The ROI Of Creating Great Local SEO Content

The last couple blog posts here at Meaningful Marketing have talked about how to create local SEO content.

This post, however, is going to talk about the time spent and the return on investment on creating more and more of these great pieces of local SEO content. We’re seeing this as we dive into our client’s analytics and even the analytics on our website here and finding how many people are actually searching long-tail search terms.

Target Long Tail Search Terms

So, long-tail search terms are anywhere from three to seven words in a search term. So “massage therapy for runners in Victoria, BC” would be a long-tail search term, or “how much does massage therapy cost in Victoria BC?”

Those are long-tail search terms. So, as you create more of those pieces of content, whether it’s a blog post, whether it’s an article, it doesn’t matter, it’s the same thing, it’s a webpage going on your site that targets a long-tail search term, you’re going to see a lot of traffic coming to your website.

And like I said, we are analyzing our clients’ sites because we are writing this type of content for them, we are advising them to write that piece of content that says, you know, “Who is the best massage therapist in Victoria BC”. You might list three competitors and you might also list yourself and say ‘hey, we’re pretty good as well, learn more about us.’

Put In The Effort

But, the time spent on creating those is very minimal, you know, it might take a maximum of five hours if you really want to write it well, and if you really want to do your research and if you really want to create some nice design elements to make it visually appealing, but that five hours goes a long way in the overall scheme of things, and I’m going to tell you why.

This is because not many of your competitors are going after these long-tail search terms, and this lower-hanging fruit. They all want to rank for the big, juicy search term, you know, let’s use a massage therapist example again. Everybody wants to rank for a “massage therapy in Victoria BC”. But there’s probably 100 websites+, whether it’s a local, just a small one-person massage therapy clinic, or whether it’s a huge one, everybody wants to rank for that search term. But what they’re not looking at is all these other search terms that people are searching

And it could be “massage therapy for runners in Victoria, BC”. It could be “who is the best massage therapist in Victoria BC”. It could be “how much does massage therapy cost in Victoria BC”

Those types of search terms, nobody’s creating content for them, or there might be a few, but how well-written are they, and do you think you can improve upon it? There are people searching those terms and if you can get to your website and that page in front of that person who’s searched them, you’re going to be doing them a favor, and you’re going to have a lot of traffic coming to your site.

Your Website Is A Bicycle Wheel

So, again, this is part of the bicycle wheel strategy we call it when it comes to content. The homepage is the middle of the bicycle wheel, but all these other pages that are targeting these long-term search terms, they’re spokes, and the more spokes you create, the more web traffic you generate. But, these spokes have little competition, so you’re going to see a lot of quick results coming to them.

One of our clients is in the home renovation industry, we’ve written articles based on each renovation, whether it’s kitchen, bathroom or basement that talks about cost. So, we’ve got three articles right there that target “how much does bathroom renovations cost in Victoria BC?” “How much does basement renovations cost in Victoria BC?” And “How much does kitchen renovations cost in Victoria BC?”

And those pages alone are generating close to 15% of his traffic, so outside of his website, he’s getting another, you know, 15% more traffic coming to his website through those pages. As you multiply all those pages, you’re going to see more and more traffic. The time spent on creating those pages is not going to take you more, it’s going to take anywhere from an hour to five hours, depending on how well you want it to sound  and depending on any other types of content that you want to promote once that person is on that landing page.

Increase Visitor Time Spent On Your Website

So, again, you know, if you’re writing a lot of content, you’re interlinking to all this other great content to keep people on your website. You know, the whole goal is to not only get more traffic to your website, but it’s also to keep these people there and keep them engaged. So, creating good pieces of valuable information and linking to them from all these pages you’ve created.

And that’s the whole goal; you want to keep people on your website as long as you can. So, the time spent on creating these pages is very little, but the return on investment from them is huge. And you just think about that bicycle wheel and you think about creating spokes over the course of three years, if you create 30 articles a year that generate 10-30 visits a year, you know, over three years you’re going to see a lot of traffic coming to your website outside of your homepage and through those bicycle spokes. If you’re doing things properly, you’re keeping them on your site by interlinking to other good pieces of valuable content for them.

So, just a quick little ‘hey,’ I want to tell everybody how easy it is, it’s just a little bit of investment of your time and energy and to get the point across that when you create this piece of content, whether it’s a blog post, or article, on your website, it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s not like a newspaper ad where the next day it’s gone or a magazine ad, when next month the new edition comes out and your magazine ad is not in there, or the TV or radio, those mediums, you have to continuously pay to have your brand in front of people, whereas content marketing and doing things properly when it comes to SEO, you are going to generate a lot more traffic and a lot more leads for your business for a lot less money.

A little bit of effort spent in sitting down and thinking about the content that needs to be created and going out and writing it and making sure it’s good. Put in the time, but think about the big picture and how the return on investment is so much greater when it comes to content marketing, because as long as your website’s doing things right, your pages, all these little spokes, are going to be ranking high, as long as you’re doing things right. So, they stay there, unlike that newspaper ad where you’ve got to make sure you’re in the next day’s newspaper.