Many online businesses benefit from concerted organic marketing efforts, chiefly search engine optimization, or SEO. Pretty much since the advent of digital marketing, SEO has offered the best ROI, the most sustainable results, and the best support for other marketing channels.
But does your business need national SEO, the best local SEO services, or a combination of both? This short post should help you break that out.
The Difference Between National and Local SEO
The main difference between national and local SEO has to do with intended effects. National SEO improves a website’s overall visibility in the search engines and local SEO will get a website to show up only in certain markets, for local keywords, or through Google maps.
How the optimizations are made is another difference between national and local SEO. National SEO focuses on broader keywords that are not location specific, and local SEO often focuses on local keywords for local businesses or small businesses, though not necessarily exclusively.
In addition, in national SEO, there is an emphasis on optimizing the overall website. The best local SEO services may optimize the overall website but more often than not will focus on location-specific keywords as well as Google Maps and Google My Business listings, or on location-specific landing pages, and sometimes on local directories.
While there are some minor distinctions between them, they are both prongs of SEO so the DNA of the marketing is the same, and while there are some businesses that might need only one or the other, there are some that can benefit from both.
Now let’s take a closer look at how to tell which of these prongs of SEO will best benefit your business.
When You Need National
Businesses that need national SEO tend to be those that have an online presence that serves the entire country, and perhaps even has international operations. Pretty much any eCommerce business can benefit from a national SEO campaign, if these conditions apply, assuming the right keywords are targeted.
Any eCommerce operation that does not have any brick and mortar outlets or other physical locations can also generally benefit from a national SEO campaign that targets appropriate keywords, considering the products they sell or services they offer.
When You Need Local
On the flipside, if your business is restricted to only a few markets in the country, then it may make more sense to target keywords associated only with those markets, and to make sure you have a lot of visibility in Google Maps through an optimized Google My Business (GMB) listing.
The best local SEO services also benefit businesses that don’t have much (or really any) online presence and who are looking to improve local foot traffic to their business locations. It’s the best option for models that are still tied heavily, or entirely, to brick and mortar retail, services or sales.
How to Find the Best Local SEO Services
Now, if you’re in the market a provider of the best local SEO services, it helps to know what you’re looking for, and here are a few ways you can tell if you’re looking at a solid partner or just another agency:
- The provider in question has very impressive existing organic rankings.
- The agency has published numerous case studies with data, some of which focus on local SEO.
- The sales team can speak to you at length about their experience optimizing local profiles.
- Their overall online presence is positive and there are a lot of good reviews.
Counting out these factors, you may still be looking at a solid digital marketing company that provides local SEO services, but if you can find one that checks off these boxes, you may have a winner.
