Understanding local search intent

Local search intent is defined as the goal a searcher has when they type a query into a search engine when seeking a resource in a specific geographic location. The local searcher could be looking for anything from a nearby cup of coffee right away to information about restaurants they’d like to dine at in another city, state, or country on an upcoming trip. 

If you’ve just begun serving local business clients, or an existing virtual business you’re marketing is about to open its first physical location to serve the public, this article will help you to understand and serve local search intent successfully. 

Define local search intent

Search engine optimizers (SEOs) typically categorize general search intent under the following four categories, all of which are also applicable to the local search scenario:

Informational intent

Think of a searcher who is looking for basic or in-depth information about a topic. For example, a local searcher might want to know what the oldest building in their town is, or what their county’s building codes are for adding an ADU to their property, or how to plant a water-wise garden in their city’s microclimate. 

Commercial intent

Think of someone doing research before making a purchase. Their search engine queries might include phrases like “which is the best phone carrier near me”, or “where can I get the cheapest running shoes in X city”, or “which laptops are the fastest?”

Transactional intent

Think of a searcher who has done their research and is ready to make a transaction. Examples of their searches might include “organic coffee near me”, “buy running shoes in X city”, or “book a manicure today in X city”. 

Navigational intent

Think of a searcher whose intent includes a specific brand name, website destination, or other online resource, rather than being open to any possibility. Their searches might include wording like “HP laptop near me”, “phone number dr. jim wong”, or “order little caesar’s pizza”. 

From the above examples, you can quickly see how local intents exist in all four categories, and if you experiment with many of the sample search phrases, you’ll see how frequently search engines like Google will return localized results, including local pack results like these:

Google will also customize their organic results if they feel is a local intent behind a given search:

And Google will also pull information from local resources to generate localized answers via AI Overviews:

Google’s goal is to match the intent behind a local search to the most relevant resources in their index. In marketing a local business, your goal is to understand local intent and publish digital assets that prove to both search engines and searchers that you are the right match for a specific local need. 

How do you optimize for local search intent?

A complete local search marketing strategy strives to provide helpful content for all four intents, so that potential customers are assisted through every phase of their journey, from wanting to know more information, to researching options before a transaction, to being ready to make that transaction, and to connecting with specific sites, brands, or resources. 

Searchers may take a winding path, transition back and forth between different intents as they come to a final decision, but no matter when or where they discover and engage with a local business you’re marketing, your digital assets need to be optimized to serve them. 

Let’s look at four different methods for meeting a variety of local intents:

Using Google Business Profiles (GBPs) to match local intents

Perhaps the most direct way to begin serving local intents is to ensure you have created and validated a Google Business Profile for each location of your business. If a searcher uses language like “near me”, includes a city name or other geographic term in their query, or even if Google just considers a particular phrase to have a highly local intent, they are almost certain to return a local pack of results. Your inclusion in Google’s local packs begins with your creation and verification of a GBP. 

Your less-motivated competitors may not put in the necessary work to fully fill out their GBPs so that they are ideally optimized for local intent matching. Increase your chances of being seen as a relevant result for local intent queries by investing the time to enrich your listings with the following content:

• Photos that prove where your business is, what brands it carries, what services it offers, and desirable attributes such as convenience, quality, cheapness, etc.
• Videos that help the public understand how to compare your products and services favorably to other nearby offerings
• Product listings and enrollment in Google Merchant Center so that your inventory can be understood and accessed
• A business description that focuses on fulfilling the commonest intents of your user base (example: “we have the largest selection of HP and Lenovo laptops in San Jose”)
• Reviews and owner responses to reviews that demonstrate trustworthiness, professionalism, and great customer service

Using on-page website content to serve local intents

The multimedia content on your website should be organized and optimized to match specific user intent, but before you begin writing, photographing, and filming aspects of your business, you need to research two things: 

1. The most prevalent intents of your customer base – use keyword research tools, surveys, polls, and other forms of audience research to surface the language your community uses during each phase of intent. For example, how do your customers search when they are researching a topic vs. when they are ready to buy?

2. Google’s take on intent – take the findings of your audience research and discover which types of content Google is returning, based on their understanding of the intent behind each phrase. For example, what do you see Google returning for the search phrase “how to calculate my mortgage payment”? Are you seeing tools and widgets in the SERPs, how-to videos, text content, photographs, infographics, podcast episodes? By knowing what Google is prioritizing as the best answers for specific queries, you will know which types of on-page content are likely to be best-equipped to earn visibility for each type of local intent. 

Search intent is also sometimes referred to as user intent. It’s vital to keep your eye on the user in all you publish, and in optimizing for local intent, we see one of the key differentiators between it and general search intent: all aspects of your on-page publishing should continuously reiterate location. Your title tags, meta descriptions, headers, main body content, alt text, video transcripts, tools, and all other assets should emphasize that your offering is associated with a specific geography.

You aren’t just offering family-style Italian dinners, late-night laundry facilities, or walk-in dental appointments. The business you’re marketing is offering these things in Chicago, or Philadelphia, or San Francisco. Don’t make mistake of counting on Google or potential customers to guess where you are – be specific about exactly when, where, and how your goods and services are available on every page of your site.

Off-page assets help you meet further local intents

In the early days of the internet, serving local intent was as simple as a user discovering and clicking on a link to your website. Now, user behavior has diversified, and your potential customers are looking for local business information and recommendations in multiple ways.

In addition to publishing robust on-page content that serves all four search intents, you can widen the path to discovery by ensuring that searchers are encountering off-page references to your business on all of the following:

• Local business listings indexes other than Google, like Apple Business Connect, YP.com, Yelp, Facebook, or TripAdvisor
• Third-party publications that publish “best of” lists, like the Yelp example shown above featuring a curated list of popular eateries in a particular city
• Social media platforms like Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, Nextdoor, and TikTok, where local businesses are a constant topic of discussion
• Video channels like YouTube, where you can publish your own rich video media or appear as a guest on the channels of others
• Podcasts or vlogs in your industry or geographic region
• Private channels and publications like Discord servers, Patreon pages, or Substack communities that are relevant to your town or industry
• Blogs that publish information about your city or vertical
• Local news sites that publish local business stories

The more places your business is cited as an authoritative resource on a specific topic, the better your chances of being visible to potential customers during different intent phases.

Optimize technical elements to further reach

Your website and digital assets must offer a user experience that is free of technical roadblocks in order to avoid losing customers when they are on the verge of transacting with you. In addition to having a fast website which renders properly across all devices, local businesses should pay particular attention to the following elements:

• Store locators – these should be easily discovered on the site, simple to use, and contain absolutely accurate information in terms of contact data and hours of operation; competitive businesses at an enterprise level should invest in a store locator product that is sophisticated enough to return accurate real-time inventory and filtered data layers that match complex intent.
• Shopping carts – these should be as frictionless as possible, and should make fulfillment options (BOPIS, curbside pickup, home delivery, shipping) abundantly clear. Charges should be described with transparency to avoid shopping cart abandonment and reputation damage from disappointed customers.
• Booking tech – regularly test all calendar and booking widgets to be sure they are functioning properly to avoid lost conversions.
• Navigational menus – multi-location brands that are not large enough to require the implementation of a store locator widget should ensure that high-level navigation menus contain obvious links to appropriate location landing pages for each branch of the business.
  

How do you measure if you’ve successfully optimized for local search intent?

Intent-based local search marketing campaigns must be tracked so that performance can be measured. For example, imagine that a general contracting firm you’re promoting has discovered that its community frequently searches for local information about qualifying to add an ADU to their property in a specific city or county. 

Based on your research of what Google is currently returning in their SERPs for these queries, you may decide to publish a text-based how-to guide on this topic. Benchmark where you are currently ranking for this search term, prior to publication, then publish and benchmark again during a set time frame (four weeks, three months, etc.) Hopefully, with some linkbuilding, social media marketing, and other forms of promotion, you will begin to see your new asset gaining visibility for the desired search phrases. 

However, if the asset fails to perform up to your expectations, it may be time to go back to the drawing board to reconsider whether Google is convinced that the format you’ve chosen is the best match for the targeted intent. Could it be that re-envisioning your long form guide as a video or an infographic might more closely match what Google wants to show searchers? 

An experimental mindset is absolutely necessary when it comes to intent matching, as is using the combination of tools and customer communications to drill down to the forms of content that people find most assistive at different phases of their journey. By tracking the performance of your intent-based content, you will be able to see when you are successfully experiencing growth in SERP visibility, traffic, listing metrics like clicks-to-call and requests for directions, web page dwell time, conversions, and sales.