How to Dominate Your Market with Local SEO Content
97% of consumers search for local businesses online. That’s a staggering amount, but it should be of no surprise. If you have an offline business that is in a local community than you should be trying to dominate that area in the SERPS.
There is an ever-growing list of ways to climb the rankings; this blog post will talk about one of those methods.
It all comes down to content
The reason that content has been hailed as “king” is because of its versatility and potency. With good content, you can gain new fans and loyal customers, while also cultivating your position in the search engines.
We’ve already written blog posts on how to use content to gain new followers, fans and customers. Today, we’re going to talk about using it to catapult your rankings.
2 Things you need for localized SEO content
A business blog. Every new post becomes an indexed page on your site. Every indexed page should be perceived as a chance to gain traction in the SERPS. This allows you to target a wide variety of different search phrases.
Strategic keywords. You’ve probably seen that many businesses overstuff their content with keywords, to the point where it is unreadable; contrarily, you’ve seen businesses use keywords sparingly or not at all. Those are two extremes that you want to avoid—the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. The keywords should be in the title tags, blog titles, and blog posts. And they should be localized terms. If you’re a restaurant in Dallas, for example, then you would use something like this in your content:
“If you want some great Italian food in Dallas, come check us out at….” You get the idea. The point is to make the sentence flow organically. Unnatural keyword stuffing may have been a viable option years ago, but now it’ll you get punished in the SERPS.
Many of your blog posts will need to have a local focus because it will be easier to weave in keywords naturally.
How to write compelling, geo-targeted content
Writing with a local focus is not something many businesses know how to do, even though it is painlessly simple. To write for both your readers and the search engines, you need to craft posts that have some sort of local interest.
Weave in local news that is relevant to your business. To recycle the Dallas restaurant example, let’s say that there is a new organic farm just outside of Dallas that the restaurant will be sourcing their produce from. That is a great topic to write about because it will allow the restaurant to write about local keywords, while having something that their reader will find interesting.
If there are any special events in your area that are relevant to your market, write about them. A restaurant could write about food festivals or farmer’s markets, for instance. The goal is to incorporate your local keywords as naturally as possible.
Write about complementary services or businesses. Write about companies that are in the same sphere as you, but do not offer the same services or products. A restaurant could write about the bakery that is across the street. Or it could write about the bar around the corner.
You could also do “best of” posts using this strategy. For example:
“The Top 10 Bakeries in the Dallas Area”
“Where to Find the Best Bars in the Dallas Area”
Now you’re targeting even more keywords, because if someone is actively searching for a bakery and sees your post, they will not only find the info on bakeries, but they will now know about your restaurant.
Write about your customers. Featuring your customers in case studies or story profiles is another golden avenue for local content. If the customer is in your local area, then use that as ammunition to target your geo-specific keywords.
The success of this strategy relies on making your business blog a hub for local-focused content, and using that as a launch pad for your SEO campaign.
Your future customers are searching for businesses like yours. Use the strategies outlined in this blog post and make it easier for them to find you.
