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.
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
-
Faceted Navigation & SEO
Hi Is my faceted navigation bad for SEO?! example: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/metal-cabinets-cupboards Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Help to identify that this SEO agency is doing a TERRIBLE job
Hi folks, I am working with a group for which I do SEO etc. for one part of the group. Another part of the group hired an SEO agency to carry out their SEO for them (before I joined). In short, they are doing a terrible job by building links in very dodgy directories (ones which get taken offline) and via machine generated 'articles' on horrendously bad 'blogs'. Please take a look at these 'articles' and leave your thoughts below so I can back up the point that these guys are not the kind of SEOs we should be working with. [List of links to articles removed by moderator] Many thanks in advance, Gill.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cannetastic0 -
Mirrors Hosting SEO
Hello, I notice that some sites do provide hosting for mirroring file downloading for cpanel, apache and other big developers. I assume that benefits of it is link building but look at this site: http://apache.mirrors.hoobly.com/ Hoobly provide mirrors for most developers but none of them are indexed by google for ex: http://apache.mirrors.hoobly.com/ So can someone explain why would be that or what is going on ? is that something hidden here ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eriklogo50 -
Technical SEO
Hi Team, What are the points we are missing on our website from technical SEO front? http://www.giftxoxo.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Obbserv0 -
Help FORUM ( User generated content ) SEO best practices
Hello Moz folks ! For the very first time im dealing with a massive community who rely on UGC ( user generated content ). Their forum is finding a great deal of duplicate content/broken link/ duplicate title and on-site issue. I have Advance SEO knowledge related to ecommerce or blogging but new to forum and UGC. I would really love to learn or get ressources links that would allow me to see/understand the best practices in term of SEO. Any help is greatly appreciated. Best, Yan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ydesjardins2000 -
Looking for help with my website
Hi does any one know of a good seo company that will get results, i.e., fix site issues and get the site improving in the serps.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Taiger0 -
Retail Store Detail Page and Local SEO Best Practices
We are working with a large retailer that has specific pages for each store they run. We are interested in leveraging the best practices that are out their specifically for local search. Our current issue is around URL design for the stores pages themselves. Currently, we have store URL's such as: /store/12584 The number is a GUID like character that means nothing to search engines or, frankly, humans. Is there a better way we could model this URL for increased relevancy for local retail search? For example: adding store name:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mongillo
www.domain.com/store/1st-and-denny-new-york-city/23421
(example http://www.apple.com/retail/universityvillage/) fully explicit URI www.domain.com/store/us/new-york/new-york-city/10027/bronx/23421
(example http://www.patagonia.com/us/patagonia-san-diego-2185-san-elijo-avenue-cardiff-by-the-sea-california-92007?assetid=5172) the idea with this second version is that we'd make the URL structure more rich and detailed which might help for local search. Would there be a best practice or recommendation as to how we should model this URL? We are also working to create an on-page optimization but we're specifically interested in local seo strategy and URL design.0 -
How Important is the IP Address for SEO?
Hi Everyone, I am curious to know if IP Address plays any role in SEO....What if a website sharing an I.P with a porn site, BlueFart site, fake viagra pills site etc.? Does it affect the SEO? Please share your opinion on this. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seodoz0