SEO 

Ryan Walsh

So, we all know that SEO can be an absolute game changer for some businesses. This is why if your business is ranked right at the top of Google, you’ll get many more calls. However, talk to any really good SEO consultant who really knows their stuff, and what you soon will know is that local SEO is far simpler to implement than regional or national SEO.

In this article, we will explain why that is so and what the main differences are between national and local SEO.

 

Local SEO and Google Business

When you want to buy something locally, you often want the closest business, one that offers exactly what you want to buy. This is where Google will show map results, or “Google Business” results, within the SERPs.

Google’s Map or Google Business results therefore focus on the following:

– Proximity- so how close you are to the business
– How authoritative is the business, i.e. how many good reviews and good quality backlinks does it have?
– Also, how well the Google Business profile has been completed, and how well maintained it is

National SEO and how is different from local SEO?

So in regards to national SEO, its more about getting the business higher up in the organic search engine results pages. Its less focused therefore on Google Maps, or Google Business. However, there should be a profile completed for each location.

National SEO is all about gaining more organic visitors and clicks and getting the business to rank higher across many different keywords.

National SEO is, therefore, much more complicated to complete than local SEO. The main reason for that is there’s just so much more competition. You might be competing locally with 10 main competitors, and nationally, you may well be competing with that x100. It’s simply much more fierce competition.

 

National SEO is, therefore, usually much more expensive.

E-commerce SEO is therefore focused nationally or even globally, depending on where your business ships to. It’s rare to have an e-commerce business that serves one city because the demand will often not be enough; for example, if you sell running trainers, you are unlikely to serve just one city.

 

So, when implementing local and national SEO, what’s the main difference?

We would say that the main difference is as follows:

With local SEO

It’s more about gaining local visitors via Google Business and organic listings. There’s a focus on gaining good customer reviews and writing high-quality content marketing, and backlinks are still important.

In regards to national SEO

Regarding national SEO, the most definite focus is on good-quality backlinks. Another major area to concentrate on is writing top-quality content marketing. That’s super important, yet what typically separates the businesses on page one and page two is the quality of the backlinks. It would be best if you had top quality, a mixture of do-follow and no-follow backlinks to rank nationally.

The on-page SEO must be well-written, and the author must understand Google E-EAT. The backlinks also need to be built in a white-hat way.

Area focused

So, regarding local SEO, the business will often focus on optimising the website for a city or town through content marketing and on-page SEO.

So, for example:

– The content marketing might be focused on offering advice to shoppers in Cardiff

– So, too, the page titles, meta descriptions, alt text, internal links and external links

However, talk to any good search engine optimisation consultant, and they will tell you not to optimise your on-page SEO. It’s a bit like baking a cake: the mix needs to be just right, but it’s possible to completely overdo it and then ruin the whole thing. Regarding SEO, this is called “over-optimisation,” so it’s likely to over-optimise a website.

National SEO is far less focused on mentioning cities. Companies that rank nationally often only mention where their address is and don’t focus on mentioning areas in content marketing.

There’s much more focus on building quality links, which will add a huge amount of link equity to the domain. So, for those who do not know what link equity means, it’s simply the power of a backlink. Some links are compelling, which will massively help improve your organic SEO, such as a link or multiple links from the BBC.

Other links may also help improve your business’s SEO, but they may not be as powerful as a backlink from a national brand or company like the BBC.

However, rubbish links—that’s spam links—can massively adversely affect your company’s organic SEO. These are sometimes referred to as “toxic links” and can cause a Google penalty, such as the Google Penguin penalty. So our best advice, our top advice, would be to avoid low-quality links. Instead, focus on quality link building.

In regards to local SEO, it is essential to optimise your Google Business listing:

So, to attract more shoppers locally, you could optimise your organic SEO and Google Business listing and spend money on Google AdWords.

However, you must optimise your business Google Business if you want to gain more customers locally; here’s how you do just that:
Keep your Google Business profile updated

 

So, it’s super important to keep your Google Business profile updated in the following ways:

– Update your address if it changes
– Update your phone number if it changes
– Add pictures of your business, the storefront, new team photos, new products that you are selling or if your company branding changes
– Update your opening hours

Regularly updating your Google Business listing shows Google that your business is active and that you want to update your customers regularly. This will show Google’s algorithms that your business is trading and that the information will likely be helpful to shoppers as you are updating the profile regularly.

Google doesn’t want a lot of listings where the information is out of date, so when you drive to the business, they are no longer there. So, by updating, say, trading hours because of, say, a bank holiday weekend, you are helping your customers to know your opening hours, but also, what you are doing is helping to keep your Google Business profile up to date so that Google knows the information is accurate, you’re more likely to get ranked more regularly in Google’s map results.

 

Fill out as much information as you can on your Google Business profile

So, national SEO is more about building backlinks and writing top-quality content marketing. This is the same for local SEO; just with local SEO, it’s more about filling in your Google Business profile as much as you can and optimising it.

Primary category

So, there’s a common pitfall that many businesses fall into: that’s to complete their Google Business listing too quickly, in a rush. Often, a landscaping business may click as the main primary category, “construction company,” or an MOT station may select something too broad, such as “automotive”.

The point we are trying to make here is that you spend a lot of time completing your Google Business profile. Don’t, therefore, complete it in a rush. Instead, make sure you choose a primary category that best suits your business. Add a unique description, make the NAP information accurate, and keep your business profile updated on a regular basis.

 

 

Does your business require help to improve national or local SEO?

Very few companies in Cardiff have the level of SEO experience that we do. We can optimise your company website for local or organic SEO. Call us for a no-obligation quote.