Local vs. Organic SEO: What’s the Difference?
Are you a little fuzzy on some of the digital marketing terms?
Don’t worry, you’re not alone. The fact that most terms are acronyms with numerous variations makes it pretty tough to sift through digital marketing ideas and make any sense of them.
There are two search engine marketing terms that you need to understand, though; local SEO and organic SEO.
We’re going to take a look at these ideas, explaining what both mean and offering some SEO tips along the way. Hopefully, the ideas below give you some insight into the next moves in your SEO strategy. Let’s get started.
What Is Organic SEO?
Organic SEO is what people generally mean when they say “search engine optimization.”
Search engine optimization is the process of curating your website and all of its content to rank well in search engine results pages. Getting the top spot in Google rankings does a lot of good for your business, so a large chunk of the digital marketing industry revolves around trying to rank well.
Organic SEO is a general, broad-scope kind of optimization. While you are trying to rank for very specific keywords, you’re not narrowing down your target audience to a specific location.
Key Aspects Of Organic SEO
The organic process starts with a little bit of keyword research. The goal is to find out what your target audience is searching for online. If you don’t have a particular audience, the goal is to identify keywords that have a lot of traffic and very little competition.
There are numerous keyword research tools and Google resources that allow you to get insights into keyword traffic, search volume, and some of the demographic factors that make up the people who are searching.
When we talk about competition, we’re referring to other sites that are trying to rank for the same keyword. Generally speaking, a business that’s larger and more influential than you is competition. A series of small businesses without digital marketing campaigns aren’t difficult to outrank if you work with a professional team.
Once you zone in on your keyword, you employ a few key tactics. Let’s look at a few of the most important ones.
Content Creation
Content is a perfect way to optimize your site for multiple keywords. Vlogs and blogs are a couple of the most common methods. You can optimize content for different keywords and spread your reach throughout the research results of your niche.
One piece of content that does well will benefit the rest of your website. The rising tide raises all ships, as they say.
Content needs to be relevant and useful to users. Google’s algorithm is really good at determining what users want and which content will get them the information they need. That’s why Google is one of the most influential companies in the history of mankind.
So, your goal is to create content that serves a purpose. Find your keywords and think of realistic ways that you might solve user problems. So long as the content is related to your business or products in some way, you can create a call to action.
A call to action is a way of asking users to engage with your site on a deeper level. Maybe you want them to subscribe to your newsletter, visit a product page, or reach out to you.
In any case, content is a vehicle for both traffic and conversions, which is a fancy way of saying “positive user engagement.”
Back-End Optimization
Back-end optimization is the stuff that happens outside of the user’s eye. It’s the quality of your site.
Site speed, first contentful paint, and numerous indexing factors all fall into his category. There’s some coding involved if you have the mind for it, but that’s not necessary in all cases. Most pre-made website builders will have SEO-optimized pages right off of the bat.
Sites like Google Search Console and Google Analytics are useful for identifying back-end errors and finding solutions.
What Is Local SEO?
Local SEO is optimization geared toward the searches in your area.
Things like Google Maps searches and region-specific searches are huge drivers of in-store traffic. Small businesses can benefit a great deal when they have an excellent local campaign.
Think of instances when you’ve searched “food near me” or “hair cut in (insert your city).” These kinds of searches are ubiquitous in daily life. So, being the first business to rank in those searches gives you an undeniable advantage.
Presence On Listing Sites
The first thing you need to do in your local SEO efforts is to create accounts on all relevant platforms and business listing sites. Yelp, Google MyBusiness, and all of the social media channels are essential.
Social media doesn’t work as a direct ranking factor in Google, but there are real local merits to being present on social media platforms. That presence gives you the potential to get positive reviews, and a lot of them.
Reviews are big contributors to local success, so it’s important that you incentivize your customers to give them.
Localized Keywords
Another shift in local SEO is the way you approach keywords. You have to narrow your search down a significant amount to find the terms that people in your area are searching for.
The beautiful thing here is that there’s far less competition for the popular terms. If there’s serious competition for those terms, there is bound to be a space for you in the less popular ones.
Beyond that, a lot of the same SEO principles apply to local and organic optimization.
Need Some Help With Your Search Engine Marketing?
Hopefully, our look into organic SEO and local SEO was useful to you. It’s tough to get your feet off of the ground at first, though. That’s why it’s important to work with professionals to meet your SEO goals.
We’re here to help you on that front. Contact us to explore your SEO options, get DIY SEO tips, and round out your SEO strategy so you start seeing legitimate results.
