Interested in connecting with more potential customers and leads in a given area? We may be biassed–but we think there could be nothing more important than understanding the difference between regular search engine optimisation strategies and local searches that can maximise your results.
New to the concept? With differences in best practices, campaign strategy, and ideal outcomes for each, we’ve broken the need-to-know information about both organic SEO strategies below so you can decide which will best suit your business and brand goals.
Ready to dive in? Read on to learn more about basic SEO concepts, the differences between SEO and local SEO, and how to decide which practice will be the best choice for your next campaign.
The Basics of Search Engine Optimisation and Local SEO
If you haven’t yet jumped into the SEO pool, we recommend checking out a few of our other SEO blog posts examining best practices and emerging trends in digital marketing. A long-since relied on practice for finding and converting more organic traffic online, search engine optimisation can:
- Help your business show higher in search engine page results
- Position your brand in front of more potential customers who are interested in what you have to offer
- Help convert warm leads to buying customers
- Help better define and refine your marketing messages and strategies going forward to better connect with your audiences.
Sound too good to be true? It’s not. Recent studies show that most businesses can achieve up to 100% ROI for well designed and executed SEO campaigns. In short–this means you could see a $1 return for every $1 spent on SEO. How’s that for an ROI?
For small business owners and solo-preneurs who are just beginning to try out select digital marketing strategies, we recommend learning more about industry best practices, how to support organic search results, and what factors will most heavily impact the outcome of your organic and local SEO efforts. A few excellent industry authorities who can offer practical insight and tips into best SEO practices include:
- Edge Marketing (that’s us!)
- HubSpot
- Ahrefs
- Moz
- SEMRush
With the evolution of existing trends and emerging best practices continually being introduced to the digital marketing landscape, we recommend staying on top of the top tools and recommendations regardless of your hands-on experience with SEO. Why? Because what was in favour and supported excellent organic SEO outcomes 3 years ago may no longer be best practice. (And vice versa!)
Further to that, know that all of the insight and education in the world can only get you so far. While we always recommend developing a broad understanding of the leading SEO platforms, tools, and practices before you spend any money on a new campaign, the value of data collected from a live campaign and real user analytics can never be understated. Helping businesses to track, follow, and measure which of their marketing efforts are showing a real ROI and which need to be reworked to better hit the target, this type of user response data can only be collected after your campaign goes live.
SEO versus Local SEO
For those in our community who have some experience with SEO, or you’ve taken the time to read through best practices and try out a few new tools, understanding the difference between SEO and local SEO can be the next step toward designing an effective campaign.
If you’re unfamiliar with the difference between the two and when you should prioritise each, read on.
SEO 101
At a top level, SEO campaigns can help optimise your website to find, connect with, and convert more leads across a large-geographic domain. Sound confusing? It’s not. In summary, SEO campaigns can be created and executed at a national level–meaning your entire target demographic in Australia who use search engines can be potential targets for your brand.
While some eCommerce brands may consider ‘the whole world’ as a potential target market, we caution against this–different countries, cultures, and languages should still be considered when designing your SEO campaign. Furthermore, top level search engine traffic is collected by country. For example:
- Target country: Australia
- Potential keyword or search query: “women’s workout tights”
- Search volume: 5000+ per month
Whereas the potential keyword shows upward of 5,000 search engine hits per month in Australia, language differences between an Australian retail market and an American retail market could differ. For example, common language and jargon in America refers to workout ‘tights’ as:
- Leggings
- Yoga pants
- Workout gear
Whereas “women’s workout tights” may show significant searches each month in Australia, the exact same keyword will show fewer searches in America because of cultural language differences.
We’ve simplified the above, but it is always a good practice to keep in mind. Further still, most search engine optimisation has a geographical component that requires users to identify the geographic region to research or execute a campaign. Like we said, businesses with the ability to be relevant to and serve customers nationwide will do–eCommerce brands are a good example here.
Wondering when you need to consider a more local SEO approach?
brick and mortar Businesses
Who can only serve local customers. Good examples of stationary brick and mortar business include professional service providers like medical practitioners, childcare centres, and product-based businesses who can’t ship or deliver their items.
Location-specific campaigns.
Considering a Labour Day sale? Some states officially recognise Labour Day during different months of the year meaning that different regions within one larger geographic zone (eg. Australia) can be further segmented to support date-or-holiday specific campaigns.
Businesses that offer products or services that cannot be delivered or offered to customers in different geographic regions.
Many service-based businesses will fall into this category. For example, a dentist office can traditionally only serve customers within their local vicinity whereas an eCommerce shop may have the capacity to ship to customers worldwide.
Think that your brand, product, or service would be best offered to local customers? Read on to learn more about the importance of defining a local SEO strategy and when it could be the right fit for you.
Localised Campaigns for Better Organic SEO Results
For both B2B and B2C businesses, sometimes a local SEO strategy will result in a better ROI for your brand and customers. While some eCOmmerce businesses won’t be defined by geographic borders when it comes to serving their target market, some products and services are best defined and delivered locally.
Several good examples of businesses that may best advertise their products and services in a defined area include:
- Dentists, General Practitioners, Chiropractic and Allied Health service providers
- Car Mechanics, Automotive Repair
- Automotive Towing and Commercial Transportation Services
What do each of the above businesses have in common? They most commonly reach out to and work with clients in a defined geographic area–and have limited capacity to service customers outside their office area. (Also meaning they should most likely only show up in local search results.)
Furthermore, some online businesses who sell products to their consumers don’t (yet!) offer international shipping. If this sounds like you, and you’re segmenting your target market across an entire country, you may want to drill down and reconsider your local SEO strategy to differ between regions and demographics.
How to Maximise Local Search Results
Based on the above, you may be able to see which type of SEO strategy will best serve your business and consumers. If you’re a brick-and-mortar restaurant and you’re interested in reaching more local customers online, we’ve got a few tips and tricks that are available to local SEO campaign-ers that can help you.
- Google My Business
Have you over searched for a local business and noticed a summary window pop-up with key business details on the results page of Google? That’s a Google My Business profile and activating yours could be a great idea.
Offering localised customers a quick way to find your business, basic contact information, and Google Maps details, many warm leads find new solutions to their problems by reviewing a Google My Business profile alone. Offering new customers extra validity about your local business with spaces for real customer feedback and reviews, businesses with a physical premise can use their Google Account to activate this feature online.
- Local SEO Keywords
Similar to a traditional SEO campaign, digital marketers should include local SEO keywords that represent their defined geographic areas when researching campaign keywords.
From “car mechanics Melbourne” to “Thai food Brisbane” including region-specific keywords in your local SEO efforts will help both Google and search engines contextualise your business. (Which means offering a quick solution to their local problem.)
- Local Reviews Support Local SEO
Much like the Google My Business profile, you can use search-engine specific and other user generated content sites to build up a portfolio of real customer reviews that help localise and position your business in organic search results.
(Coming across a number of reviews that don’t specifically mention where your business is at? Consider responding to customer feedback. An authentic and friendly way to connect with consumers, you can help position your local business within defined geographic limits while also engaging with your community.)
- Local Website Pages
Interested in optimising your website to support your local SEO strategies and connect with relevant customers? Some businesses will create ‘localised’ versions of their existing product and service pages that can help drive increased traffic from local searches. For example:
- An automotive team can off on-site car repair services in 3 unique neighbourhoods
- To find and connect with customers from each of their defined geographic areas, they may duplicate an existing website service page to integrate on-page local SEO copy that targets and connects with users searching with those parameters.
Similar to standard SEO practices, you can help your website rank higher in local searches and organic search rankings by incorporating basic organic SEO best practices both on-page and off.
Learning More About Local SEO and Emerging Digital Marketing Trends
Whether your business is better suited to design a local SEO campaign or you have the capacity to serve customers and SEO campaigns worldwide, the facts don’t lie–search engines can result in significant ROI for businesses with well designed and executed campaigns.
If you’re interested in learning more about popular digital marketing trends, search engine optimisation, upcoming technologies that may affect digital marketing, and how you can best find and connect with new customers online, follow along with the Edge Marketing blog. Dedicated to education and upskilling our community, we regularly deep dive into best practices, industry insights, and ‘how to guides’ that can keep you reconsidering and redefining your marketing efforts each week.
Interested in outsourcing some of your bigger marketing campaigns to an expert team? Get in touch with the Edge Marketing team today.
