If your company serves a national or global market, you may think you can bypass local SEO in your Internet marketing strategy.
You would be wrong.
Local SEO should be part of virtually every SEO campaign, for several reasons. Here is an overview of why local SEO has become so important.
1. Personalized Search Results
At one time, Google served organic search results more or less uniformly for any given search query. Today, this is no longer the case. Google personalizes SERPs (search engine results pages) based on several factors, including the user’s search history, the type of search being conducted (e.g., news, video) and geographic location. Even if the given search query is not expressly local in its intent, Google tends to favor locally optimized Web content — especially when those searches are conducted by mobile users. A strong local SEO strategy enables you to stand out from competitors that have not bothered to implement local SEO, and ones that are doing local SEO incorrectly.
2. Capitalize on Strategically Important Markets
If certain markets stand out as being especially favorable or important to your business, a local SEO campaign can throttle up lead production in the areas where you most want and need it. Many companies put emphasis on large, competitive markets (such as Chicago or Los Angeles), where local SEO emphasis reduces competition from hundreds of thousands of companies marketing without local SEO, to several hundred (or fewer) that are executing strong local campaigns.
Which local markets you target depends on your budget, competitive landscape, ROI calculations and several other factors — we can help you figure out the most cost-effective approach if you are not sure.
3. Local Keyword Variation
Some businesses need different keywords for different regions of the country. A great example is soda versus pop. If you are selling pop (as we say here in Chicago), you will need to select different keywords depending on the state or region you are targeting — if you use the keyword “pop”, nobody in the Northeast will know what you are talking about!
Other businesses may not have such extreme differences in language, but even smaller variations can have an enormous cumulative downward drag on conversions. Local SEO gives you the flexibility to shape your keyword strategy around specific locations, increasing lead production, reducing cost per conversion and thus improving campaign ROI.
Want to discuss implementing a local SEO campaign to generate more leads and better leads? Contact us now! We’d love to hear more about your needs.