We all know how effective using the internet can be for finding useful information, researching a product or service, socializing or making purchases. But the topic we will be discussing is why local search engine optimization in important.
Google Algorithms Changes and SERP Watching
Understanding this, the demand for optimizing your content and your website has reached an all time high. What once was a practice concealed in mystery, SEO (search engine optimization) has become a multimillion dollar enterprise as a result of supply and demand.
Without relevant results, search engines are obsolete, therefore as the need for search technology improved, similarly the need for ranking higher in search engines grew in relationship to this, which is why now having optimized relevant content is just as important for your business as traditional advertising was in the past.
There are a few things to consider, first understanding the needs of the individuals searching for your site. If you had a site about selling more books, then having a general reference would be applicable since you are referencing something which is outside of a regional or geographic query.
So in this instance optimizing a national search term would be ideal. Aside from this say for example you had a car dealership, in which case a targeted local search engine optimization or local search marketing tactic is required.
Then you would utilize references to your city, state, surrounding counties or other significant elements that support local search optimization. In addition to this there are a number of useful local search tools such as Yahoo, Google, Superpages and others that can assist in augmenting organic search engine placement.
Regardless of what type of product or service you offer, naturally as a default there is a physical location. If you choose to utilize that in concert to your marketing efforts or if it is logical to do so, is entirely up to you.
Ranking highly in search engines is something that is relative to supply and demand. If a keyword or series of related key phrases have a high monthly or daily search volume, typically those are the more difficult terms to optimize due to the demand. It is not always the case, but more than naught.
If you consider the words at the top of the list the head and the words that have less frequent use the tail, this is an analogy to what is known as long tail search engine optimization. Long tail optimization is designed to capitalize on people conducting specific searches (usually indicative of a consumer) vs. someone just typing in a relative or broad search term.
Using the previous concept from before, a standard or broad search for someone interested in an automobile might be “buy a new car” whereas a long tail search term which has a higher conversion of searches to sales would be “buy a used ford mustang in Cleavland Ohio” is a long-tail search. This would produce results for pages that have the tags that are relevant to the criteria.
Is your business missing the mark for local search? There’s only one way to find out, have an SEO consultant evaluate your business model and your website to see if there are additional ways to maximize, profit, traffic or returns on your website.
National exposure is only required for a handful of industries, surprisingly most businesses are not taking full advantage of local search and optimizing their pages accordingly.
Aside from the fact that national optimization can take a considerable amount of time, effort and patience, optimizing less competitive phrases or using pivotal phrases with less competition provide the ability to work your way up the tail and achieve placement for the main or top broad search terms over time.
Ignoring local search or not seeing it as a viable investment suggests a lack of understanding on traffic, relevance and how search engines see your content. The more opportunities to showcase your website the better, those top 10 rankings add up and eventually translate into website authority, and what better way to get in the spotlight than by ranking for terms relative to your location.
For more information about local search marketing or optimization services Seo Design Solutions would be happy to provide a free analysis of your website.
Thank you, There are so many new people breaking into the market and calling themselves seo’ and producing content that is…lets say not good. It’s refreshing to see something useful. Thanks again
@Chris:
Thank you for commenting, we appreciate the feedback.
All the best.