Local SEO: How Far Does Its Reach Extend?
I have been in the digital marketing and SEO industry for years. I know my way around most standard SEO practices. I am also intimately familiar with local SEO. Curiously however, it recently dawned on me that I do not hear a lot of people talking about regional or state-wide SEO. Is there such a thing?
Yes and no. In our industry, we don’t differentiate between local and state SEO. Instead, we take local SEO practices and expand them as needed to extend an organization’s reach further. In a sense, ‘local’ is more about targeting an audience within a defined geographic location rather than accepting the broader reach of standard SEO. It is just a matter of adapting SEO principles accordingly.
When Local SEO Is Truly Local
It would be easier for the remainder of this post to distinguish between local and regional SEO. When local SEO is truly local, companies are trying to reach customers in the same town and county. This is about as local as it gets. To do that, SEO providers concentrate on a number of proven strategies:
- Stressing local keywords in online content.
- Targeting local consumers with PPC ads.
- Promoting online and print listings in local business directories.
- Ensuring that name, address, and phone (NAP) is accurate.
The idea behind truly local SEO is to guarantee that a company’s website ranks as high as possible whenever local searches are run for the chosen keywords. Note that the principles applied to truly local SEO can also be applied regionally.
Keywords in Online Content
The perfect way to explain the previous point is to consider Webtek Digital Marketing and what the organization does for clients across the state. Webtek is a Utah SEO provider based in Salt Lake City. One of the ways they extend local SEO to the entire state is to use a broader selection of keywords that are familiar to Utah residents.
For example, the term ‘Wasatch Front’ is very familiar to both Utah and Salt Lake City residents. It pertains to a particular part of a local mountain range. If Webtek decided to use the phrase as a longtail keyword to promote the skiing industry, locals would instantly recognize it. People living in Delaware would probably have no clue as to what the Wasatch Front is.
Keywords are still the primary means by which search engines rank websites and pages. Therefore, agencies like Webtek put a tremendous amount of effort into searching out the most attractive keywords for each client and its content. They focus on things that speak to Utah residents purchasing goods and services from Utah companies.
Reach as Far as You Can Take It
The keyword example takes us back to the basic premise of how far local SEO practices can reach. They can reach as far as companies and their SEO providers take them. Applying local SEO to the state or regional level is really more of a mindset than anything else. You stop thinking hyper locally and start thinking about the entire region in which you do business.
When you do that, everything else applies the same way. You expand keyword research to cover the larger geographic area. You make sure your business is listed in regional and state-wide directories rather than focusing on a single town or county. If you have a Google My Business profile, you tailor it to be attractive to the entire audience throughout your targeted region.
Applying local SEO to a larger geographic region is no more complicated than focusing local SEO on a single county or town. It is just a matter of adapting SEO principles accordingly.