Local vs. National SEO Campaigns, Where to Focus your Effort

Jul 12

If you want to rank higher in local search results, you’ll need to know how to optimize your website for local users. Local SEO is an umbrella term used to describe the process of optimizing a website or its content so that it ranks higher in local search results. Say you are a company based out of Charleston, serving local customers. What should your strategy be?

Global SEO refers to the activities you or the company undertakes when you have a broad set of targeting across geographies. Let us look at how to take this forward. Say you are a company based out of Charleston, targeting customers globally. What should your strategy be?

Let us delve deeper to understand these two scenarios and try to find an answer.

LUX

Local User Experience Optimization (LUX) is the practice of optimizing the user experience on a page from start to finish. It includes factors like load times and mobile-friendliness, among others.

This type of optimization does not require additional content or links. LUX focuses on improving existing pages before making any significant changes. It is an ongoing process, and businesses must always have their ears open for feedback from consumers. They may be unhappy with certain aspects of their online experience.

They may hear complaints about something, and these can be like slow load times or difficulty navigating through a site’s navigation bar. Under these circumstances, they will most likely consider fixing those issues before someone else comes along and beats them at it!

But what happens when someone searches for information related to your business on these or other sites?

If you aren’t sure whether they’ll get accurate results (or at least ones that aren’t entirely negative), it’s time to rethink your strategy.

You can reach out to SEO agencies to help with a strategy. If you are in Charleston, you can look for an SEO company in Charleston, SC, to shortlist the best-suited agency for your business.

You don’t want potential customers finding out about an issue from ten years ago. It could ruin all chances of success just because someone found an old article written by someone who claimed it was true without any proof whatsoever.

Local SEO – Optimizing for Local Visitors

Local SEO is the practice of optimizing your website for visitors in your local area. It’s a subset of SEO, meaning it uses the same principles as global SEO but focuses on a more specific set of goals.

For example, if you wanted to get more traffic from Google Maps search results, you’d want to target map listings and optimize them for local searches (e.g., “restaurants near me”). If you were targeting people looking for an auto mechanic, optimizing your website for those types of searches would be another way that local search optimization differs from globalized optimization.

Localized marketing is when companies tailor their marketing messages to specific regions or states within a country. In theory, localized marketing helps businesses connect with customers by speaking directly about what they care about most: where they live!

Global SEO – Optimizing for Global Users

Global SEO is the practice of optimizing your website for users all over the world. The difference between global SEO and local SEO is that you’re optimizing your site, not for a specific city or region. You are doing it for anyone searching for your content, regardless of where they are in the world.

Global SEO is about finding relevant topics and questions that people from all over the world may be searching for. After that, you create useful answers to those questions. If you have a blog about vegan recipes (for example), it makes sense to target keywords like “vegan recipe” or “vegan meal plan” so that people who live outside your local area can find you when they search online.

Local SEO – Targeting Where You Want to Be

Local SEO is all about targeting the people who live in your area. It’s not just about targeting the keywords they use but where they are based. It also includes what they look for when it comes to local businesses.

Local SEO is also often referred to as geo-targeting. It means you have

A physical location that you are trying to attract customers from
An online property that provides services within a geographic location

Global SEO – Targeting Where You Want to Be

Global SEO is about targeting users all over the world. It’s about targeting users who have questions that your content answers, not just those in your geographical area.

Global SEO requires a global strategy and involves:

Create content relevant to people looking for information across the world on topics like “how can I get rid of acne?” rather than “where can I buy acne cream?”
Optimizing this content, so it ranks well on search engines all across the globe, e.g., using schema markup or hosting it on international domains like .co.uk or .ca

Local SEO Focuses on Instant Offering

You can reach your local customers more effectively by focusing on local SEO. Local search results are displayed first in the Google SERPs. So, if someone is searching for a business in their area and they see yours is at the top of those listings, they’re likely to choose you over someone who isn’t.

The same applies if they type in something like “best pizza near me.” It’s going to show them what other people have said about nearby restaurants that use that keyword.

Global SEO Focuses on Answering Queries

You should focus on keywords that people are already searching for. I’m sure you have heard this before, but it’s a good place to start. The key here is finding out which keywords people are typing into search engines. After that, you can determine if your content can answer some of those questions.

If something has a high search volume, chances are there’s demand for it in the market. That means there’s more potential business coming your way if you get into the game early enough (and with enough content).

Local SEO With Geography Incorporated Keyword Strategy

Business owners have to incorporate geography into their keyword strategy with Local SEO. You can’t just use the same keywords that people use to find businesses in other areas or countries. Instead, you have to be specific about the location of your business.

For example, if you own an Italian restaurant in Boston, don’t try to rank for “Italian food near me” or “Italian restaurants near me.” Those are broad terms that will bring too much competition and not enough real customers.

Global SEO – Geography Incorporation in Keyword Strategy

With Global SEO, business owners don’t need to consider location when choosing keywords. Global SEO can be helpful for business owners who want to spread their brands across the globe. For example, if you’re in a country that doesn’t offer many options for keywords but you have potential customers elsewhere in the world, Global SEO is a great way to reach them.

The first step is to choose keywords that are global instead of local. It means using terms like “carpet cleaner” instead of “carpet cleaner NYC.”

Next, find a tool (like Google’s Keyword Planner) that will help you find relevant and existing search terms within your industry. Thus, you know where people are looking online already. After this, you can use those queries as inspiration for your content strategy!

Conclusion

If your business is local, then you should focus on local SEO. It means that you’ll want to make sure that your website gets optimized for the area where your business belongs to. If it is a national chain, in that case, global SEO might be a better option. Global SEO allows you to target more customers who may otherwise not be able to find your business online.

You have a location-specific product that people need at that exact moment in time. Local SEO works best for you. It gets traffic from people close by and looking for help right away. Global SEO works best if you have an e-commerce business or offer services to customers around the world. During such scenarios, you find no harm in simultaneously targeting both types of audiences!