Local SEO Content Strategy
In my last post I talked about how search engines, especially Google, like to see websites that have useful content. I also mentioned that content is important in my seven SEO trends for 2015. Today’s post is about a local SEO content strategy you must implement.
Why is local content so important? Google and the search engines want to provide searchers with relevant and useful resources as fast as they can. So they will rank websites that fit that bill on the first page or in the top 3. They don’t want searchers going past the first page as that hinders their search experience and might force them to try another search engine.
So the question I put to you is, what is your website’s content like?
But What Do I Mean By Content?
By content I mean two things. The length and quality of the content on your websites pages. And the amount of website pages you have.
I did some Freelance work back in 2013 for a friend who owns a niche web development company for contractors. His philosophy was to create websites that had at least 40 pages of quality content (400 words or more) and that targeted surrounding cities, municipalities and counties.
Here’s how we did it and what you need to do.
Implement This Local SEO Content Strategy
We developed a strategy where we asked his clients to list 10 other cities, municipalities or counties they were targeting residents from. From there I created optimized pages targeting each of these areas and the main service the contractor offered.
For example if it was a painter in Fort Myers, we would create pages targeting each surrounding area.
So a couple of pages we’d create would be:
“Cape Coral Residential Painters”
“Cypress Lake Painters”
“Painters In Buckingham”
We had done this for a couple of clients in 2013 here at Meaningful Marketing. But I forgot about it until recently when I chatted with Andrew Shortland from the Local SEO Guide. He did an analysis of a clients website and made one simple suggestion. Add content to the site that targets surrounding areas.
We did that beginning on February 2nd 2015. In just 3 weeks, this client jumped from 18 to 13 for the search term “painters Victoria BC”. You can see the results in the screenshot below.
This was a big jump considering the website sat in the 18th position for almost two months.
This Works For A Physical Storefront
The above examples highlight service based businesses. For them, it doesn’t matter where their clients are located as they drive to their homes and provide a service.
But this strategy can work for a physical store front as well. Create the pages and simply mention that you are not physically located in that area but that you have serviced residents in that area.
Ask your clients who are located in that area if you can name drop them on that page. The visitors might know them but if not, you still have a targeted visitor on your site and they are looking for what you have to offer. It’s up to your content and copywriting to convert them to a client so they will come do business with you.
I want you to think of your website like a bike wheel with many different spokes.
Tips For Creating SEO City Pages
If you are going to take my advice and use this strategy, be sure that you change the page titles and url structure around. For more on SEO friendly urls, visit this post and scroll down to the “Targeting Keywords on a Page” section.
Also be sure to create new content for each page. Google does not like duplicate content so don’t think you can just use one template page and insert the city name.
Phil Rozek from Local Search Visibility has a great post on 25 Principles of Building City Pages. He’s got some solid tips that we’ve implemented for our clients.
Bonus Strategy
We’ve found this strategy works great if you blog for business and implement the strategy of answering common questions through your blog. This shows Google and the search engines you are focusing on updating your site with new content on a regular basis.