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Understanding the Similarities & Differences between Local & National SEO

As the customers continue to change their mode of shopping and searching for any service, it has become a compulsion for companies to make their online presence known to the world.

This shift of customers from traditional marketing towards online marketing is the major reason behind the rapid growth of the SEO industry. SEO strategies help all the companies who have an online presence. When a company improves its online visibility, the revenue automatically increases as the number of customers visiting the website and the lead conversion increases. Along with PPC advertising, SEO has become the key to success for the companies and, thus, it is necessary for them to have some knowledge about SEO.

There are two distinct search engine optimization strategies that benefit different businesses depending upon the services they provide. These strategies, namely local SEO and national SEO, share a lot of similarities as well as differences which we will discuss.

  1. Similarities
  2. Local SEO and National SEO both work towards the objective of optimizing a website to make it better for visitors and the search engines. Hence, they share some similarities with each other.

    Results: Efficient SEO, either local or National, ultimately provide the website with a higher rank in the search engine result pages (SERPs) and increase the inbound traffic as well as conversions.

    Strategies: Although the techniques are different from each other, there exist some strategies which are applicable to both Local and National SEO. These are basically two strategies which specialists commonly use for SEO.

    Both local businesses and large corporations benefit from guest posting as they get backlinks from other prominent sites. The search engines such as Google and Bing regard these backlinks highly as they show that your site is a credible one because it has links from authoritative sites. Thus, backlinks are an effective way of making a website well-reputed.

    Although the targeted keywords in the local and national campaigns may differ, the basic strategy remains the same.

    The local and national SEO also share another strategy which includes acquiring backlinks from resource pages. All prominent sites have their resource pages where they can list relevant sites or resources. It provides an apt platform to acquire backlinks.

  3. Differences
  4. Keywords: Both local and national SEO target different types of keywords for increasing the rank of the website.

    As the National SEO campaigns have more budget and workforce than local SEO campaigns, they can target generic keywords and also succeed in their attempt of gaining the top spot for such keywords.

    Contrastingly, the smaller local campaigns for local businesses have a strict budget and thus target geo-specific keywords which contain the name of the place where they can provide their services. Through targeting geo-specific keywords, the local businesses also try to attract the maximum number of local customers towards them.

    Keywords example: The national SEO campaigns will aim for keywords such as “SEO services in India” or “SEO services”, whereas the local ones will aim for “SEO services in Delhi”.

    Citations: Local citations are a unique feature of the Local SEO as no similar concept exists in the National SEO campaigns. These citations mention your company’s NAP (name, address, and Phone number) on other sites. They are important as they contribute towards the local search results.

    Social Media: The funds play a significant role in the use of social media. As the National SEO campaigns have more money than local SEO campaigns, they remain active on various social media platforms and also boost their link building through these platforms. The local SEO includes minimal social media activity as they cannot do much more than creating a Google+ business page.

    Google+ Local: It’s an internal search platform, designed by Google especially for local results. It is an adequate platform through which the Local businesses can benefit as the Google+ Local ranks websites based on the combination of quantity and quality. Thus, it is crucial for local businesses to maintain a quality Google+ Business Page. Local SEO campaigns help in maintaining such pages, increasing the ranking in local search results.

    Regardless of the strategy, SEO is essential for maintaining a profitable position in the online world and hence, you should soon associate with the right SEO agency for your business.

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