Jun 10, 2011
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A key difference between organic SEO and local SEO is that for the latter, you have a narrower target. Local SEO removes the guesswork from local marketing. It’s not like dropping leaflets through a letterbox or putting an ad in a local paper which may or may not be seen by someone interested in your service. Local SEO reaches local customers when they’re looking to buy your local service or product – they need your service and/or and they’re ready to buy it. And those new customers aren’t just online customers; they’re ‘real customers’. Local online marketing promotes your business (your name, your services, address, phone number…) not just your website. So your new customers will call you or walk through your front door, not simply visit your website.
Let’s consider 5 main reasons for using local SEO:
- Your business only sells in or services a local area. Sure, your objection may stand valid that you might be willing to ship your products or open a branch service center, if the demand was there. Yes, this is a valid observation, but examines it in this way, competing nationally against, potentially; millions of other Web sites to get business in a local market just don’t make sense. There’s a lot less competition for customers in the local areas. On top of that, consider that if you attract potential customers from outside your local area, you may not be able to provide the products or services they need. There is no point in frustrating a potential customer.
- Rather than compete nationally against an enormous number of competing Web sites, you choose to market city-by-city to get a page 1 presence. The reason behind that is the size of the competitive market. Remember, only 10 entries can get on the first page of a search engine. Let’s take golf shirts as an example. Nationally, you would have about 4,120,000 competing sites for 10 slots. In Atlanta, you’d only have about 543,000 competitors for those 10 slots. Which one makes more sense to compete against? And almost any Internet marketing agency can get you a top search engine ranking with less than 1 million competing sites. Why try to claw your way up through millions of competitor when you don’t need to?
- You’re just starting out using the Internet for marketing and you need new customers fast. And local SEO can get you those customers quickly because you are known there and have a reputation there. Build out from your base for continuing business!
- For small businesses on limited budgets, local Internet marketing makes sense because it is usually less expensive than a full-blown national campaign.
- It enables you to generate the capital you need to expand into national marketing on the search engines.