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.
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:
You can use HubSpot’s buyer persona template to create relevant buyer personas for your local business, as shown below
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:
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
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:
You can use Ahrefs Keywords Explorer to find local keyword ideas relevant to your business offerings, as shown below
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:
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
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:
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
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.
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:
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
“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:
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.
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:
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
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
Brice has been handling marketing projects for more than 12 years and he is providing consulting services on SEO, Social Media and PPC. He has a huge expertise in working at large corporations including Accenture Interactive & PwC Digital Services.
Brice has been handling marketing projects for more than 12 years and he is providing consulting services on SEO, Social Media and PPC. He has a huge expertise in working at large corporations including Accenture Interactive & PwC Digital Services.
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