SEO is an acronym that stands for search engine optimization. It is a process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page to rank higher in the results that are listed by search engines such as Google and Yahoo. In fact, Local Brand Advisor implements SEO services for clients to help them rank at the top of search engines, especially when it comes to local SEO. However, there are important distinctions between the two concepts that you must understand to recognize if you need an SEO professional for your business. Therefore, this post will discuss the difference between SEO and local SEO.
What Is SEO?
The term “SEO” refers to a wide range of practices designed to increase the number of visitors to a website by improving its ranking in search results. The principles, methods, and techniques involved in undertaking SEO may vary depending on the strategy adopted by any particular organization or even an individual. It includes link building, article submissions, blogging, intensive backlinking, and keyword optimization.The most important goal of any SEO campaign is to improve the ranking of websites in search engines for a given set of keywords. You can get help from trusted companies online like nextandco.com.au to know the best SEO strategies for your company and apply other proven conversion rate optimasation techniques.
Search engines function by crawling through pages on the internet and indexing them in their database. This, in turn, allows users to view their search results based on the keywords they entered into the search bar. These keywords are then matched up with websites and pages that have those words on them. These are the top pages that will appear in a user’s search results.
However, there are still many factors that can affect how a search engine ranks the pages. The most common issues that affect the ranking of a page comes from lousy link building. When content is built to make sure more click-throughs to your website, you are raising its rankings as well. This is what local SEO does it helps raise a business website’s ranking in local search results by improving the links coming into your website from other websites and blogs within your local area or industry.
What Is Local SEO?
Local SEO is an extension of conventional SEO and focuses on optimizing your business’ visibility in the search results of Google Maps and other localized search engines. Local SEO can be considered an important part of the overall online marketing strategy. Another way to define local SEO is the process of improving the visibility of your website or blogs in local-based search engines like Google Maps, Yahoo! Local, MSN Live, or Yelp. Additionally, local SEO helps to increase the number of customers with your physical location.
A large portion of customers who visit a business will be searching for services, products, and information that pertains to the company’s location.
Three Main Things That Local SEO Does
- Improve the website’s structure. Improving the internal system of a business website can help with the flow of traffic within it. The internal links are essential because they can lead to higher ranking results in search engines this is known as PageRank, one of Google’s ranking methods for its search engine results.
- Outreach to local businesses and blogs for link building. This method shows that your business is an active part of the community, and that you are collaborating with other businesses as well as showcasing your products and services to them. Link building is important because it can help create a relationship between your business and the other ones that you are in contact with.
- Join local online communities to build relationships. Online communities such as blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are platforms where a business can connect with its clients and form relationships with other businesses based on their industry or location. Social media helps businesses strengthen the relationship and can be an excellent tool for local SEO.
The difference between SEO and local SEO lies in its aim to rank your web page for keywords specific to your business’ products or services to increase traffic, leads, referrals for sales, or another goal that you want to accomplish for your online marketing strategy.
Thus, SEO is a broad term that includes the set of activities that help your business rank well on a search engine results page. However, local SEO is a subset of SEO that focuses on the keywords for your business. Thus, local SEO is optimizing a website to rank better in search results for searches related to a business’s products and services.