If you are a small business owner or in charge of marketing your small business online, you have likely heard of local SEO and organic SEO. But you may ask yourself what the difference is and why local SEO is essential for your small business.
In this post, I'll explain the difference between local SEO and organic SEO and how they're related.
What Is Local Search?
The biggest difference between organic search and local search is that local SEO includes a geographical component and is integrated into Google Maps.
Search engines and, more importantly, Google recognizes local intent when a user searches for an industry, topic, product, service, and location. For some searches, search engines will also assume local intent based on the user's location, search history, or query type and deliver the results that are most relevant to the user. The ultimate goal of the search engines are to provide the most accurate answers to the user's query.
The following is how local search works:
I am staying on the coast of North Carolina and want to go deep-sea fishing. Who am I going to call? Now I have a couple of options, I can search out a print publication, brochure, or rack card, or I can do a Google search for "fishing charters Wilmington NC."
As you can see in this fictional example, three options appear in the local results under the advertisements, followed by the top ten organic results, all on the first page.
(And even if I just search for “fishing charters” Google assumes I’m looking for nearby fishing charters.)
What Is Local SEO?
Local SEO is the process of optimizing your small business's online presence so that you show up in and for those local searches. We'll get into it a bit later!
Going back to our fictional search results example.
Look underneath those local results for what are known as "organic" results. These are the results that search engines return based on E-A-T (expertise, authority, and trust) they have in a company's website. The algorithm believes that the more relevant your business and content are, the more likely it is to match you to a user's search.
What Is Organic Search?
These will include a wide range of content, including articles, videos, and webpages from various websites that the search engine algorithms have determined are relevant to the user's search. These results may also include local businesses, and some of the same business websites may appear in both the organic and local results. While a searcher may be looking for basic information rather than a specific location, both may be relevant and useful to the user.
Now you may be wondering how search engines work. At a high level, they rank and index individual web pages and sites based on hundreds of factors or signals, including outbound and inbound links, keywords, speed, usability, content, and design.
Who Should Rank in Organic versus Local Searches?
If you are a brick-and-mortar business, you need to focus on your presence and ranking in a local search, now more than ever, simply because the searcher is probably looking for a specific product or service related to your local businesses.
Furthermore, if you want to appear as the subject matter expert, you are, for the specific search terms, topics, products, or services. You must invest time in producing your on-site and offsite content to rank higher in organic searches.
Can or Should Local Businesses Rank High in Organic Searches?
Ranking both locally and organically is the best of both worlds. The more time you can show up on the search results page (SERP), the better. When you have helpful content on your website, you need to think of it as a tool and a way to help you drive new business. Ensuring you have an optimized and accurate listing will help you rank well not only in local searches but also in organic searches.
Organic SEO is the process of improving your website and other online references so that search engines understand who you are and what you are good at. Then they are able to crawl, index, and rank your small business website to ensure they are delivering the best results possible results to searchers.
To rank higher on the SERPs, both organically and locally, your small business has to be relevant to a specific search query. Therefore you have to state the obvious to ensure that the search engines show your business as having the right answer for a particular query.
Why Local SEO (Local Search Marketing)
Your business needs to appear in relevant local searches because "76% of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a business within 24 hours, and 28% of those searches result in a purchase." (Source: Google)
Naturally, optimizing a small business marketing strategy for local SEO is heavily based on its physical location. The search engine, and primarily Google, need to know exactly where your company is located so that when someone searches for an area or location you service, they can find your business there.
To put it simply, for local SEO to be effective, you must ensure that your company's name, address, and phone number (NAP) are consistent throughout local listing directories and your website. However, that is the bare minimum for local SEO.
Organic SEO
Organic SEO deals with whether your website is relevant for specific search terms and keyword phrases.
When you or an agency is optimizing a website for organic search, the goal is to have the website appear for specific queries or keywords. This may be as simple as "fishing charter near me" or a question put into a smartphone's voice search, such as "what is the best fishing charter going to frying pan shoals."
You need to focus on essential topics relevant to your business's services and use precise keywords in your body text and headings throughout your site for organic SEO. Also, don't stuff the paragraphs full of keywords, but if you're posting a list of the best fishing charters, you might want to include the phrase "deep-sea fishing charters" a few times on the page.
How Do Local SEO and Organic SEO Affect Each Other?
Certain SEO tactics benefit both local and organic search rankings. For example, you include a link to your website when you claim your business page on local listing directories such as Google, Bing, Yelp, etc.
These local listing citations (your company's name, address, and phone number) aid in local SEO by informing search engines of your location. They develop connections back to your website, which is a backlink-building method that can significantly benefit your organic SEO efforts as search engines consider the number of backlinks when ranking sites.
On-site local SEO (for example, publishing a locally focused blog post or updating a page with your company's address) can also boost your organic SEO. Because search engines prefer new content, local SEO can help increase your organic SEO efforts while also sending signals of local importance.
When done right, local and organic SEO efforts will help boost your website ranks; however, both can significantly negatively impact your digital marketing efforts when done incorrectly.
Remember that while SEO is optimization for the search engines, it is what helps customers find your local small business.
While you want to ensure search engines understand what your company and website are about, you should also consider potential clients searching for your company.
Don't just optimize for Google to find out what you do. Make sure searchers can get all the information they need about your company, such as its exact location, hours of operation, services or products, etc.
At Cube Creative Design, we specialize in creating digital marketing plans for North Carolina small businesses. Contact us today if you want to learn more about how we do what we do or how we can help your business grow!
