What is local SEO
Local SEO is the process of ranking locally for a term on Google. It’s generally specific to a particular town, city or county. The strategy usually involves optimising for local keywords but also includes achieving high rankings on map listings.
When optimising for Local SEO you are trying to rank a website within that particular city or area. Generally, this relates to restaurants, tradespeople etc who will use Local SEO exclusively while a lawyer or insurance company may incorporate local SEO into their strategy but use a mix between local and national.
What is National SEO
National SEO is a strategy that focuses on ranking a website for a term within a specific country. National SEO focuses on the original top 10 ranking positions and will ignore location-based keywords.
Generally, the types of companies that pursue national SEO will include large insurance companies, manufacturers and large service-based companies as well as online retail stores.
Why Choose Local SEO or National SEO
Local SEO generally speaking has less competition making it easier to rank higher within the Search Engine Rank Positions (SERP’s) however the downside to this is that the number of users searching, also known as search volume, for the service is smaller making your market smaller and giving the company a smaller return.
National SEO will generally have a large number of searches per month making the return and reward greater, however, in a lot of situations you will be competing against large organisations with huge marketing budgets making it difficult to achieve.
So for an insurance broker for example, while they might have an interest to rank nationally, they might weigh up the resources needed to rank on a national level and decide that the competition is too high and decide to pursue a niche target audience that’s local.
In some situations, a service company might only be able to service a particular area and so the decision will be made for them based on their ability to service their customers. In these situations, Local SEO would be the only appropriate option.
How the algorithms work differently
When developing a strategy for your SEO campaign you will need to determine early on in the process whether you are trying to achieve local or national rankings. The reason for this early decision is because the search engine optimisation of your site will be different depending on the type of ranking you are trying to pursue.
When optimising on a local level, Google will not only take into consideration the content on your website and external links pointing back to your site (often known as backlinks) but it will also take into consideration customer engagement through your Google My Business Profile.
In a lot of situations, local websites will have very few external links or backlinks pointing back towards them and the algorithm can often focus more on user engagement through reviews, direction requests and calls to the business in determining its position within the SERP results as well as the content on the website itself.
In certain niches, for example, sometimes companies only need a Google My Business profile to compete. While this would not be recommended it goes to show that your Google My Business profile does play a role in how your rank on Google Maps
National SEO uses the more conventional algorithm where content and backlink quality are of utmost importance.
While it sounds like there may be less work in National SEO as it doesn’t require a Google My Business profile it’s important to note that your content marketing strategy will be significantly larger and more demanding. The amount of content you need to produce and the number of contextually placed external links pointing back to your website will likely be significantly more than a website trying to optimise locally. For instance, a local website might only need 30 pages with no external links while a national SEO website might need 300 pages with hundreds of external links.
Is there an overlap between Local SEO and National SEO
No matter what you are optimising for, be it images, local, national, or international there will be an overlap. There are multiple algorithms constantly crawling your website and each algorithm has been created based on a previous algorithm so there will be elements that will overlap.
For instance content on the site will be important to give context for all algorithms and external links pointing back to your site will be of importance as well no matter what you are trying to rank for.
The differences between algorithms will be minute. Take for example an external website linking back to a local website compared to a national website.
If we were a local website we may want a backlink to our site to use an anchor text “Insurance Brokers in London”. This will give google a signal to rank the site for “Insurance brokers in London”. If we want to rank on a national level the desired anchor text from a backlink might be “Insurance Brokers England” as again it gives Google context.
The difference between Local and National SEO when optimising
The example above is just one example of the difference in sites being optimised differently for Local SEO compared to National SEO.
The main difference is in the keywords used or the keyword research process. If you are ranking locally the obvious tactic is to include local keywords in titles, headings, descriptions etc and get listed on local websites. Your tactics will also encourage customers to review and engage with your Google My Business Profile and you will need to update your Google My Business profile regularly.
If you are pursuing a competitive national ranking you will have silos of content. A silo being grouped content covering a topic in depth. You will also have mentions of counties and cities throughout your website to give Google context that you aren’t focused on one particular area.
Your link strategy will likely be different as well as you will need to gain more domain authority. Domain Authority is calculated based on website size and link quality. For a national SEO strategy, you will likely use partnerships, sponsorships and whitepapers etc to generate links rather than going out looking for placements.
Takeaways
Depending on whether you want to rank locally or nationally, it’s important to identify what will work best for your business early in the process.
If you are targeting local rankings the main factors you want to pay attention to will be the content on your website and your Google My Business profile followed by local listings, citations and directories to help your company rank
If you are trying to rank on a national level you will need large-scale content creation with a clear content strategy. Following this you will need to identify how many links and what quality those links need to be with a very clear path as to how you will achieve those links.
Personally, I’ve worked on both Local & National SEO projects at Digital Trawler. As a consultant I prefer national SEO, the rewards are greater and the challenges are more complex but they are frustrating if resources are underestimated.
Make sure to take your time in determining what strategy works best for you and overestimate the resources needed.
