Some people think that SEO is not important at all nor that it has any demand on the web. But luckily, it's not true! In fact, local SEO plays a significant role worldwide and definitely makes up a large part of all searches on the web!
According to Google, in recent year (2022), around 46% of all searches were locally oriented. To put in another perspective, that's equal to approximately 3.9 billion searches EACH DAY!
Another concern (or a lie) regarding local SEO is that you "supposedly" need a huge budget. Fortunately, that is also not the truth! The biggest reason for this is weak competition. For example, if you search for the keyword "air conditions New Jersey" you won't find Amazon or Wall Street Journal because they're targeting the whole world market (not the local ones). Still, you will find smaller websites that are breaking through their local competition and presenting their specific business.
Due to the weak competition, which mainly doesn't invest in local SEO, a much smaller budget is needed, and therefore it is much easier to rank the site and beat all of them.
This SEO branch ties two things; local website optimization, which includes on and off-page SEO adaptation, and as well GMB listing and it's ranking. The simple goal of local SEO is to drive you more traffic through the website's ranking and Google My Business listing. It's obvious that both parts are important, and Google says that about 30% of local audience ends up on GMB listing, while the other 70% end up entering the websites.
Local SEO is very important to businesses and stores that primarily rely on local customers or to people that are temporarily in that location. Businesses of that type are food restaurants, car services, health care, housing services, lawyers, etc. And the best part is that it's completely free to list a business on Google. Therefore, if you have a physical address, make sure to apply as soon as possible!