Local SEO and National SEO: What’s the Difference?

Is Your SEO Strategy Targeting The Right Audience?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) basically refers to how well your business shows up across the web. Whether it be your website or other web properties, your SEO score is determined by where your business stands when words relevant to your business are searched for in Google, or any other search engine.When discussing SEO strategies, conversations can start as broad as talking about a website ranking on page one of Google, to as specific as discussing setting up Web 2.0 properties. The first topic needed to cover is whether the overall SEO strategy is focusing on local searches, or national/global searches.

Local SEO

The term local SEO means targeting searches that primarily come from a specific geographic area surrounding your business, most commonly your city. Search terms that include your city name in them are typically considered local searches. For example, if someone searches 'Sacramento restaurants', this is an obvious alert to Google that they should only provide results relating to Sacramento, and of course, restaurants.Another important aspect to consider about local seo is the fact that Google displays different results across different geographic areas. They do this by manipulation the results depending on your IP address, since IP address are localized. When someone in New York googles the term 'restaurant', they will see different results than a search done in Sacramento. Also, the Google Ads that display on the top will be different since these ads are targeted to specific geographic areas as well.

Is Local SEO Very Competitive?

The answer to this depends on what location we are referring to. For a city like New York, local SEO is going to be very competitive since there are many businesses similar to yours with extremely high budgets put into their SEO strategies. A city such as Carson City, Nevada, may not have as much competition since it is a smaller city and the businesses tend to be more local with lower budgets for their SEO and online marketing.Local SEO is much less competitive when compared with national, or global, SEO. Ranking for a search term such as 'SEO' is extremely difficult at this time. However, for a local SEO agency, ranking locally in a place such as Carson City is not as difficult. If the goal of your business is really to provide the local community with services, then you will be better off focusing your resources at targeting local customers.

What Does It Take To Rank Locally?

Ranking locally can come in many different forms. By doing a search with your business search terms can give you a good idea of what Google is thinking. For example, searching a term such as 'Carson City plumber' will bring results starting with Google Ads, then they will display a few Google Business properties. You may also notice Yelp showing up high in the ranks. This shows us that Google is not necessarily considering and plumber website to be the most relevant, but rather other highly ranked sites such as Yelp which display your business. If your business is not listed on Yelp or is lacking reviews on Yelp, this would be an area to strategically improve upon."The first aspect of any business we, at KKP Golden Connection, focus on is the why a business has their Google properties setup. If set up improperly according to Google, this could be detrimental to your entire SEO strategy", says Kat Hood of KKP Golden Connection.One of the most important aspects of any SEO strategy, local or global, is having things set up correctly. This could be the difference between ranking on page one or having your business blacklisted from Google. There are many Black Hat tricks that companies have used in their SEO campaigns that have gotten them de-indexed with Google, meaning their business is nowhere to be found anymore through online searches. Always make sure you are practicing White Hat strategies that are approved and verified by Google. In order to do this, you will need a significant amount of knowledge of SEO and will have to keep up with that latest SEO Google trends. This is the reason many companies turn to an SEO Company such as KKP Golden Connection.

So What Is The Main Difference Between Local SEO and National SEO?

For local SEO, you will be targeting keyword terms that contain local terms such as the city name. For National, or Global, SEO you will be targeting more general keyword terms. Global keyword terms tend to be much more difficult to rank for. SEO companies tend to charge a lot more to help you target these terms. Your Google Ads will be more expensive as well. You can target less competitive keywords in order to stay within a tighter budget.Local SEO tends to be a bit more affordable since the market and competition research proves to be easier, and you will be targeting less competitive keywords. In most cases, it takes less effort and time to rank locally, allowing local businesses to stay within a reasonable budget for their SEO and SEM.

Is SEO worth it for my business?

In general, without SEO, you will be missing out on a big opportunity to expand your business to a broader audience. Whether you do commerce online or only offline, your brand awareness is vital to your company’s success.

Local SEO and National SEO: What’s the Difference? was originally published to http://kkpgoldenconnection.com