The Benefits of Local SEO

Most people don't understand the benefits of local SEO and are too focused on short tail keywords (smaller keywords and higher traffic) that they don't consider the majority of their traffic can come from local visitors. There are several factors to take into consideration when trying to locate your local target market such as:

Population - Is there enough people within a specific area to justify the effort of Search Engine Optimisation?

Competition - Has a brand been developed within this area? If so, are they established well enough to be a market leader or is there a gap for your services?

Community - Is there a community website you can partner with in order to establish a relationship which is mutually beneficial to the Webmaster and your company? (Affiliate marketing)

If you can consider the above points then you can begin to market your brand or services to a local audience. You can research local SEO very easily; you can do so using Google Maps and local knowledge. Pick 5 areas around where you trade and focus on these, one of the main benefits to local SEO is the competition is not that fierce if you avoid larger populated areas or counties (such as London). Keyword research tools should only be used as an indicator, if the competition is low and the search volume is relatively high for that area, try running a PPC campaign to see how many impressions / clicks your advert gets. If you are new to Pay Per Click most vendors will give you trial credit when starting up.

Use online tools such as Market Samurai and Google AdWords keyword tool to see search volumes for local searches (try to avoid broad matches). The keyword structure usually revolves around {Service}{Area} e.g. SEO Newcastle. Once you have established a list of keywords try searching them on Google and see what results are returned. You may see Google has chosen that particular keyword to trigger local map listings i.e. Google Places Listings. It is always beneficial to create a Google Places page, as this is predominately targeted at local search and a well-optimised Places account will provide enough traffic to justify the time spent in creating one.

Local SEO takes less time and effort to dominate so you should use this as a short term fix for traffic. Optimising your website for local SEO can very quickly outweigh the benefits of ranking for a short tail keyword for instance, 5 local search volumes could outweigh 1 short tail keyword and the time dedication, financial investment and tweaks are naturally lower.

When generating traffic from local search you are targeting visitors where larger organisations are trying to be, within a community. Any community naturally has influential people and a recommendation within this market would be more valuable than pushing your product online.

Revax Media provides SEO Services, SEO Newcastle

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