How Local SEO Can Help Las Vegas Businesses

A simple way in is to ask how you search for a Las Vegas business yourself. Chances are you go to Google, type in a search term, and a decent set of results appears for what you were after. But how do those businesses end up on the first page for that term? The answer lies with local SEO, where everything is set up not only for local search terms but for mobile devices too.

The thing to understand is that Google uses your location to work out where you are and what the likely answer to your search is. Search for “digital marketing in Las Vegas” and you get businesses in that city. But suppose the term were just “digital marketing company” — how would Google know which companies to show? By using the location of the phone in your hand, it shows local results.

So How Do Companies Rank For Local Search?

The first place to start is a Google Business Profile, still widely known as GMB. The listing carries the company’s address and zip code, and Google uses that to connect the business to the search.

The second is Google Maps — or, to be precise, making sure the pin actually matches where the business is, so there is a visual reference. In theory a customer can then ask for directions straight to the door.

The third is having plenty of genuinely local Las Vegas content on the website, to the point where Google understands this is a local business. Schema markup helps here too, since it states plainly what kind of business the site belongs to.

Finally, if the business operates from several places, giving each location its own page helps each one individually.

You will also see it claimed that if enough people search for a business on their phones and then use the directions function to drive to it, the local ranking improves. It is a widely repeated idea in the local SEO community rather than anything Google has confirmed, so treat it as a theory rather than a tactic to build a plan on.

All of these small differences add up in a local SEO campaign, and they are slightly different to what a national campaign needs. Bearing in mind that southern Nevada and Clark County cover a huge area, “local” search here can mean a good deal further than it does in other US cities.

There is more on how all this fits together on our digital marketing in Las Vegas page, including the Business Profile and Maps side of it.