The Internet has given individuals and businesses the chance to reach a global audience in ways never seen before in human history. However, for businesses that are smaller or more locally-focussed, sometimes taking on the world isn’t going to yield the best results. Quite often, the best course of action for more locally-minded businesses is to develop a strong local SEO campaign.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO campaigns allow you to optimise your online presence in a way that specifically targets an area of your choice. Rather than attempting to take on an entire industry in the digital landscape, these types of campaigns mean that you are only competing against other businesses within your chosen area(s).
What are the Benefits of a Local SEO Campaign?
When compared with traditional search engine optimisation, localised SEO has two main benefits:
Better Targeting
While you might spend thousands of dollars getting yourself to the number 1 spot for keywords like “sports apparel” across Australia, that won’t necessarily have a great ROI if you don’t offer shipping. Alternatively, ranking number 1 on Google for a geographical keyword, like “sports apparel in Doncaster” will have less reach, but will provide you with more relevant traffic.
A Lower Barrier to Entry
As with the above point, if you’re taking on optimisation for a global keyword, you’re taking on the globe. Businesses looking to rank well for keywords like “designer jeans” will be going toe-to-toe against retail juggernauts and designers alike for those rankings; a fight most SMEs are destined to lose. By targeting your campaign more specifically, you are cutting out a large number of competitors that you may not even benefit from competing with.
So, How Do You Do It?
Whilst it’s all well and good to try and talk about the benefits of local SEO, it’s not particularly helpful if you don’t know where to start. For those that don’t feel they are up to the task, working with an established digital marketing agency is likely the best approach. However, if you have already formed an SEO campaign and are looking for ways to improve your local results, here’s a few things that can be done.
Keyword Research is Your Friend
As was suggested earlier, the keywords you choose to target will effectively make or break your digital presence right from the start.
Let’s take a Japanese restaurant in Balwyn as an example, given that restaurants are the establishments that tend to benefit most from local SEO. A restaurant only has a relatively small reach when it starts out; with dining out being very location-based and even deliveries having a relatively small radius.
This means that, unless you’re a renowned eatery in a densely-populated city, trying to target “Japanese food Australia” would be entirely pointless. Even “Japanese food Melbourne” is likely to provide you with a lot of irrelevant traffic.
A business of this kind needs to be very specific in its target demographic which, in this case, would be those looking for Japanese food in the Balwyn area. So, although “Japanese food Balwyn” is likely to yield fewer searches than more broad terms, those that find your site through this keyword are going to be much more likely to convert.
Just make sure that whatever your primary target keyword is, it gets some level of monthly traffic. There’s no point in trying to develop a comprehensive campaign based around attracting an audience that doesn’t exist.
Optimise, Optimise, Optimise
Now that you have your list of local keywords, it’s time to start putting them to good use. In today’s search engine climate, high-quality, engaging content is an absolute must for those establishing a strong presence online. What this means is, while you want to ensure that your chosen keyword appears throughout your website, that doesn’t mean you should have it in every sentence.
Going by the Yoast SEO measurement of optimisation, your keyword should ideally appear in 1% of your content (once every hundred words or so). Additionally, you should ensure that no page on your website is without ample content. Google’s crawlers will prioritise indexing pages with 300+ words of information for each page, and is getting better all the time at sorting good and bad content.
Also, remember to have your contact information and business address easily accessible and crawlable (don’t have it as an image on your site). By doing so, search engines will be able to more effectively send people your way. Finally, consider starting a blog that discusses topics relevant to your industry. Search engines prioritise websites that are updated regularly, and so a blog is the perfect way to show them that you are an active presence online.
Start a Google My Business
Have you ever looked up a business on Google, only for a sidebar to pop up providing you with all of the information you need regarding reviews, services, images, contact information, and more? That’s a Google My Business. This highly-valuable, informative tool allows you to take control of how potential customers find and interact with your services. Plus, it’s free to start one!
Utilising your chosen keywords and the same skill set as optimising your website’s pages, you can increase the chances that people searching for your service will find your GMB over a competitor. Just make sure that you provide as much information as you can to assist in Google’s algorithmic rankings and allow customers ease-of-access to your services.
Whilst there will always be more to do when it comes to local ranking factors, this should hopefully give you an idea of the pathways available to you. If you’re unsure how to proceed, working with a digital marketing agency with local SEO experience is always an excellent option. It will come with regular fees, but if it assists you in dominating your little area of the business world, it’s more than worth it.