10 Local SEO Copywriting Tips to Increase Organic Traffic

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It’s no secret that Google likes to change its algorithms frequently.

And that can give SEOs and copywriters a bit of anxiety. 

After all, when it’s constantly changing, how do you come up with a winning copy? 

But here’s the good news — the fundamentals of local SEO won’t change. They are here to stay. But learning to adapt to changes is a valuable skill in the 21st century. 

This article will be sharing evergreen local SEO copywriting techniques that will skyrocket your local organic rankings. 

1. Understand the Local Buyer Persona 

Understanding your customer’s needs is the key to winning their hearts. That’s where your buyer’s persona comes into the picture. 

What is the buyer’s persona? It is a generalized composition of your customers, their needs, where they live, etc.

Here’s how to research to create a perfect buyer’s persona:

• Leverage Social Media: Set up polls on social media sites and ask customers for their preferences, lifestyle, etc. These polls are an excellent way to get direct feedback from your local customers. 
• Uncover Sales Data: You will have tons of sales data as a business. These patterns in sales will help you understand the demand for products, the seasons when sales are high or low, etc. 
• User-Generated Content: Direct feedback from consumers is always better than third-party data. Ask your customers to share their stories. So, you can learn more about them.

You can use HubSpot’s buyer persona template to create relevant buyer personas for your local business, as shown below

2. Understand And Write For Search Intent 

When a customer searches for something on a search engine, they are searching for an answer to their question. You must provide the correct answer or risk losing the customer to your competitors. 

That’s where the search intent plays an important role. Now, there are four kinds of search intents: 

• Informational: With this intent, users want to find a piece of information about something. E.g., 'Best sustainable rugs for living rooms.

• Navigational: With this intent, users want to access only the specific site by entering the term in the search results. For instance, 'Sustainable rug types'.
• Commercial: Users want to buy something soon and are in the preliminary research stage with this intent. For example, 'Best sustainable rugs near me.'
• Transactional: This search intent comes after a commercial one. Users want to buy with this intent. For instance, 'Buy a sustainable rug in Minnesota'. 

As you have seen, you need to target the right search intent keywords and queries if you want higher engagement. If the customer is at the research stage, they will probably scroll past all transactional content since they wish to learn more about the product. 

You can uncover the search intent for various keywords by looking at the search results page for those queries. Notice how Google only displays comparison pages for the local search query “Best Chinese restaurants in Dallas” 

Read: Common Keyword Research Mistakes People Often Do In SEO

3. Choose And Use Keywords Carefully

Keywords are an essential part of any local SEO. As a copywriter, you need to target the right keywords to attract organic traffic. 

Just a caution. Avoid keyword stuffing. 

Excessively targeting main keywords to improve your rankings can damage users’ experience. Imagine seeing 'Custom rugs in Brooklyn' in every third line? You will just leave the page, right? 

And what happens when users don’t stay longer on your site? Google takes that as a signal for bad user experience and will not rank you higher. 

Here’s how you can choose your local keywords: 

• Make Them Local: One of the common mistakes that local businesses make is, well, targeting national, unrelated keywords. As a local business, you must target hyperlocal keywords since they will be the ones that will attract a local audience. 
• Target Ancillary Keywords: A piece of content ranks for several keywords. For example, if you search ‘’Local SEO basic’’ on Google. You will find the pages ranking for local SEO basics and ‘’Local SEO for Beginners’’, ‘’Beginner’s Guide To Local SEO’’ etc. So, next time you sit down to write your copy, target ancillary keywords.

You can use Ahrefs Keywords Explorer to find local keyword ideas relevant to your business offerings, as shown below

4. Include Local Testimonials

As a New Yorker, which review will you trust more? Another New Yorker’s review, or some from Arizona? 

You will more likely trust a New Yorker’s, right? After all, they have experienced the service and understand the issues with living in New York. 

When customers are looking for reviews for local services, they look for reassurance that the company provides quality services and want to understand how other local customers perceive the business. 

And this is what provides an excellent opportunity to build geographically motivating content for the testimonial page.

Here’s how to use testimonials to improve rankings:

• Encourage Location Sharing: Ensure that whenever any customer submits a review, it also requires providing the location. For example, 'Diana Campberry, New York' shared a positive review. When other customers see this review, they will get a positive image, not about your service, but of the business's location. 

Have a look at how these local reviews for a Dallas based pub on Yelp display the customer’s location as well along with their review 

5. Put Local Region In H1 And H2 Tag 

The H1 and H2 tags are an important part of local SEO. They are HTML equivalents of title and first heading. 

H1 and H2 tags are an essential part of your landing page as far as local SEO is concerned. This is because it shows both Google and the reader that your landing page is referenced with this topic and its regional locale.

How to properly optimize your H1 and H2 tags in your local SEO copywriting:

• Research local keywords with any keywords research tool of your choice, such as Ahrefs, Semrush, or Keyword planner. For example, if you are a textile shop in Brooklyn, you can target keywords like 'Best textile store in Brooklyn to buy custom rugs', etc. 
• Once you have the keywords and queries, it's time to incorporate them. 

You can use Google Docs to structure your content with the relevant tags and optimize for local search queries while creating content, as shown below 

6. Use Bucket Brigade Technique 

Bucket what? 

Bucket Brigade is a term used by copywriters to help retain users and reduce bounce rates. 

This technique essentially works like this. 

Copywriters hook you with first-line 

And then next 

And then next…

Did you get it? 

But how does it help with local SEO?

User retention is one of the critical metrics of SEO. When people stay longer on your web page, search engines get a signal that your website is valuable for visitors. 

Here's how you can use the bucket brigade technique for local SEO.

• Break your paragraph into 2 or 3 lines because it's impossible to retain attention with long blocks of never-ending text. 
• Use transition words and sentences to maintain the flow. For example,
  • Here’s the deal:
  • You might be wondering:
  • Have you ever…
  • It gets better.
  • But wait – there’s more.
  • So you want to… 
  • Listen:

7. Write For Passage Ranking 

According to Search Engine Journal, Google announced in 2021 that passage ranking is live for English content in the United States. 

But, what is passage ranking? How does it work? 

Passage ranking, also known as passage indexing, is part of a Google update that no longer just indexes the page but also specific content passages.

Passage ranking provides your content with multiple opportunities to rank for different queries. 

Here's How You Can Take Advantage Of Passage Ranking In Local SEO Copywriting:

• Add Answers To Related Queries: To benefit from passage ranking, you can answer questions closely related to your topic. For example, suppose you target the best textile store to buy custom rugs in Brooklyn. In that case, you can add related queries like 'Where to find sustainable custom rugs in Brooklyn?' and other popular queries. 
• Add A Snippet Bait Section: This technique is used by Brian Dean from Backlinko. According to him, to rank higher on search or get in the featured section, we can add a short, concise answer as a paragraph that directly answers the user's question. The best place to add is at the top of the page. 

You can find relevant related queries to answer on your blog post by looking at the People also ask and related searches section as shown below

8. Tell Your Customer’s Story But In A Local Way 

“Does anyone care about your copy?” 

The answer is if you tell a good story, they do. 

 Humans are naturally more drawn to a story than a simple informational text. 

Companies like Starbucks and Apple regularly use the power of storytelling to boost their sales and create brand loyalty. 

If these global companies use the power of storytelling, why not you? 

Several reasons why the story is a critical part of SEO copywriting are: 

• The story is always more emotionally fulfilling than a blunt 'Buy now' or 'Visit our store button.'
• Stories are rare. Not everyone can tell a good story. 
• A well-written, good local character works much better than a fake character with fake smiles, such as the one that appears in advertisements. 
• Customers can relate more to local characters and local situations since they have been through it. 
• Last but not least, stories are fun. Who doesn't like fun?

As always, to write a good, emotionally fulfilling story, you need to understand the buyer’s persona. So, if you don’t know who your ideal buyer is, scroll to our first point and research your buyers. 

9. Break Up Your Content With Rich Media 

Although Google advises long-form content to rank higher in search results, your content should have interactive media to keep readers engaged. 

Imagine scrolling through the never-ending wall of text with no pictures graphics. Boring, right?

Google likes content that leverages rich media, so don’t forget to incorporate it. 

Here’s how to incorporate rich media in your copy in the proper way:

1. Optimization Is The Key: Rich media, particularly images and videos, are pixel heavy. Meaning they can slow down your site, thus giving a bad user experience. As a result, ensure to optimize your rich media before adding them to your copy. 
2. Know The Type Of Rich Media To Use In Copy: There are several types of rich media, including images, videos, infographics, GIFs, etc. But, not all of them are suitable for every landing page. For example, infographics, especially long-form ones, are more suitable for social media than landing pages. 

You can use tools like Canva to create rich media with a consistent design language relevant to your brand and TinyPNG for optimizing the size to make sure it doesn’t slow down your website loading speed

10. Write For Humans, Optimize For Machines 

Last but not least, don't forget to write for humans before running after SEO. After all, your customers are your main targets, not the machines. 

Google's algorithms have advanced so far today that they can understand the content without you sprinkling unnatural keywords all over the page. 

But another thing you can do to optimize your local copy is optimized it for voice search. 

It’s 2022! And voice search is in rage. About two-thirds of people between the age of 25 and 49 speak to their voice-activated devices at least once each day.

This means users will use long queries in the form of questions to search for information. 

For example, instead of using the keywords 'Gardening supplies in Utah', they will frame it as questions like 'Where to get the best gardening supplies in Utah?'.

You can start optimizing your local content for voice search by providing relevant, concise, and to the point answers to the queries under the People also ask section for all local search queries, as shown below

Key Takeaways 

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• Ensure you understand the local buyer’s persona. 
• Understand the search intent before writing. Does the buyer want to buy, research, or compare products?
• Choose keywords carefully. Use local identifiers in keywords. E.g., 'Custom Rug Service in Minnesota.'
• Don’t forget to include the local regions in H1 and H2 Tag
• Use the Bucket Brigade technique to retain a shopper's attention.
• Write for passage ranking, 
• Tell your customers stories to increase connection.
• Ensure you write for humans too, and not only search engines.