily.
The algorithm also assesses authority based on reviews and
citation and it will take into consideration the information available
in your Google My Business profile, which plays a huge role
in rankings.
Conclusion
As a martial arts school owner, you want to reach as many
potential students as possible, so it’s important to reach people in
your vicinity.
20 MARTIAL ARTS WORLD NEWS VOLUME 22 | ISSUE 1
Illustration by ahmetemre