An optimisation campaign for a site should be planned and implemented with the specific requirements of the business in question in mind. Nonetheless, there are some general principles that can be of considerable use. In addition to these general principles, there are some particular techniques which have proven successful in more than one case. These deserve elaboration, but will only be productive if they are tailored to fit individual sites. Many sites today represent small businesses that have predominantly local aspirations.
At SEO Consult we are experts at designing and pursuing local SEO. We recognise that many sites have no chance of dominating the world or becoming of national importance. However, this limit to their potential does not mean that they cannot make more out of their local or regional market. Regional SEO is similar to the local variant; it merely has to take a larger geographical area into account.
When it comes to getting content correct for a largely local target audience, there is actually a great deal to do. Firstly, many of the articles and blog posts in question need significant attention in terms of making them relevant to local issues. Secondly, local keywords may be inserted into the text in an unobtrusive manner. Thirdly, content providers must spend some time finding out about the local culture and economy. Fourthly, competitors in the area have to be tracked and lessons may have to be learnt.
These tasks are usually best accomplished by a consultancy that is based fairly close to the business concerned. In the age of the internet it might seem absurd, but there is still no substitute for local knowledge. Hence there is a lot of benefit to be gained by those site owners who contrive to get the best local firm there is to represent their interests. A firm that is based a long way away will also be difficult to communicate with. Face-to-face communication is still very effective in establishing and maintaining trust, even when compared with video conferencing.
The way in which this debate is sometimes set up can be seriously misleading. Locality is not just important for conventional optimisation. It is also of importance when it comes to exploitation of social media. Twitter and Facebook are both platforms from which local businesses can make a lot of progress. However, it takes professional direction to obtain positive results that are sustainable. Simply following a random selection of local people and local firms on Twitter is not enough.
It is critical for many campaigns to retain a flexible mind-set. A campaign for a local food provider might not have to look outside the area. Using Google Places and other local techniques could be sufficient for it to get more business. However, some companies do need a mix of techniques.
This is because they could do even better if some of the efforts of their consultancies were directed further away too. This underlines the fact that when it comes to optimisation, there are often no easy answers to the problems campaigns must address.