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What is local SEO?
Did you know that targeting locations as part of your SEO is an effective way of boosting your rankings in your local area and can help to pre-qualify your traffic to relevant audiences.
If you’re a small landscaping company in Dallas, and you only service there, it makes sense to target the keyword “landscaping in Dallas” as opposed to the broader keyword “landscaping” which would compete nationwide.
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Why should I be targeting by location?
For the most part, Local SEO will ensure a higher ROI for the activity, as it’s targeting a specific audience searching for a specific area that you serve. This additional layer of audience targeting will ensure a higher CTR and better results.
Local SEO is something that needs a lot of consideration to ensure that your SEO spend is a good value for your money.
Many companies target what we would call “vanity search terms”. Understanding that ranking for ‘Vanity Keywords’ simply doesn’t achieve the same marketing ROI. It makes you feel good when you have one or several number one rankings for a search term that includes your hometown, but is this of value to your business? Should you be targeting your whole county instead?
Being top for your branded search is great, but will it generate the customers you need to thrive?
The answer is probably not. A Strong SEO Strategy will ensure you’re on top of the basics like brand searches, but also that you’re branching out into relevant keywords targeting new customers. This is where Local SEO becomes essential, because casting your net too wide or too close may not benefit your business.
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Can I do my own keyword research?
There are countless tools online to help you discover new keywords, get search volumes and give you an idea of competition.
The biggest one is Google Keyword Planner, which you can see below. It’s a tool that sits within the AdWords platform, which runs Google’s pay per click advertising in their search engine. As well as average searches per month, it gives you an estimate of impressions, clicks and advertising costs. It can also show you similar and related keywords to get you started.
Fore the most part, it’s the perfect keyword research tool. The only downside is that you must be a Google AdWords user, and you must have campaigns running on the system to access it.
Google isn’t the only company with a keyword planning tool. After a quick search, you’ll find a vast number of tools available online. The Jaaxy Keyword Tool from Wealthy Affiliate is accessible for free 7 day trial and easy to use, and it pulls information from Google as well.
It gives you less information than Google, but essentially it has the search volume for each keyword – which is the most important factor for SEO. You’re able to upgrade to a plan for the rest of the information, but for initial research it’s completely free!
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Factors to consider when choosing your SEO target keywords
Which areas of your business are the most profitable?
Which areas of your business need more custom?
Which of your audiences are most likely to use search engines and which keywords can you use to target them?
What locations does your business serve, and which are the most profitable currently?
Do I need to work with an SEO agency if I only want to target my local area?
The strategy behind Local SEO is essential, as sometimes you need to be far more granular to get the best results for the money you spend.
There are some aspects of Local SEO that you can implement yourself, like creating a Google My Business listing, so by all means if you can get the basic fundamentals done without help, we advise that you do so before seeking specialist SEO help, as this will free time up for the specialist to work on more advanced techniques.
Working with a specialist SEO Agency will not only help improve your rankings, it’ll make your life easier! The first thing they will need is an idea of what search terms are relevant to you and which areas of your business are most profitable (or need the biggest push).
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From here, your SEO Agency will be able to undertake in-depth keyword research.
This research will help to create a list of keywords that are relevant, realistic and have a good volume behind them. It will also help identify where you rank for each of them already and allows the SEO Agency to create an effective SEO Strategy.
An experienced, skilled SEO Agency will never ask for a list of keywords from you to instantly start targeting, not without doing any prior research. If you do supply a list, it’s essential that the correct research is completed, analysed and reported back prior to activity starting.
Location targeting for SEO is a massive consideration when creating a master search term list to target. A good location-based SEO Strategy will ensure that you rank for appropriate keywords, not spending all your budget focusing on a handful of giant, highly competitive ones. It’s great to have those keywords as long-term aims, but you need to be realistic when you first start.
Local SEO
Cruz Online Marketing in Houston will plan, create and implement extremely effective SEO Strategies for your local business and add to your bottom line. The best thing is, everything is managed in-house.
These can do Local SEO Services for service companies, finance, private health, property development, aircraft charter or any business that needs more traffic. Some of these target a global audience such as SEO for property development and finance where others are targeted more by local locations to the business.
So if you would like to discuss an SEO strategy for your company, contact us and we can start planning today.
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