Any major digital marketing authority will preach the importance of a uniform local search presence for local businesses. There is no shortage of posts emphasizing the need to either spend the immense amount of time to clean up local search directories, or to pay someone to do so for you — and you won’t find any contrasting opinions here.
So widely is the importance of local SEO taught, but rarely is it outlined, in plain terms, why it is important. “It’s integral to SEO!” Why? “It will help your rankings!” Why? “It’s good for Domain Authority!” Why? Since so much time (and often money) is involved in making sure that all directory listings are uniform across the World Wide Web, why do we obediently follow instructions without understanding the reasons behind them?
In an attempt to reconcile this, here are three similes to shed light on the why of maintaining local SEO.
Local SEO Is Like Voting in a Democracy
All too often we are told that local SEO is important for search rankings, followed by a jargon-y sentence full of words like “consistency,” “brand,” and “uniformity.” Anyone trying to understand how it actually affects rankings may be lost in the mix.
It helps to look at local search listings as voting in a democracy. Having authoritative directories linking to your site are votes for your business, which can help improve search rankings.
What can be confusing is the fact that even slight inconsistencies between directory listings can split these “votes.”
Source: Hallme