How Does SEO Help Local Businesses
-
Hello,
I recently took a position as a digital marketing manger with a advertising agency. Its my job to grow the digital marketing department.
One of the issues I am running into is 90% of our clients are local businesses. When doing keyword research it is very difficult to find keywords with lots of search.
For example, if I am optimizing for a Ford dealership in Hackensack,NJ there are not a lot of searches for this term.
How can I justify a larger SEO budget when there is just not a lot of search volume for these keywords?
This is nothing like Dog Training Videos or something similar.
Am I missing something?
Where can I pull traffic from for local businesses to justify larger SEO budgets?
Thanks,
Bill
-
Anthony,
I think you are right on point with content strategy. I guess the challenge is coming up with content that will drive the right traffic.
If we are selling cars in the NYC area and I write a great article on how to detail your car like a professional and someone from Arizona visits the site, the visitor is not targeted.
The other thought I had was to write about local happenings where the car dealers are located. Make more of a local portal than a site just dedicated to people looking for cars in a local market.
-
As Egol advised you need to understand your clients market.
Whats their average sale?
Whats the lifetime value of a customer? (repeat business)
Potential for Referral business? (Professional Services, Home maintenance)
What is their current marketing spend and Cost of customer Acquisition (COCA) look like?
Can you provide a lower COCA than their current marketing spend?
You don't want to be selling "SEO" you want to be selling your clients on the fact that you can reduce their Cost of Customer Acquistion and provide a higher ROI than their current advertising efforts.
Think of the potential clients near you e.g. Glazers, Home Security Installations, Fencing Suppliers, plumbers that have a high Average sale - a dozen extra sales per year for these businesses could have a serious effect on their bottom line.
-
Hi Bill,
You're getting some excellent feedback already from members here. I thought I'd pop in to make sure your question is being understood. You write:
"When doing keyword research it is very difficult to find keywords with lots of search.
For example, if I am optimizing for a Ford dealership in Hackensack,NJ there are not a lot of searches for this term."
In Local SEO, one seldom finds high volume keyword phrases with the geo keywords attached. Unless the business is in LA or NY, the number of searches DISPLAYED with city keywords attached will generally be low because the available data centers aren't showing you actual local data. So, your core term takeaways from kw research tools are going to be non-geo-specific keywords (car dealership, ford dealership, ford cars, used cars, affordable cars, car lot, or what have you). Make your list out of these terms and then add on whatever geographic terms are necessary.
Perhaps you already know this, but from the way you phrased your question, it sounded to me as if you might be judging search volume on criteria you can't count on. This is an oft-voiced beef in the Local SEO industry...keyword research tools do not present an accurate picture of true local searches. So, the workaround I've described is what is used by pretty much every Local SEO I know.
Does this make sense? Please, let me know. Great discussion in here, everybody
-
I'm a small local business ...
I have TRIED to hire SEO before, but every time I look into it I am not happy with what I run into.I would kill to have someone else take over the SEO for me & gain me clients so I could give them bigger jobs as well...Right now I am paying the 99 a month to do it myself as well as several hours per week.(Hours that I am NOT out gaining clients in person)
Now on to your issue of local vs not so local...
1. It depends on your local economy, here in Oakland it is a very mixed bag but I live quite close to larger markets such as San Francisco I even pull "local" clients from as far as Modesto & Carmel.
2. If your client can understand that people WILL travel to buy from the PERFECT vendor then he/she can pull clients from anywhere...I have had clients literally buy a plane ticket & fly to me to shoot as well as have me fly to them... Your job is to gain that small business a few killer out of state clients show them just how much ROI you can give them.
3. Many special niche markets have VERY loyal clients, who are willing to drive, fly, have products mailed to them...Make sure your clients understand that and once THEY start seeing the money flow more will flow to you...
4. If your clients are in a vacation destination then take advantage of local tourism industry...
Lots of search is not as important as targeted click through conversion search.
I honestly don't care a bit if I get 150 hits a day or 1500, I want clients...
I have in fact increased by web traffic by 100% since Jan and held it at this new level....Guess what...I might have 2x the number of visitors to my site but I don't yet have 2x the number of bookings or 2x the booking rates.
-
When there isn't a lot of KW volume for the local terms, you need to look beyond doing on-page optimization for one or two major KWs. It's not simply a 'target these words and watch the business flow-in' type of optimization.
Instead, your SEO efforts should be based around creating a content strategy. Content that will be interesting, useful and naturally contain a ton of relevant local long-tail phrases that have a tiny search volume of their own. You might not have a keyword that brings in 100 visitors in a month, but you might have 500 keywords that are bringing in 2 or 3 visitors per month. 1500 monthly visits!
Content FTW!
-
If you get one client for a dentist that client might spend an awful lot of money. I just paid nearly $1000 to get one tooth repaired. They want nearly $100 for a six month check! So, if you can get that dentist one patient per month that dentist should have positive ROI.
Your work gets a car sold... geez... they want $350 to do the $30,000 mile check! If you get one car customer per month they should have positive ROI.
Now, at the end of 36 months that dentist should have sustained revenue of 72 cleanings a year and at least 18 minor repairs - unless he has bad breath that scaress away the patients. The result of your work on a monthly basis would be ((722200)+(18*200))/12 .... $2700 per month
So, if you are charging a few hundred a month then that might be a good return (for the dentist)... but if you are looking for $2000/month clients then you are fishin the wrong pond.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO Drop
Over the last few months my rank has dropped by around half and for the life of me I can’t see why. There are no warnings on Google Console. Am I missing something? Website: thespacecollective.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Dealing with negative SEO
Interested to know people strategies for detecting and mitigating negative SEO. Previously I've used link monitoring tool and kept an eye on all new back links coming in to any page on the site. I have then manually assessed each one again using some tools and actually visiting the website. However, this always leaves me with one dilemma. Regardless of my assessment how do search engines see that link? I run three lists a white list, grey list and blacklist. White list - very relevant and have a lot of authority. I.e. leading industry blogs and forums. Grey list - out of topic/industry, directories Blacklist - sites de-indexed by Google, illegal content or absolute spam (i.e. one page filled with hundreds of links to different domains) Do you have any thoughts? How do you assess if link is bad?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Merging Pages and SEO
Hi, We are redesigning our website the following way: Before: Page A with Content A, Page B with Content B, Page C with Content C, etc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading1
e.g. one page for each Customer Returns, Overstocks, Master Case, etc
Now: Page D with content A + B + C etc.
e.g. one long page containing all Product Conditions, one after the other So we are merging multiples pages into one.
What is the best way to do so, so we don't lose traffic? (or we lose the minimum possible) e.g. should we 301 Redirect A/B/C to D...?
Is it likely that we lose significant traffic with this change? Thank you,0 -
Related products & SEO
My company has a comprehensive set of historical images and text - hosted separately on a free museum site - it's currently displayed on our main site as an iframe. I realize the iframe brings no SEO juice to the site - but we are updating our site - and thinking of bringing the images and text to our site. I'm wondering if this could help or hurt us - the historical information is about "boat widgets" and we sell "car widgets" - could a lot of information about "boat widgets" dilute our "car widgets" seo ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThomasErb0 -
Is Snip.ly bad for SEO?
Hi, I'm using the software snip.ly, which allows me to add call to action into content I publish through social media. It's really powerful but I'm wondering how it can affect my SEO? Snip.ly now appears into my link report and its spam score is only 2, which is good. However I'm afraid that in the long term, it can be bad: links are created manually by the webmarketer Topics of this website are infinite the ancor is the same Your thoughts?..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 2MSens0 -
Joomla Plugins for SEO
Any input on which Joomla plugins could help us to facilitate the SEO on a client's site? Wordpress has some simple all-in-ones but we're not as familiar with Joomla and it doesn't look like that's the case. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MackenzieFogelson0 -
"Original Content" Dynamic Hurting SEO? -- Strategies for Differentiating Template Websites for a Nationwide Local Business Segment?
The Problem I have a stable of clients spread around the U.S. in the maid service/cleaning industry -- each client is a franchisee, however their business is truly 'local' with a local service area, local phone/address, unique business name, and virtually complete control over their web presence (URL, site design, content; apart from a few branding guidelines). Over time I've developed a website template with a high lead conversion rate, and I've rolled this website out to 3 or 4 dozen clients. Each client has exclusivity in their region/metro area. Lately my white hat back linking strategies have not been yielding the results they were one year ago, including legitimate directories, customer blogging (as compelling as maid service/cleaning blogs can really be!), and some article writing. This is expected, or at least reflected in articles on SEO trends and directory/article strategies. I am writing this question because I see sites with seemingly much weaker back link profiles outranking my clients (using SEOMoz toolbar and Site Explorer stats, and factoring in general quality vs. quantity dynamics). Questions Assuming general on-page optimization and linking factors are equal: Might my clients be suffering because they're using my oft-repeated template website (albeit with some unique 'content' variables)? If I choose to differentiate each client's website, how much differentiation makes sense? Specifically: Even if primary content (copy, essentially) is differentiated, will Google still interpret the matching code structure as 'the same website'? Are images as important as copy in differentiating content? From an 'machine' or algorithm perspective evaluating unique content, I wonder if strategies will be effective such as saving the images in a different format, or altering them slightly in Photoshop, or using unique CSS selectors or slightly different table structures for each site (differentiating the code)? Considerations My understanding of Google's "duplicate content " dynamics is that they mainly apply to de-duping search results at a query specific level, and choosing which result to show from a pool of duplicate results. My clients' search terms most often contain client-specific city and state names. Despite the "original content" mantra, I believe my clients being local businesses who have opted to use a template website (an economical choice), still represent legitimate and relevant matches for their target user searches -- it is in this spirit I ask these questions, not to 'game' Google with malicious intent. In an ideal world my clients would all have their own unique website developed, but these are Main St business owners balancing solutions with economics and I'm trying to provide them with scalable solutions. Thank You! I am new to this community, thank you for any thoughts, discussion and comments!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | localizedseo0 -
Adwords Policy and SEO
I have a customer who runs campaigns on adwords and we have had real problems with his ads being taken down due to certain ingredients being present in supplements. Now we move towards his SEO campaign and we wondered if the natural listings are effected by sites that list banned substances or pages listed on the adwords policy as being banned ? Has anyone experienced a site being downgraded by link being present from sites that provided products or services that are banned from being advertised on Google adwords ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinemediadirect0