You know you should be devoting more time to creating content for local SEO. Still, amid the hustle and bustle of everything else going on ( email campaigns, social media updates, blog postings, white papers, ebooks), local SEO always gets put on the back burner. And since your current content marketing strategy seems to be paying off, why would you spend time trying to fix something that’s not even broken?
Here’s the truth. You can get by without local SEO. You can generate leads and attract customers with consistent content marketing, but you’re missing out on a ton of potential business without local SEO.
Understanding the Value of Creating Content for Local SEO
Regular content marketing targets audiences according to their needs without taking into consideration their geographical location. Local SEO markets your business to local customers and focuses on getting your content in front of these people at the precise time they are looking for something that your product or service can serve as a solution to.
If you sell products or services on a national or global scale, consistent content marketing will do wonders for your website. But let’s say you’re a salon owner, and your shop is located in Henderson, KY. The audience you need to be appealing to will consist of people in and around the Henderson area. If you capture a lead from Seattle, WA, this does no good for your salon (unless, of course, you sell your salon products and offer to ship).
To put it simply, if you’re a business owner and you offer your services to only a select audience, then creating content for local SEO should be viewed as a necessary part of your content marketing campaign. Local SEO enables you to create content that truly resonates with your community and the audience you are targeting.
Tips for Using Local SEO
Using our example of a salon owner from Henderson, KY, let’s look at tips for creating content for local SEO.
It Starts With Titles and Meta Description Tags
The first place you need to start incorporating local SEO is in your titles. This includes the title of your website’s homepage, services page, about us page, and the titles of your blog postings. You’ll also need to integrate local SEO into your meta description tags.
Titles and meta description tags are elements of HTML, and both can easily be customized to appropriately reflect the content of the pages they are associated with. Both are also shown in search results. They are, in a sense, a mini-ad, and they need to be carefully crafted.
Thanks to Google’s recent changes, a title tag can now display up to 50 to 60 characters in a search result. Your description tags can now contain up to 200 characters. Having this high number of characters gives you plenty of space to advertise your business in search results.
Every time you create a title and meta description tags, make sure you review them for how they appear in search results. You want to make sure they aren’t getting cut off. An excellent tool to preview how your title and these tags will look before you publish content is SEOmofo.
Here’s an example of a carefully crafted title and meta description tags for a salon in Henderson, KY, and how they would appear in search results.
Claim Your Business On Google
Chances are, Google already knows all about your business, including its name, where it’s located, contact phone number, and much more. Google probably has a page for your company in its directory, but you need to claim it before you can start using it to your advantage.
The best way to determine if Google already knows about your business is to Google your business’ name. To the right of the search results will be a list of relevant companies. If you see your company, click on own this business?
From that point forward, you’ll be able to add valuable details about your business and take advantage of Google’s easy-to-use MY Business site builder as well as many other features. You probably won’t use this site/directory listing as your primary website, but it will be very valuable to direct your local audience to your site.
If you don’t see your business when searching for it, Google how to add your company to the Google directory, and you’ll find easy-to-follow instructions that walk you through the entire process. It’s very simple.
Creating Content for Local SEO – Publish Reviews
Lastly, creating content for local SEO can be established by publishing reviews. Not only do reviews help your brand resonate with the local community, but they also prove valuable in being able to generate leads. Did you know 84% of consumers give equal weight to online reviews as they do personal recommendations? It’s not hard to acquire reviews from your customers. Statistics show that 70% of consumers are more than willing to leave a review. All you have to do is ask for it.
The Takeaway
Content marketing can only take you so far. However, local SEO content marketing allows you to reach your targeted audience better and generate a higher number of qualified leads. To learn more about creating content for local SEO, contact us today.
Want to see how your company is doing online? Use our free scan to see where you can improve your local SEO!
