Local SEO & National SEO: Which Is Best For You?

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Local SEO and National SEO are two significant players in the world of search engine optimization (SEO) and can work together to increase rankings for your company.
The key differences between the two are how search engines perceive them, how often they change, and how much you need to invest.
Take a look at the screenshot depicting local SEO ranking at a particular location while national SEO focuses on bigger geography.
National SEO is more difficult to get into because it is more competitive, which means that if your website achieves top rank in a local area, it may not be enough to rank nationally.
This article will guide you in deciding the type of SEO you need to take your business to newer heights.

Local SEO vs. National SEO

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Benefits of Local SEO

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1. Build a Community

Local SEO provides tools that allow businesses to build their online community to engage with customers and optimize their websites for search engines.
An important strategy that helps many local businesses is content marketing.
A blog helps business owners establish a connection with their customers and allows them to build a community and get feedback and support from others in the same industry.
For example, an air conditioning website offers AC and heating repair services.
Furthermore, they have a blog section to help their audience with added information. This, in turn, help succeed in securing a top position on SERPs.
Blogs are a proven way for people in an area or niche to connect, interact, and share information.
Blogs provide exciting and engaging information for followers and allow businesses to showcase their expertise and knowledge on the subject matter.
The more followers attracted, the more happy customers will be due to the company's commitment to providing meaningful and valuable information.

Three useful blogging tools:

• Topic - A generator that gives unique blog ideas when you input a topic
• Google Trends - A classic tool to find out what's trending in your region
• My Stock Photos - A platform with 1200+ free stock images

2. Get More Phone Calls and Foot Traffic

There are many ways to get phone calls. Still, one of the most effective is Local SEO.
The technique will help you increase the visibility of your business in search engines for various geographical locations. This can help generate more phone calls because it makes it easier for potential customers to find your company and contact you.
Having that information readily available can also decrease the amount of time spent on research since it eliminates any need to look up the address or hours.
With local SEO, businesses get a chance to appear on SERPs, as shown in the below screenshot.
Local SEO also helps generate more customer walk-ins by listing the business in map listings, generating citations, and the like. The strategy is about getting your business found by people close to you on the Internet.
Because people are more likely to make purchases from a company they can visit in person, optimizers like us adjust your website for customers close to you, giving them more reason to contact you.
Tips:

• Claim your Google My Business and Bing Places listings
• Add photos, phone number, address, and website link
• Add a location map for discoverability
• Use a local listing management tool like Advice Local if you have a multi-location business

3. Get Quality Traffic

Optimizers research and find out what cities and states a business wants to target and see which keywords will be most effective for them. This will help the business get the most qualified leads.
As shown in the screenshot, they also check on Google Analytics to see whether the target audience is visiting the website.
The technique involves optimizing a company's website and online properties with keywords relevant to the area where it is located. This will improve its visibility on search engines and increase the chances of being found by potential customers, allowing them to decide whether or not it's the right place for them.
Another way one can get high-quality leads through Local SEO is by creating quality localized content that speaks to the needs and desires of potential customers.
Tips:

• Use free e-books and whitepaper as lead magnets to attract high-quality leads
• You can also use coupons as lead magnets
• Run area-specific offers to get more traffic

4. Establish Authority among Locals

Local SEO's effects are geared more towards people that live or work nearby your business. It establishes authority among locals because it helps them find you easier while shopping locally.
For example, localized content is one of the strategies used in Local SEO. When firms provide specialized information about their industry, customers will give more credence.
Here's an example of localized content ranking well on SERPs.
Localized content caters to the needs of those who live near your business and makes them feel more connected. It also cultivates relationships with the local audience.
Tip: Authority is also established through promoting products and services to the residents of one particular area.
For example, a business in Michigan can target people in their local zip code for marketing or promotions. When you offer unique information about Michigan and offer discounts to the locals, you connect with the audience.
Check out how Zeekspizza ranks high for queries such as "Seattle Pizza."

Which Type of Companies Should Focus on Local SEO

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1. Realtors

In today's world, people are shopping online more than ever before. This is especially true for the real estate industry because the Internet is a great way to search for homes and narrow down your location. If you're a realtor but have not invested in Local SEO, this means that you may be missing out on potential buyers who want to buy or sell the property.

2. Law Offices

Local SEO is critical for law offices to maintain their performance in the competitive legal market. The problem arises when you have to start competing against attorneys just down the street. When clients are looking for a law office, they will often search by geographic location, so you're less likely to be found if you don't rank on their home page.

3. Medical Services

Today, medical services are not limited to a doctor's office or hospital. The sector is evolving and expanding quickly to include home care, wellness centers, urgent care centers, and more. This shift has created an increased need for Local SEO because people want to know what kind of medical service is available near them.
Even Google, as shown in the screenshot, tries to give the best user experience by showing only the nearest centers.

4. Home Services

We see it all the time. People search for "home services near me" or "local handyman" every day. The problem is that they are not being directed to the right page on a website.
If you have a home service business, you need to invest in Local SEO to have a handful of pages optimized with contact information and a list of services offered.

5. Coffee Shops and Restaurants

Most coffee shops, bars, and restaurants rely on organic reach to drive customers to their doors. This is true even for some chains that have a broad customer base.
A small mom-and-pop cafe typically relies more on organic search than paid advertising. If you own an eatery but struggling to attract customers, investing in Local SEO would be a prudent decision.

6. Pet Services

If you're a business owner in the pet care field, your SEO needs should be as specific as possible.
Depending on the domain you operate in, you need to optimize your website for keywords such as "pet food delivery," "pet boarding," and "dog grooming." Fortunately, you have SEO experts like us who can make your Pet service website rank higher.

Benefits of National SEO

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1. Help You Increase Market Share

National SEO is a strategy that can help businesses increase their market share. It involves broader efforts to grow the awareness of the business online on a national level, rather than just focusing on regional or local search rankings.
It includes investing in a range of optimization techniques to expand the audience reach. It also involves cooperation with other websites, blogs, or influencers to help raise awareness of its products and services.
By increasing website traffic, customer leads, and conversions, a company can increase its market share. This is achieved by creating a solid foundation of on-page optimization that helps bring search engine crawlers to the site and earn high-quality links.
Three Must-Have SEO Tools

• Serpstat - An all-in-one SEO tool for your online needs
• Google PageSpeed Insights - A free tool that analyzes your page loading time and resources
• Google Search Console - Another Google tool to measure your website's performance and find issues

2. Reduces Marketing Expenses

SEO tools can help companies cut marketing costs by providing ROI and other vital SEO metrics.
With these tools, companies can see what topics are famous in their niche, how many social shares they have for that topic, and how other sites rank. For example, with Exploding topics tool, one can find trending topics in a niche over a selected period and search trends and volume.
Once this information is compiled, companies can target specific audiences to reach their goals. One can find what keywords other websites use and then find the best possible keyword phrases in SEO campaigns. This saves time and money because you don't have to go through hours or days of trial and error to find the best keywords for your business.
National SEO also helps generate leads, resulting in less money spent on marketing campaigns. These leads are more likely to convert into paying customers.
Three SEO Tools To Cut Costs:

• Acquire - A conversational chatbot for lead generation and customer support
• IFTTT - A tool to organize all your apps and devices
• Google Analytics - A suite of free SEO tools to analyze your business data

3. Increase Brand Awareness

National SEO helps increase the awareness of a brand. It is a process where bots crawl websites and analyze links for keywords. This allows companies to rank higher in search engines when customers type in specific keywords, which leads to more awareness and traffic for the company.
You can also improve brand awareness by producing relevant, high-quality, and on-brand content. The key is to organically produce useful and understandable content for customers and rank well in search results.
The content should be easy to find and share across social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to reach new audiences.
Another easiest way to improve brand awareness is through backlinks from businesses related to your domain. These links will serve as an entry point for potential customers and increase your search engine visibility.
Search for sites linking to top-ranked articles on SERP for your keyword using Ahrefs and pitch them for guest posting or request to add your useful resource.
Tips To Increase Brand Awareness:

• Channel your efforts towards content marketing
• Make use of native advertising
• Join hands with influencers
• Have a referral program
• Use videos for storytelling

Read: Tips to Boost Your Reputation Using SEO

4. Improve Domain Authority

The Internet is an enormously complex system with trillions of pages competing against each other. It's no surprise that it can be challenging to achieve Domain Authority for your website.
Google's Domain Authority is a two-step process that looks at on-page and off-page factors. On-page factors refer to the onsite content such as page title, meta descriptions, website speed, and keywords.
Off-page factors include signals such as backlinks, social shares on Facebook, or retweets on Twitter.
Domain authority is the level of trust that a particular domain's website has with search engines and can be improved through various means such as link building, co-citation, and content marketing. This is why all businesses give sheer importance to gaining backlinks from high DA sites, as shown in the example below.
Search engines such as Google use links to determine site ranking in their SERPs. National SEO will ensure that your site has many high-quality links from relevant sites to increase the rank in search engine results pages.
Tips To Improve Domain Authority:

• Earn high-quality backlinks
• Keep your on-page and off-page SEO on point
• Keep your site mobile-friendly
• Increase internal links
• Use Small SEO Tool's DA Checker

Which Type of Companies Should Focus on National SEO

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1. Ecommerce

Some of the most successful companies in America focus on eCommerce. They see great success with their websites and all of the promotions they run to win new customers, but they often neglect to do SEO at a national level.
This is a grave mistake that can cost them new customers and significant profits. National SEO is necessary for online stores to compete with the likes of Amazon.
Read: Best Ecommerce SEO Experts to Follow

2. SAAS Companies

New SAAS businesses often start with a local focus, but it is crucial to keep National SEO in mind as they expand. Local SEO can help reach consumers in your city, but if you want to grow outside the boundaries of your city, SEO at the national level will be necessary.
Zoom platform is the best example as they beat the competition to stand apart by focusing on national SEO. Take a look at their growth post covid in the screenshot.

3. Multi-location Businesses

A company with multiple locations needs to have SEO done nationally. SEO done at a national level helps build brand awareness, increase site traffic, and improve brand exposure.

4. HR Companies

Having a robust digital presence is not just for small companies. HR companies need to do SEO at the national level to be found by potential employees from across the country. This will give HR firms an edge over smaller organizations that may not afford SEO and develop a strong digital footprint.

5. Start-ups

There are a variety of reasons why start-ups need to do National SEO. A key reason is that it can be difficult for start-ups to get noticed in the marketplace, and doing SEO at a national level will help generate awareness. It is also crucial because the competition for search phrases is much greater at a national level, which means more businesses are vying for that spot. Read: Why Startups Need SEO?

6. Manufacturing Company

B2B businesses are made up of customers looking for the best deals, especially buying in bulk.
A B2B business needs to understand potential customers and provide them with the information they need. National SEO will help a B2B business provide its clients with video testimonials and case studies.
Five Important Local SEO Stats

• 99% of customers have used the Internet to find out about local businesses in 2021
• 98% of people read online reviews for local businesses
• 86% of people use Google Maps to find a local business's location
• 67% of smartphone users are most likely to become customers of local businesses with location-optimized websites.
• Businesses that find a spot in Google's 3-Pack get at least 100% more clicks.

Local SEO and National SEO - FAQs

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Q1. How Local SEO Is Different From National SEO?

While Local SEO focuses on keywords that strike a chord with the audience of a specific area, National SEO targets generic keywords.

Q2. Do Citations Help My National SEO Efforts?

Yes. Search engines do consider the citations of a business before ranking it. Whether your business is local or national, citations help to an extent.

Q3. What Are Some Tremendous Local SEO Techniques To Rank My Site High?

Optimizing your Google My Business page, earning high-quality backlinks from relevant websites, and having stellar reviews online are a few things that work in favor of your Local SEO efforts.

Key Takeaways:

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• Curate localized content to attract high-quality leads for your local business
• Earn quality local backlinks from nearby businesses
• Ensure your Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) are consistent across platforms
• Run area-specific promotions to get more phone calls and walk-ins
• Make use of free SEO tools
• Join hands with bloggers and influencers to build awareness for your national-level business
• Use chatbots and email marketing tools to reduce marketing expenditure.
• Optimize your website for mobile phones
• Have a great internal linking structure
• Improve your Domain Authority to rank high on SERPs