Content Marketing: Types & How to Use Them for Local SEO

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If you are a local business owner investing in local SEO efforts, content marketing might have crossed your mind.

However, many local businesses fail to leverage content marketing effectively. And it is one reason why some businesses struggle to build prominent local search visibility. 

Meanwhile, content marketing is undoubtedly the O.G. of every SEO strategy (including local SEO). 

Moreover, a marketing survey states that businesses that leverage content marketing gain 6x more conversions.

So, content marketing can help you rank for relevant keywords, grow local visibility, and boost conversions. 

Let’s check how it is done! 

Content Marketing: Types & How to Use Them for Local SEO

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1. Blogs

Blogs and articles are inevitably the most popular format of content. These give marketers abounding real estate to get their information across to the audience. 

Here’s an example of how it looks.

Moreover, online users readily absorb information from blogs. 70% of consumers trust consuming a product’s information from a blog over a paid ad. 

These allow you to grow your keyword relevancy, generate backlinks, source traffic, share value proposition, etc. 

How to Use Blogs for Local SEO?

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1.1. You must produce long-form blogs around your business-critical queries. 

E.g., If you are a local pest control business in Austin, a good blog topic can be –

“5 Preventive Measures to Manage Pests in Your Home in Austin.” 

Take a look at this screenshot showing a blog targeting rental property owners in Austin.

Such blogs around common queries attract generous traffic and leads. Moreover, by targeting your business-specific keywords in these blogs, you can grow your relevancy for local search queries. 

You must use Ahrefs and SEMrush for drawing good blog topic ideas through competitor analysis.

1.2. Produce blogs to share across social media and guest posts to attain valuable backlinks. 

Backlinks remain important for your location authority and domain authority. When you share highly relevant blogs on social media, you reach a wider audience. This approach wins you traffic and backlinks.

For example, here’s an example of a relevant backlink to buffer

Blogging also unveils guest posting and link exchange possibilities that translate into quality backlinks. 

1.3. Blogs help you optimize for several business-specific and localized keywords. 

Google must witness your subject-matter expertise for a relevant query. And blogs offer you optimum real estate to display your products/services and add crucial keywords.

Here is an example of how it looks.

Few blog categories to explore: 

• ‘How To’, DIY Tips, Best Ways To Do, etc. 
• Question & Answer type blog posts around your industry-relevant and localized queries
• Problems & Solutions posts
• Your Industry News (This week in ‘X’ industry)
• Service/Product promotion blog posts for your business
• Exclusive Guest Posting Content

2. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Consumers and Google both love FAQs. And it is one of the highest consumed content online. 

The FAQs also form a significant part of the Google Knowledge Graph. Google uses it to display direct answers and information in an infobox for specific queries. 

Take a look at the below image to see the types of Knowledge Graphs.

FAQs allow you to offer valuable answers to the most common queries from your target audience. 

How to Use FAQs for Local SEO?

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2.1. Create highly-relevant FAQs and add them to your brand’s GMB listing. 

This approach grows the relevancy of your GMB profile for long-tail queries. 

• It grows your profile engagement.
• Your FAQs are likely to rank for position zero as quick answers to relevant queries.
• Long-tail keywords in your FAQs help you rank for relevant searches.

For example, here’s a law firm answering a question on GMB

You can easily use Quora, Reddit, and Tumblr to find common queries related to your business niche. 

A good approach is to find long-tail keyword queries through Google Keyword Planner. These keywords queries represent the FAQs for your niche. 

2.2. Add valuable FAQs to your site to grow your site traffic.

Also, ensure to make your FAQ content qualitative with images and videos. 

Adding FAQs to your site offers you a wider room to cover several long-tail keywords. 

3. Email Newsletters 

Email marketing has been one of the most extensively used digital content delivery channels. Whether lead nurturing, information sharing, or feedback generation, the email channel works the best. 

For example, here’s an example of a newsletter

Moreover, both B2B and B2C marketers draw significant ROI from the email content channel. 

How to Use Email Content for Local SEO? 

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3.1. Enhance your feedback generation strategy through feedback request emails.

Local reviews are crucial in deciding your search rankings for the local queries. 

So, you must produce personalized emails for earning abounding reviews on your GMB profile and website. 

3.2. Share your content for direct traffic, leads, and backlinks through email newsletters.

You can share your blog links, infographics, and other content through email newsletters. This helps you generate initial traffic to your site content. 

Moreover, positive user metrics on your site will add to your local SEO value. 

Ensure to keep the newsletters crisp, interactive, and value-oriented. 

3.3. Share your business updates, product launches, or offers through email content.

Email content offers you a good reach for your business-specific content. You can share your new product launch info and other crucial business updates with your subscribers and prospects. 

Moreover, you can share deals and loyalty offers with previous customers through emails. 

These practices win you regular site traffic, leads, and conversions. 

Active site traffic and positive user metrics will most likely enhance your local SEO performance. 

Read: Tips to Improve Your Ecommerce Email Marketing

4. Infographics

Infographics are yet another popular content type that wins due to their visual representation. Users readily consume and share infographics as they are more engaging and crisp than long-form blogs. 

The consumption probability of infographics is 30 times more than regular text-based content. 

Marketers love to create and share infographics for content with abounding facts and figures. 

How to Use Infographics for Local SEO? 

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4.1. Repurpose Top Performing Blog Content as Infographics to Gain Site Traffic

You can simply repurpose your long-form blogs into infographics by using the main subheadings. 

PicktoChart, Visme.co, and Canva are easy-to-use tools to build appealing infographics. 

You must also share these infographics on social media and infographic sharing sites. 

These help you attract engaged users, and more web admins are likely to link back to your infographics.

I came across this simple infographic from an HVAC & plumbing service provider: 

4.2. Create short single-image-based infographics for your blogs.

By adding infographics to your site and blogs, you grow the engagement potential of these pages. It results in a lower bounce rate, increased leads, and positive SEO value. 

5. Videos

Video consumption is at an all-time high in the present times. And it will reach new peaks as internet consumption grows. 

Today, four times more consumers prefer to learn about a product through videos instead of a blog. 

Videos bring you a significantly high engagement rate than textual content. Mark Zuckerberg stated that videos would constitute the largest share of online content in the future.

How to Use Video Content for Local SEO? 

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5.1. Create Promotional Videos 

Consumers love to learn about a business and its offerings through video content. 

For example, if you are a restaurant business owner, you can make a video of your venue and food. This allows viewers to learn about the experience at your restaurant and your food specialties.

Take a look at this drone video of Cancun, Mexico.

Highly engaging video content earns you traffic, customers, and good SEO value.

5.2. Repurpose Textual Content into Video Content

You can repurpose ‘How To’ blogs and FAQs content as short videos. You can add these videos to your site and share them on YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, etc.

Videos around local queries are likely to rank in search engines. And video content can also rank as featured snippets for highly relevant searches. 

5.3. Earn and Display Video Testimonials

Video testimonials represent solid social proof for your local business. And this grows your brand credibility for both consumers and Google.

Take a look at this video testimonial.

5.4. Plan Live Videos

You can also attract traffic and leads by planning Live Video Content. Search Engine Journal states that the engagement rate of Facebook Live videos is 178% higher than pre-recorded videos. 

6. Social Posts

As of 2022, the total number of social media users has exceeded 4.62 billion. That means 85% of internet users use at least one social platform. 

Moreover, 80% of marketers witnessed increased site traffic due to social media. 

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc., work especially to help you share your content. However, you must also produce platform-specific for these social platforms. 

How to Use Social Posts Content for Local SEO?

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6.1. Share your content to grow reach and earn backlinks through social media.

You must share your blogs, videos, image content, or infographics on social media. You can also create engaging posts and link your main content to them. 

Your content reaches more consumers, and you can expect growth in referral traffic. Moreover, as more web admins come across your content, you gain more backlinks.

6.2. Repurpose and Produce Original Content for Social Media

You must build exclusive content to grow engagement on your social profiles. 

You can use social post content formats like Videos, Stories, Feed Posts, etc. 

You must also try Short-form Video Content that has been winning the highest engagement in recent times. TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shots are some most popular platforms. 

Moreover, you can also employ local influencers to help you with video content.

Tip: Enable the “Do You Want Other Search Engines to Link to Your Timeline?” option on Facebook. This helps your Facebook content to rank through a direct search on Google. 

Also, use relevant hashtags, keywords, and alt tags, to grow searchability. 

Tools: Use BuzzSumo, Sprout Social, and SEMRush to research your competitors’ social media content. 

7. ‘How To’ Guides

‘How To’ guides and blog posts are the most searched and best-performing blog category across the internet. 

You could witness abounding ‘How to’ content posts in blogs, videos, infographics, etc. 

WikiHow is a blogging platform that works as a humongous library of ‘How To’ guides. 

These guides can help you rank for the most relevant search queries and win huge traffic. 

How to Use ‘How To’ Guides for Local SEO?

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7.1. Produce long-form ‘How To’ guides around the most crucial queries in your business niche. 

These guides will allow you to cover the most important queries from your target audience. Moreover, you can naturally place important long-tail keywords in these blogs. 

Thus, you optimize for highly relevant search queries for your local business. 

Tip: Use illustrations and instructions across the content to deliver real value from your guide. 

7.2. Repurpose ‘How To’ guides such as videos, infographics, micro-blogs, etc. 

You can share this repurposed content across several channels. These include video-sharing sites, social media, micro-blogging platforms, and forums. 

This grows your local search visibility, increases site traffic, and yields more inquiries.

8. Case Studies

Case studies and client portfolios are highly sought-after content for service-based businesses. 

They allow consumers to learn about previous clients’ experiences with a business. And these content materials showcase a business’s expertise. 

Case studies become the most preferred content for 79% of B2B consumers. 

How to Use Case Studies for Local SEO? 

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Local service-based businesses must produce case studies to grow social proof. 

E.g., If you offer Industrial Plumbing Services, your clients are most likely to check your portfolio. 

Case studies come in handy in these cases and can win you crucial projects. 

Moreover, Google considers case studies important social proof, influencing your local SEO value. 

Case studies also earn good engagement on your site. You can enrich them with client testimonials, videos, and detailed insights. 

9. Forums & Mirco-blogging Content

Forums and micro-blogging sites attract huge active audiences daily. And these platforms power the most relevant queries in several specific niches. 

Marketers draw significant traffic, leads, and conversions by posting on forums and micro-blogs. 

How to Use Forums & Micro-blogging Content for Local SEO?

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9.1. Start posting on forums that cover topics and queries relevant to your local business.

Quora and Reddit are two popular forums that witness huge traffic daily. You can search for relevant topics and queries on these platforms and start posting. 

Here you can find highly relevant questions posted by your ideal target audience. Create a valuable answer to these questions and include images, videos, references, etc. 

A good presence on these platforms allows you to rank for relevant queries in Google Search. 

9.2. Post content on popular micro-blogging platforms.

Akin to forums, you must increase your search visibility by posting on micro-blogging platforms. 

Tumblr is a good platform, and it offers you Dofollow links that add to your local SEO performance.

LinkedIn Pulse, Medium, Facebook, etc., also allow good traffic on micro-blogs. And these blogs often rank for relevant searches in Google. 

10. Press Release

Online users regularly consume an abundant amount of business news and industry news online. 

And so, press releases and media mentions earn substantial brand awareness among businesses. 

Take a look at this press release from Desert web hosting.

How to Use Press Release for Local SEO? 

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10.1. Get your business updates across local media platforms. 

You can connect with local PR agencies and sites to cover your business news, product launches, etc. 

These press articles will earn valuable brand awareness, traffic, and inquiries. 

10.2. Contribute to industry news or thought leadership.

You must gain PR mentions for your brand by contributing with thought leadership or industry news. 

HARO and PR Newswire are popular platforms that can help you contribute to PR stories.

HARO helps you connect with PR professionals creating PR stories in your niche. These professionals regularly post their story ideas and check for suitable contributors. 

You can find relevant stories and pitches to these PR professionals. Next, you can work together to build a story and earn valuable PR mentions. 

Backlinks from valuable PR sites also add to your local SEO performance. 

Read: Press Releases and SEO

11. Influencer Campaigns

In recent years, influencer campaigns have become one of the most far-reaching content types. 

Today, 77% of consumers are highly likely to purchase a product they see in influencer-endorsed content. 

Moreover, businesses that actively invest in influencer campaigns draw $6 returns for every $1 invested. 

How to Use Influencer Campaigns for Local SEO?

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Connect with local bloggers or influencers to promote your business. 

You can collaborate with the influencer to together produce an engaging content piece. Or, the influencer can help you with exclusive influencer-generated content for your brand. 

This can be a video commercial, a social media post, a review about your business or products, etc. 

E.g., A popular influencer tries your Hair Styling services and prepares a feedback video. He can share this with his followers, and you can also share it on your site and social platforms.

You can expect significant traffic and inquiries from such influencer campaigns. This referral traffic and positive review contribute to your local SEO performance. 

Tip: Ensure that the influencer’s followers resemble your ideal target audience. 

Key Takeaways:

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Content marketing remains one of the crucial strategies to support your local SEO gains. So, here are the key tips: 

• Build valuable and interactive blogs around the most relevant queries in your niche. Include localized keywords to the blogs and share them across social platforms. 
• Research through popular long-tail queries and the most common FAQs in your niche. Create valuable answers to these FAQs and post them on your GMB profile and site. 
• Produce strategic and interactive emails to request feedback, share content, and promote your business.
• Repurpose your best-performing blogs as infographics and share them across several channels.
• Build business promotion videos, repurpose blog content as videos, and display video testimonials. This earns you high engagement, traffic, and social proof.
• Grow your content’s reach, and gain traffic and backlinks by repurposing it as social media posts.
• Benefit with the huge consumption rate of ‘How To’ guides. Produce business-specific ‘How To’ guides and videos.
• Win with a high engagement rate and social proof through detailed case studies.
• Gain awareness, traffic, and links through PR submissions and contributions.
• Collaborate with local bloggers and influencers to produce highly-engaging content & reviews.