How Local SEO is Valuable

The internet is marvelled at for its global potential, the capacity to communicate with somebody in a yurt in Tibet with a dongle, and somebody living in a bungalow in Keynsham, has helped bring the world closer together and given potential for many companies to defy international, geographic restrictions and bound across the globe like Apollo riding his chariot across the sky.

Regardless of dot com potential there are still companies that are restricted to local business. This applies to businesses that aim at niche markets, local producers and specialist retailing outlets who ultimately do business physically and rely on local interest to provide custom. Alte
atively there are those business owners with simply no need or desire to push for global recognition, for small or family run businesses then the efforts of dealing with a sprawling network of international interest can be altogether far less appealing than concentrating on providing a much more localised service dedicated to a smaller, but much more personal market.

For example a family run farmers market in Keynsham will only produce as much as their land provides. They will be interested in highly personalised services for the local residents who take an interest in their produce, but they will still want an online presence to appeal to and keep hold of that dedicated local market.

For these businesses the capacity to market to that fellow in the Tibetan yurt is useless, he will never be interested in local vegetable produce from a farmer in Keynsham, by the time the carrots have been shipped they'll have gone rotten anyway. Our Keynsham farmers still want an online presence however, they just need it to target a more specific market, rather than wasting time on the rest of the globe.

This is where the value of a locally focused SEO strategy comes in.

By understanding the searching habits of specific areas and targeting them, as well as understanding the local listing sites can help SEO agencies tailor their campaign towards a specific audience.

The most obvious technique of this is by including the actual name of the region being targeted in the key words. So, for example, Keynsham residents looking for Keynsham local produce will search for "Keynsham Produce" unlike people from Glasgow who won't be searching for Keynsham. So this is instead of targeting nationally relevant key terms that not only reach an irrelevant audience, but bring smaller companies into tougher competition with bigger companies.

Understanding how to utilise local listings like the Yellow Pages and building links with more relevant sources will also improve a specifically targeted SEO campaign.

So Local SEO is the saviours of small businesses, when done intelligently it can allow local businesses to focus their cash effectively into online marketing and find ways around competing with major national companies.