Should an international company also be marketing locally?
-
I've just watched the very helpful video on Google Local best practices at http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/all-about-google-places and see MANY areas in which we are not utilizing our local marketing efforts.
Given that we do not have TOO much local demand, I would say that the main reason for doing this work is to gain momentum in our broad-scale Google SEO efforts/results.
But I am worried that Google might see us as a local company and stop showing us in the SERPs for non-local searches. Is this a good strategy to market locally, or to stick to backlinks on a broad international-based scale.
Does it even help my overall SEO rankings (for broad keywords like Point of Sale and POS Software) to have a strong local and hyperlocal presence?
Thanks!
Derek M
-
Excellent! Good luck Derek.
-
Thanks! Great reply. I will make these adjustments
-
For local and some national products I like to back brand on the title tag:
Best Green Widgets - Widget Company XYZ
-
Hi Derek,
Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum.
Now, my answer to your question is going to be of the it-depends type. Does your business have:
-
A physical street address (not shared, not a virtual office)?
-
A local area code phone number?
-
Face-to-face interaction with clientele, whether at your office or at their homes/businesses?
I ask these things because they are the requirements for inclusion in Google Places, which is pretty much the big cheese in Local. If you can say yes to all 3, then we're good to move forward. If any of those items is missing, then Google will not consider your business to be local.
Moving along, I want to mention that this is one of the most common questions I see being asked. Business owners want to know if having a local campaign will decrease their national or international presence in the eyes of Google. To date, I have only ever seen and given common sense answers to this question and have never seen:
-
An official study on this, with actual stats
-
An official pronouncement from Google on the subject
So, the advice I can give you here is going to be the general advice given on this topic, and should not be considered as though it is based on studies or words from the horse's mouth. The general consensus of opinion on this is that it is fine to run a modest Local SEO campaign at the same time as doing your National/International SEO.
What this might look like:
You put your complete local contact info in the footer of your website site-wide and you add it to your contact page. You devote a page or two to talking about your local office, local services, etc.. You get your business profiled in Google Places and other relevant local business directories, being sure to carefully adhere to the guidelines. You seek and manage your reviews. Finally, depending on the competitiveness of your market in your geography, you may do a little linkbuilding to give you a boost over other local competitors.
It is my belief that the percentage to which you engage in local SEO efforts should be commensurate with the percentage of local business you do. So, if 90% of your business is international and to 10% of it is local, then it makes sense for 10% of your efforts, content, linkbuilding etc. to be devoted to local. In such a case, you would NOT want to go and rewrite all of your title tags to include your city name in them or otherwise highly optimize for your local geographic terms, but a modest campaign, at least in the collective wisdom of the Local SEO community, should not harm your other rankings.
I do wish some company with good Local skills and extra time on their hands could do a thorough study of this FAQ so we could have some more visible conclusion to cite, but I hope this general advice will be helpful to you in making up you mind. Good luck!
Miriam
-
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
-
How to keep NAP if my company has two locations?
Hello, I am a bit puzzled since the company I'm working with has recently opened a new location. The company's first location is listed in all local directories. Could you please advise me what to do to make 2 locations visible and not to mess up with keeping same NAP all over the web? Most directories do not simply have the option to add another location. I had to open a brand new Google Business page for the second location (while using the same name brand). I suppose I am getting into trouble with this?
Technical SEO | | kirupa0 -
How do I setup sitemaps for an international website?
I am adding translated versions of my sites to a subdomain for example es.example.com. Will I add each subdomain into Google Webmaster Tools? Will each need its own sitemap?
Technical SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Cant find internal links on one of my pages.
When I run open site explorer for www.kingremodeling.com/ss.php?pid=5 it says there are 40 links to it on my site. However, I cannot find these links on any of the pages that open site explorer lists such as my homepage www.KingRemodeling.com. Totally confused!
Technical SEO | | allb830 -
Large Companies Taking Over Rankings
Recently many large companies. (lowes, bed bath and beyond, walmart, target, ace hardware, etc.), have taken over the rankings of keywords we used to rank high in. Is there any way to improve our rankings and compete with these large companies? Is this due to recent Google changes? Sample keywords are: electrolux vacuum bags, oreck vacuum bags, vacuum cleaner bag, vacuum cleaner filter
Technical SEO | | totalvac0 -
Recommendations. Need Hosting Company
I need a new hosting company asap. I am based in Costa Rica but need a reliable international service that supports Modx. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Llanero0 -
Avoiding duplicate content on internal pages
Lets say I'm working on a decorators website and they offer a list of residential and commercial services, some of which fall into both categories. For example "Internal Decorating" would have a page under both Residential and Commercial, and probably even a 3rd general category of Services too. The content inside the multiple instances of a given page (i.e. Internal Decorating) at best is going to be very similar if not identical in some instances. I'm just a bit concerned that having 3 "Internal Decorating" pages could be detrimental to the website's overall SEO?
Technical SEO | | jasonwdexter0 -
SEO Terms for Internal Vs External
Hey there! I am writing up an SEO plan for our company and wanted to get the groups input on the use of some SEO terms. I need to organize and explain these efforts to nonSEO people. I usually talk about, SEO in terms of "Internal" vs "External" efforts. Internal SEO efforts being things like Title Tags, Description Tags, Page Speed, Minimizing errors, proper 301 redirect, content development for the site, internal linking and anchor, etc. External SEO efforts being things like Link building, social media profile setups and posts (FB Twitter Pinterest, YouTube), PR work. How do you split these out? What terms do you use? Do you subdivide these tasks? What terms do you use? For example, with Internal, I sometimes talk about "Technical SEO" that has do to with making sure that site speed is working well, 301s are setup correctly, noindex tag etc are all used properly. These are things that different versus "On Page" efforts to use keywords properly etc. I will also use the term "Site Visibility" for non SEOs to explain the technical impact. For example, if your site has the wrong robots.txt, if you have 500 errors everywhere and a slow site, if you are sending spiders down a daisy chain of 301s, it is difficult for the key parts of your site to be found and so your "Visibility" to the engines are poor. You have to get your visibility up, before you begin to then worry about if you have the right keywords on a page etc. Any input or references would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CleverPhD0 -
How Much Authority Needed for Page with 1000 Internal Links?
Hypothetically speaking, if you wanted your homepage to have 1000 links, how much Page Rank or link authority would you need at a minimum (in order for Google to crawl all the links on the page)? Here is an example: http://www.khanacademy.org/#browse
Technical SEO | | ProjectLabs0