Did you know that more than half of B2B marketers agree that SEO has made the largest impact on their lead generation? Local SEO is more important than ever for small businesses looking to connect to consumers. Why? There?s a few reasons.

1. The Phonebook is Dead

It?s probably been a while since you took this beast out of the drawer and flipped through page by page to find the appropriate entry. About 90% of people — if not more by the time you read this — no longer use a traditional phone book. So if you want to get local coverage, SEO is the way to go since most people will simply be typing things like ?pizza delivery? into Google search.

2. Content Marketing Helps Your Brand

The difference between companies that are able to harness social media and their web presence and turn it into tangible returns, and companies who struggle to gain traction online, is often their branding. Creating a tight website that lines up with your social media presence will help you to build traction, and build a reputation.

3. Mobile Friendly Website Design is Key

Did you know that 30% of restaurant searches are made from mobile devices? More and more, people are specifically turning to their phones when they have questions about local offerings. By investing in SEO, you can help capture this market. SEO focuses, in part, on making sure that you not only get the clicks — but that once people arrive on your website, they aren?t just going to turn around and leave.

4. Your Consumers Want Information

The time of the phone book is gone in more ways than one. People don?t just want a slogan and a phone number. They want directions, open hours, pricing information and more when they go to your website. As website designers can advise, streamlining this information on your website can be good for SEO — because it?s what people are going to notice when it pops up in their search results.

5. You Can Spend Less Elsewhere

The statistics on how many people routine read the paper every morning — or even how many people watch the news, in this Netflix age where so many young people don’t have a television — can be pretty grim. Local SEO helps you target your specific audiences so that you can stop throwing money into the black holes of advertising that exist elsewhere.