1. What is SEO
SEO is the process of getting your content seen by more people. This is done by improving your content, building backlinks and improving your site’s user experience.
SEO isn’t just about optimizing your content. By using six rules you can prioritize your content to get to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs). Other elements of your marketing include optimizing your site for navigation, making it searchable and user-friendly, and adding any relevant keywords. All of these elements contribute to your SEO strategy.
Local SEO is about getting the most visitors to your location. This means improving your marketing strategies for making your business successful naturally, organically, without exogenous help. Local SEO is definitely an important part of the puzzle to getting your content seen by an audience that is searching for your unique product or service.
Though the two are sometimes confused, there are actually six different terms that should be avoided confusing them. Here are the main ones that I see people misusing and why.
1. Local SEO
SEO or local SEO is the process of finding specific, relevant, and valuable content and directing it to the right people in search engines.
2. Backlink
Backlinks are inbound links that point to specific content. These are generally referred to as internal links and are the lowest-tier link type.
3. Keyword
A keyword is a term that customers, users, and search engines can learn about a business online. Keywords can be used to create targeted marketing efforts.
4. Keyword Planner
A keyword plan is your SEO strategy for a specific keyword phrase. It’s a good way to determine what is working for your business.
5. Keyword Bounce
Keyword bounce rates are the number of times a keyword appears in the last month of a given search.
2. What is Local SEO
Local SEO is a method of optimising your website to rank highly for search queries that are related to your business. For example, if you’re a plumber in Melbourne, local SEO would involve optimising your website for search queries that are related to plumbing in Melbourne.
This involves showing up on the first page of Google when people type in ‘plumber’ or ‘mason Percents’. Optimising your content to include search queries related to your business, automatically directs users to your website for relevant insight.
While local SEO is focused on the business, SEO is anything but local. While Google may claim that local SEO is all about location, it doesn’t stop there. There are other elements that contribute to the rankings of a website, like the content of the website.
SEO can have an impact on several key aspects of a website, resulting in a drop in user behaviour and improved user experience (UX). In short, local SEO is about targeting your website to relevant search queries, but it doesn’t stop there! It involves:
Before you get started on the local SEO emails or Google planner you will need to find out what local SEO is all about. Fortunately, Google provides several resources that show how to get started with SEO in your specific city or state.
The top tip is to utilise HTTPS on your website, since a website's SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption protects its online information. Making your website more secure enables your website to stay up to date and protects you from hackers.
Google’s Local SEO Breakdown neatly summarises how to optimise your website for local searches. It focuses on what workarounds or techniques you can use to improve SEO. In a nutshell, if you use universal keywords to target local search queries, you will rank higher on the first page of Google.
Because your website isn’t optimized for local searches it doesn’t show up on first page, ‘Google first’. It also lowers your perceived quality, and increases competition from other local websites.
3. The difference between Local and SEO
Local SEO requires that you have a physical address where people can visit your store or office. If you’re using SEO to draw people to your website, then you don’t necessarily need a physical address.
Still, it’s important to find a spot on the internet where people congregate. There are a number of search engines that can pinpoint your website’s location. You can also rely on not being ranked on any one search engine. This is because your marketing is more about building brand recognition and ultimately converting people to customers.
“Local SEO is more of a marketing strategy for achieving a specific goal to influence and impact the selection of a consumer for a certain reason and based on a geographic location linked to advertising. It is used to build brand awareness of a business,“ the Priceonomics blog states.
Without a physical address to show for people to go to, you can’t build any type of brand or advertisement about your business. This is important, because the customer is the only one who can buy or use your products, so finding a way to get the word around to real potential customers is crucial to your success.
It makes sense that your business would have a physical location that people can visit. Ideally, you would want to be visible on major search engines like Google, or at least in the top 5 results when someone types a keyword that is relevant to your customers and products.
Online businesses should bear in mind that the location of their physical store or office is irrelevant — they cannot match someone searching for a product or service in a city or even a state they’re in. A couple of simple search engine alerts can help determine the geographic location of your competitors or any area where you could give customers a reason to visit your store.
4. How do you get started with Local SEO?
There are four main things you want to do to get started with local SEO. The first is to claim your online listings. You want to claim your business listing on Google and Yelp and make sure that you’re on any other local directories that are relevant. The second thing is to create citations.There are a great number of websites that give you the citation, rank you in their search results, and give you the chance to grow your business. The third thing is review sites. These sites rate competitors and give you feedback on your offerings. The fourth thing is content marketing. Google, Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms are great places to get high-quality content that will help your business stand out.
Let’s go through each one of these in turn. Thank you for understanding what these are, where they come from, how to get started with them, and have a little understanding of what each one entails.
To get started with SEO, search engines like Google and others use data about the web to understand how users behave and provide relevant content to users.
Two types of data that information that are from Google is referred to as Google Content ML and Google Structured Data. The first uses proprietary algorithms on how users interact with content to predict what types of content users might be interested in. The second looks at how search engines categorize content to understand what types of content, labels, or keywords users might use. This lets you build a profile of your target customers and what they might be interested in.
Google only uses the content that is submitted by websites. That means online stores that are offline are not considered, so consequently, provide no value to those types of SEO campaigns. That’s why it’s helpful to focus on aggregating content from sites that are online to gain relevant data. To do that, check out this piece from Smashing Magazine, Local SEO Statistics Now You Know.
There are different reasons content is didn’t find a user.
Conclusion: If you're using Google AdWords, then it's important to realize the distinction between local and organic search results, because these two fields often overlap. Working with a professional who understands both can help your marketing efforts tremendously.
There are two main fields that you want to focus on when it comes to paid advertising in the search engine space: local and organic. Local results are often the ones that show up on the left hand side of the page under “Local Places.” If you go to Google and type in restaurants, the restaurants that show up there are from the local field.Organic results option gives search results to a business that has earned the webmaster or webmaster’s group (WG) approval to include a business in their organic results.
There is a wide range when it comes to local SEO and site architecture. It can come and go with just as much rapidity as the visuals of a search results page (SERP). One popular structure for a site that is primarily local is a Nucleus SEO Hub. This web-based platform makes the pieces fall naturally into place to provide the best user experience possible. Nucleuses are built for SEO but other factors should also be taken into consideration while designing them.
On May 14, 2018, Google released a new version of the SERP called Local SEO Report. This tool is a part of Google’s suite of products that collect local SEO data on a daily basis. This tool gave organizations a new snapshot into what organic local results look like in search and how they compare in the field.
Google needs written permission from WG to show something in your organic results page. It also needs written consent to create your links. These two elements guide how organic results appear, and how each company’s SEO efforts are presenting that to the search engine users.
Setting up a local SEO strategy that aligns with Google’s guidelines is important to connect to your search engine results (SERP) as best as possible.
Things to know about local SEO include:
So many businesses think announcing yesterday that they are starting up a business of their own online is the end of the world. However, in reality, it doesn’t take a lot of work to get momentum and get your foot in the door with SEO.
