The Local SEO Dilemma
Local SEO is no better understood than national SEO by most SEO newbies. So, the question remains. Is Houston, TX search engine optimization any different than for San Francisco, CA?
No…and yes. Here’s why:
Say you own a Houston business website and it’s brand new. The same ramp-up period may apply in terms of SEO sandbox theories, but in reality the process is very much the same. Only the keywords and topics are customized, as well as the linking strategies employed. If it is an Ecommerce SEO campaign, you may be opting out of local focus.
How Local Focus Can Help
If your business and customers are truly local to you: smaller competition. Well, that was simple, now wasn’t it? But that’s not the only way it could help. If you’re a local biz that could easily go national, you’ll naturally benefit from building out content that addresses all the markets you’re able to currently focus on. And that means not just Houston, but Dallas, San Antonio, Fort Worth and eventually all the main areas of Texas. Start tackling other top cities from there, or keep moving regional if yur other marketing efforts gel more with that approach Either way can be supported with off-page efforts like shared onsite press releases, video content on YouTube, LinkedIn page info and posting. The sky is really the limit .
Just remember that for every top landing page of content or major keyword focus you create on your site, you’ll ultimately want offsite inbound inks supporting that content and it will need to be imagined in an organic, natural marketing strategy as much as possible for best possible results. Good enough is good enough, true. And with SEO, you’ll need to be a flexible SEO client…but always give your biz what you can in the way of marketing love. And that ultimately means: imagine PR as PR, imagine blog posts as share-worthy blog posts, imagine content as useful and/or sharable. Don’t just do SEO…do marketing with SEO factored in. And yes, hire someone who’s good with SEO, but make sure they want to plug into a good content factory.
How Local SEO Can Hurt
If you’re an Ecommerce website, optimizing your website content for local will quickly become an ongoing and impossible task. Sooner or later you will need to relinquish much of your local strategy, giving way more and more to national core and long-tail keyword representation, and eventually, to excellent, newsworthy/share-worthy content.
For more info on how local SEO can help your site, contact us below:
