Local vs. traditional SEO
Audience makes up the core difference between traditional SEO and local SEO. Whereas the central goal of traditional SEO is typically to increase visibility in search engine results for a national or international audience, local SEO narrows the focus down to a smaller geographic region, be that a county, a city, or even a neighborhood.
If you’re trying to understand the differences between local vs. traditional SEO in order to discern the best form of marketing for a particular business, today’s article will guide you towards making a fully-informed choice.
Find your path through the differences of local vs. traditional SEO
Read through this set of local SEO FAQs for helpful answers that will assist you in determining whether local or traditional SEO is right for you.
- Is local SEO easier than traditional SEO?
There are two legitimate answers to this common question and it’s important to be able to see both sides of the coin on this.
Local SEO is easier than traditional SEO when you think of it in terms of needing to reach a small, geo-specific audience instead of a vast national or international one. For example, it’s likely to be easier to rank well for “track shoes in Boise” than it would be to rank highly for “track shoes” as a general term across the whole country or around the globe.
However, local SEO starts to seem less “easy” when a business has multiple locations and needs to rank for “track shoes in X city” for dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of cities. The work that goes into making a multi-location outdoor outfitter like REI or Patagonia rank well wherever it has a physical storefront is considerable.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the coin, local SEO is harder than traditional SEO because of the added work involved. Virtual brands like e-commerce companies may only have to take into account the various factors that contribute to ranking well in organic search engine results, but local brands must also strategize around these tactics, plus local search engine ranking factors, too. In other words, local SEO includes everything involved in traditional, organic SEO, but adds local search marketing work on top of that dynamic.
- Which kinds of businesses is local SEO for?
Most typically, local SEO is the right match for brands that serve customers face-to-face. This can be at the businesses’ locations (think restaurants, retail shops, banks, etc.) or at customers’ locations (think plumbers, housekeeping services, electricians, etc.) It can also be for hybrid models (think of a pizza restaurant that offers both indoor dining and home delivery or a bank that has both daily open hours plus a 24-hour ATM outside). If a business you’re marketing has a physical address (even if it is only a home address) and serves customers in person, it is typically eligible to engage in the full spectrum of local SEO and marketing.
However, there are cases in which business models that don’t meet the common definition of being a local business may need to engage in some localized SEO tactics. For example, an international brand like an e-commerce outdoor outfitter website might run localized marketing campaigns, offering different deals to different audiences based on factors like global region and seasonality. Such a business might be running a special on beachwear in June in California, while emphasizing cold weather gear in Sydney, Australia. The goal would be to get inventory ranking well organically for the right audience at the right time and place.
Another example might be a cable television provider like Comcast, which may not have physical locations that customers visit in all of its markets, but which may seek to be a visible organic result for local audiences throughout all of its service regions. While a model like this might not come immediately to mind as a “local” business, it may be able to engage in some degree of local SEO to earn organic visibility for customers in particular geographies.
- Why is it so important to understand Google Business Profile (GBP) eligibility?
Determining whether any business will be able to engage in the full suite of local SEO tactics comes down to understanding its eligibility in the eyes of Google. The Guidelines for representing your business on Google fully lay out Google’s vision of both basic eligibility for inclusion in their Google Business Profile system and the number of listings a business qualifies for, based on its specific model.
In short, businesses are only eligible to create the local business listings in the Google Business Profile system if they:
- Have a physical address, even if it is a home address. Virtual offices and P.O. boxes are not considered eligible addresses. Scenarios like co-working spaces are only acceptable if they feature permanent signage, a phone number that is directly answered by the business instead of by a message center, and are staffed during stated business hours.
- Serve customers face-to-face. This includes both brick-and-mortar models like retail stores and service-area businesses (SABs) like landscaping companies. A few exceptions exist to the concept of serving customers in person. For example, ATMs and kiosks are eligible for GBPs if they meet the requirements outlined in the guidelines.
If a business you’re marketing does not meet both of the above definitions, then it is unlikely to be eligible for a GBP and therefore cannot engage in a full local search marketing campaign.
While the guidelines for representing your business on Google do not cover every possible business scenario, reading through them will help you understand Google’s vision of your business model and how they want you to operate within their system. The number of listings you are eligible to create will be based on learning to see the business you’re promoting as falling into one of the following categories:
- Single location brick-and-mortar business (like a single restaurant)
- Multi-location brick-and-mortar businesses (like a restaurant chain or franchise)
- Single location service area business (like a single plumber)
- Multi-location service area business (like a plumbing chain or franchise)
- Hybrid business (like a restaurant with indoor dining and home delivery)
- Multi-department business (like a single or multi-location automotive business with multiple public-facing departments for parts, sales, and service)
- Multi-practitioner business (like a single or multi-location legal firm with five attorneys at each branch)
- Home-based business (like a bookkeeper who works from home)
- Seasonal businesses (like a farmstand)
- Exceptional models (like ATMs, kiosks, food trucks, or ghost kitchens)
Carefully consult the guidelines to understand your full eligibility picture and to avoid having non-compliant listings penalized or removed. It is a waste of time and resources to try to market ineligible brands in the Google Business Profile system. Non-local business models are better served focusing on organic visibility instead of rankings in Google’s local packs, local finders, and Maps.
- How do I create website landing pages correctly for a local business model?
A “landing page” is a page on your site that is designed to serve specific information to a specific audience. For example, each Google Business Profile you publish will have a field in it that links to a page on your site, and it provides the best user experience if your GBP visitor is taken from the listing for one of your locations to a page on your site that’s been designed for that location.
Local landing pages come in four main varieties:
- Location landing pages – pages that represent each physical storefront of your business
- City or service area landing pages – pages that represent each of the cities or regions your business serves
- Practitioner landing pages – pages that represent each of the public-facing practitioners within a business
- Department landing pages – pages that represent each public-facing department within a business
The goal of each type of landing page is to connect the website visitor as directly as possible with the information they are seeking. In its most basic form, landing pages should include complete contact information, such as name, address, phone number, hours of operation, SMS number, fax number, driving directions, and a map. But this is only the beginning.
Stronger local landing pages can increase their chances of being brought up in Google’s organic results if they offer a rich content experience to visitors. Optimizing these pages for improved visibility could include enhancing them with the following forms of content:
- Product information/e-commerce functionality
- A complete service availability menu
- A complete description of on-site amenities such as patio dining or parking
- Links to social media and review profiles
- Photographic and image content
- Video content
- Reviews and testimonials
- Deals and special offers
- Booking buttons, forms, and calendars
- Links to relevant podcast episodes or blog posts
- Staff bios
- Information about payment forms accepted, languages spoken, or accessibility
- Information about licenses, degrees, industry associations, awards, and press
- Career opportunities
- Tools, widgets, and apps
This is just a starter list to get you strategizing about the creation of best-in-class landing pages on your website. You may well be able to think of other elements your community would appreciate to assist them in understanding that your business offers what they are looking for.
Two questions frequently arise in conjunction with the topic of landing pages:
Question #1: Should non-local businesses create city or regional landing pages?
Even if your business does not qualify as “local” according to Google’s guidelines, you may well have a need to create geographically-oriented landing pages to better serve specific markets. For example, a virtual brand might run different seasonal specials in different regions of a country at different times of the year. In such cases, creating regional landing pages with rich content designed to rank well in the organic results could make good sense.
However, a very common version of this question relates to something like a cable TV provider which technically offers the same services to every city in a state or across an entire country. It is not typically a good investment of marketing time or budget to create thousands or millions of pages representing every variant of the service + city keyword combination when the services being offered are identical. This brings us to question #2.
Question #2: Should I be worried about duplicate content on landing pages?
This last scenario we’ve mentioned almost always brings up concerns about duplicate content. If the cable TV provider were to create hundreds, thousands, or millions of city landing pages offering the exact same content because its services are identical nationwide, this could be seen by Google as a signal of low website quality. Before a brand you’re marketing invests in a tactic that could give it a reputation for publishing thin, low-quality, and duplicative content, put in the time to learn about the impacts of Google’s Helpful Content Update.
While some degree of content on a local business website will be naturally duplicative (for example, location landing pages will all feature the same business name) a good rule of thumb to follow is to only publish content that has the purpose of assisting customers along their journey. Think carefully before publishing large volumes of pages that have no other goal than attempting to rank well in search engine results.
- Do local links matter, and how do they differ from traditional links?
For decades, a core traditional SEO tactic has revolved around earning and building links from third-party websites to brand websites. Such links are believed to improve search engine rankings because the algorithms of entities like Google count them as a kind of “vote” for the authority of the website or website page being linked to. Local businesses are no different in this case, and should also plan to earn and build links to improve their chances of being returned as an authoritative answer to local search queries.
The main difference between local links and traditional links is that local businesses can make excellent use of geography to help them discover link opportunities. For example, a local chimney sweep might earn links for industry associations in their state or country, but they can also think of ways to build relationships with fellow nearby business owners, such as hearth product dealers, home cleaning services, home inspectors, and realty firms. Real-world networks exist within the local business context which can form the basis of relevant, useful linkbuilding and referrals. All of these businesses can both link to one another and recommend each other whenever their special skills are needed by clients.
Local linkbuilding can well be seen as easier than traditional linkbuilding (which often has to fall back on cold outreach), because it can be based in real-world relationships within the business community of a town or city. There are countless ways in which local brands can earn valuable links from networking, sponsorships, community participation, and other meaningful activities, as well as appearing as a guest on local blogs and podcasts, or being featured in local online news stories.
- Does publishing a “geoblog” work as a tactic?
You may be wondering whether a hyperlocal blog (sometimes referred to as a “geoblog”) could assist the organic rankings of a local business you’re marketing. The truth is that there is a unique answer to this common question for each business. A blog that focuses on local events, news, and other happenings could be a good fit for a business if:
- There is sufficient interest in the community to foster reliable readership
- The brand has the internal resources to commit to a dependable publishing cadence
- The community has lost its local newspaper and is eager for any form of local coverage
Too often, local brands start blogs out of a feeling of obligation, only to leave them gathering dust. This can create the wrong impression that the business is doing poorly and is neglecting its online presence. The idea of a blog should only be entertained if the company’s topic and community are a good fit for the dynamic.
If you determine that a blog is not the right match for marketing a particular company, hyperlocal blogs can still play a part in promotion. If there are established bloggers in your region or city, consider sending them newsworthy information about the business, offering to be interviewed on the blog, or offering to contribute to the blog on a one-time or regular basis. The same strategy can be used for vlogs, podcasts, and video channels, too.
- Which tactics work best to improve my local SEO performance?
The #1 tactic for improving local SEO performance actually happens both offline and online, and can be boiled down to being obsessed with providing exceptional customer service. When customers have excellent experiences with you in person and truly helpful, frictionless interactions with your digital assets, it can impact your local SEO performance in all of the following ways:
- Happy customers will review your business positively, increasing your average star ratings and improving your rankings in Google’s local packs, finders, and Maps. Your customers’ words are your best free salesforce.
- Customer reviews can be excerpted as the bonus snippets of text known as “local justifications”, which Google can display on your local pack listings as an added incentive to choose your business.
- Satisfied customers can include photos in their reviews that increase the time searchers spend looking at your listings, which is a positive user behavior signal that could influence rankings.
- Loyal customers can recommend your business to others via social media platforms, and these conversations can be excerpted by Google on your GBPs as well as in the organic search engine results.
- Customers who also happen to be publishers of blogs, podcasts, vlogs, and video channels can use their voice to speak positively of your business, sending you new leads and also diversifying your organic visibility for a variety of search phrases. They can link to your business, supporting your quest for authority and high rankings.
Beyond taking a meticulous approach to offering the best customer service in town, your next-best tactic for improving local SEO performance revolves around asking what you can do for your community. Consider:
- Hosting or volunteering at community events
- Sponsoring local institutions, teams, and events
- Creating scholarships for local community members
- Donating to worthy local causes
- Joining local business associations and mentorship programs
- Cross-promoting with fellow business owners where it makes sense
All of these activities will help you build relationships within the communities you serve, and the business relationships you develop can lead to creative opportunities in terms of earning links, mentions, and referrals. Your goal is to have your brand become a household name by being liked and trusted by your neighbors.
Finally, with the rise of AI, it’s important to pay attention to the role which third-party content is playing in being cited as a source of information. Ideally, you want your own publication to be cited by features like Google’s AI Overviews, but the next best thing is being mentioned or linked to from these source documents. Just like traditional SEO, local SEO should be seen as the opportunity to grow your digital footprint over time, being cited and linked-to as an authoritative, trustworthy source of expert information in your field across an ever-widening variety of websites.
How do you rank for both national and local keywords? What are best practices?
If this article has helped you determine that you qualify for a complete local search marketing campaign, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your only goals will be to rank well in Google’s local and organic results for local audiences.
Keyword research tools may sometimes indicate that it would serve your brand well to try to compete for national terms, as well. For example, let’s imagine that a business you’re marketing started out as an independent shop selling small batches of homemade kimchi in San Francisco. The product is fantastic, and eventually, the business owner expanded to three fermented foods storefronts in the SF Bay Area. The business got featured in local and then national news and the opportunity arose to begin distributing the product nationally. The business owner is truly passionate about kimchi and wants their brand to rank for a variety of branded, national searches while still maintaining local search rankings for their growing number of stores in Californial, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.
Interestingly enough, this all brings us back to where we started: differentiation between traditional and local SEO through audience recognition. Different types of content will serve different intents and earn different kinds of rankings.
To earn local search visibility, the business should obsess about local customer service at its storefronts and online, maintain its Google Business Profiles and other local business listings, develop a strong set of landing pages optimized for its service cities, seek opportunities for community involvement in these cities to earn links and mentions, grow its footprint across local blogs, podcasts, and video channels, and continue to develop content that’s been optimized to serve the audiences surrounding its physical locations.
To earn traditional organic visibility, the business should use keyword research tools to identify popular phrases with a manageable level of competition, develop thought leadership content on these topics and seek authoritative links and mentions from national sources, such as industry publications, major news sites, lifestyle magazines, and social communities. Content should showcase the brand’s unique level of expertise and authority in its field, without needing to be optimized for local audiences.
While it may at first seem easier to market local businesses than national ones, the complexities and diverse SEO goals of local brands can actually present significant challenges to marketers. Understanding the full business model and eligibility for GBP inclusion is critical to creating a strategy that makes the most of both local and traditional SEO tactics so that the brands you market can achieve maximum visibility for each desired audience, be that nearby, national, or international.
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