Transcript
Hi guys. Welcome to another edition of Zupo's SEO Talk & Tea.
Today's conversation is balancing cities and counties in local SEO. The reason why we want to have this conversation is because a lot of times, you wherever you are geographically, you normally have a city that your business may reside in, and you may have an overall county that you may be a part of. So there is a balance between working between those.
But before we jump on in, I do want to introduce the tea we have today. Today we have an Imperial green tea from Mei Leaf and Mei Leaf is a very special tea brand that I am very particular to because they're actually, one of the people that has helped introduce me to, I don't want to say tea, but I think I was introduced to tea when I was much younger, but enjoying tea at a different level.
I think when I was younger, tea was all about Boba and just drinking a lot of it. Mei Leaf I would say has educated me a little bit more about the different levels of tea and how to enjoy some of the nicer teas and everything. So today we have a special guest of the Imperial green tea from Mei Leaf. And we're going to go ahead and get started brewing and get talking about this conversation today.
So balancing cities and counties. So the number one thing is, this really depends also on where you reside. For example, in some geographic areas, they really use the county and in some areas they don't talk about the county. So a good example of the area that does talk about the county a lot is Orange County. Orange County is where we reside, that's where our agency's located. And in our area, Orange County is used very heavily. A lot of people, they identify with the county itself and therefore a lot of people will look at Orange County as a whole, as opposed to a city.
So if you're in Orange County you may have to balance between, do I want to rank in Irvine in Orange County? Or you want to rank in Anaheim in Orange County. There's a different city at a county level. There are some localities and geographic areas where the county is not as important anymore. It's where they don't really identify with the county itself, they more identify with the city. Now I don't really have one off the top of my head, but there are different areas that do that. So if you're one of those people that, where your business resides, you guys don't really relate to the county then this may not be too much of an issue because you can just go to the city.
So to loop this back into the conversation I want to have today though, is balancing cities and counties in local SEO. I'm going to use specifically Orange County examples where, I've worked with some businesses that may want to rank, let's say in Mission Viejo and Orange County. Mission Viejo is a Southern city of Orange County, and they want to rank in their local city, but they do want to service everyone in Orange County. And what you're doing here with local SEO is you're trying to balance the two. And when you're choosing between the two, you're going to have to do one of two things. One is, typically the county has a wider geographic area therefore, there's going to be more volume. And then second it's a higher competition.
Whereas your local city may have a lower volume, but lower competition as well. So what I often do when I work with clients is we first assess doing keyword research. But generally, if the competition is just too high in Orange County, we will go for your local city first and then move on to the county. And how that's executed is therefore your title tags, SEO tags, and headers on your site would say something like, "Business in Irvine," or, "Business in Mission Viejo." And then as we rank for Mission Viejo, we then might add, "Business in Mission Viejo and Orange County," just to add the Orange County layer. There is usually a balancing act to it. Sometimes you may need to pick one or the other, but when you're balancing the cities, what I would say is look at the search volume and the competition.
Sometimes Orange County is way too competitive, and then you go city by city. Sometimes though it is competitive it is way, much more worth it because of the payoff, because the volume of searches is much higher. Therefore, I'd recommend when you're working with the cities and the counties, the biggest dictator is going to be the keyword research and the competition. However, I believe most businesses want to rank in their city and then the county.
So what I would say is first rank in your city, then go for the county. So when you rank in your local city, don't stop there. You still need to be doing link building, you still need to be adding content and then start ranking for the county as a whole. So again, if you're not in Orange County and you're across the country, I would say, you would know best how your local geographic area operates.
Do people use the county or do people use mainly only their cities? If you're not sure, go on to the keyword research tools, look at what people are searching up. Do they use business in this county or just business in the city? And that will tell you what you should be going for. And therefore, then you can do what I said earlier, researching, and then dictating the strategy.
So local SEO gets a little bit nuanced because you are, you're starting to stretch your balance with different cities. And when you're doing content, it sometimes can be weird to say, "Business in these four cities and Orange County," it can be a little bit unusual. So I would say it is worth measuring and having concentrated strategies that go for each locality. It doesn't usually work if you're trying to rank for 20 cities and the county, with just one strategy it technically needs to just siphoned off into different strategies.
So hopefully that's helpful, guys, I'm going to go ahead and start pouring out my green tea. Local SEO is something that has become very important. I think a lot of people do not understand parameters around it. So therefore in this discussion, ensure that you understand the geographic area of how people will treat cities and counties. And then second, how that translated into your strategy from there? So hopefully you found that video valuable and you liked it. Please go ahead and like, and subscribe. I'm going to go ahead and have my tea for today. And I hope to see you guys again soon. Thanks everybody.