Transcript
Hi guys, and welcome to another edition of Zupo SEO Talk & Tea.
Today's conversation is about keyword optimization if you're trying to rank in Orange County. The reason why we're having this conversation is because our agency is actually located in Orange County and our agency specializes in Orange County SEO. We have a wide network in orange County as well. So we want to provide a video to help people who are our friends in this county understand what keyword optimization looks like in this county. Anyways, before we begin, we have our tea today, which is the Magic Dragon Tisane, which I actually introduced in last week's videos. But I liked it so much that we're going to have it again. I just love the name of this tea, it's Magic Dragon, and it has apple, rose hips, hibiscus, blackberry leaves. And I think there's dragon fruit ... yeah, and dragon fruit. Yeah, that's why it's called Magic Dragon.
Well anyway, let's get brewing, let's get talking. So keyword optimization when it comes to Orange County. So first thing's first, let's set up straight. If you're trying to optimize for SEO results in Orange County, you're competing in local SEO. There's no way around that, because you're trying to rank in the county, local SEO is your game. So I would say first things first, just to know that you're going to be in a local game. And so there's a little bit of difference when you're doing local SEO when it comes to keyword optimization. Keyword optimization for SEO usually involves making sure you're using a keyword you're trying to rank for in the text, headlines, SEO tags, and so on. That's the case for local SEO, but you add one more thing. You need to add the local geographic modifiers. That's a very academic and complex way of saying you need to put the city or county that you're trying to rank for in your text as well.
So what that means ... So for example, let's use my favorite example of pizza. If you're trying to rank for pizza in Orange County, you want to make sure that your SEO title, your SEO description, your headings and your title and your content and your site all generally have a theme saying, "Pizza in Orange County," or "Orange County pizza," right? So you need to have the keyword and the local geo modifier, which is Orange County. So in that case though, what'd you have to do then make sure is the SEO title tags, SEO descriptions and like I just said, the headings all have it. So when you're trying to do it though, I guess the best way to think about it is when you're doing it, make sure not every page is optimized for Orange County pizza or pizza in Orange County. There is many ways you can take it.
I would say the best way to do is have your homepage be usually the highest volume the keyword is going for. So generally pizza in Orange County, but then as you deviate beyond that, you can use [inaudible 00:02:35]. People will say pizza delivery in Orange County, I would move that to your delivery page. If your people want breadsticks and pizza or meat lovers pizza, you have separate pages. And that's where I think the area where I feel a lot of people get messed up is that they're trying to rank for one keyword. They start using it on all of the pages, oh, pizza in Orange County, pizza in Orange County, pizza in Orange County in all the pages. And that's not actually the best way to do it because SEO title tags and descriptions is the way Google understands what your page is trying to rank for.
And if every page on your website is trying to rank for the same keywords or they're just unable to tell what you're trying to rank for because they're all the same, they will auto assign it. Although they may auto assign the right page, which is usually your homepage, it causes some issues because it also viscerally limits how many keywords you're going for. Google is complex and searches don't all use the same term. They use different search queries that they'll use like pizza in Orange County, OC pizza, pizza in the OC, what's the best pizza in the OC. There are many different variations and you want to optimize your different pages for those different topics. So what's the best pizza, you might want to have a blog post about how your pizza was one of the top three pizzas ranked in the county, another page about how your meat lovers pizza is gray and what do you guys do with it, how you guys came up with the recipe and so on and so forth.
And so what I would recommend is yes, have pizza in Orange County as your homepage but as you go to the different pages, ensure that you're using different variations of keywords are still relevant to what you're trying to rank for with the geo modifiers. So there is some value in saying like, "Okay, this one's for delivery, this one's for just general pizza," and the different adjectives. And then from there, what I'd also encourage you for keyword optimization is, I've talked about this in other videos, make sure your internal linking is on point in terms of your own site. So what I mean by that is if your homepage is trying to rank for Orange County pizza, and you have the pizza delivery page, you want to make sure that when your internal links are set across your site, the anchor text of that internal like is matched to the keyword you're trying to rank for.
So here's a good example. Let's say you're talking on a blog post about how you guys will deliver pizza in Orange County, but also that your delivery is unique in this way, that you'll get to in less than 30 minutes, whatever it might be. Well, if you're writing a blog post about, you will probably have a service paid about delivering pizzas. You want to ensure that the anchor text ... if you're trying to optimize that page for a pizza delivery in OC, the anchor text linking to that page also says, "Pizza delivery in OC," or some really close to that or phrase match to that. And the reason is that that reinforces to Google the idea that not only are you trying to rank to those keywords, but every page that links to it is also referencing that same keyword.
And that's when it comes to local optimization, it isn't too much different from traditional keyword optimization. It just gets a little bit trickier because you have the keyword you're trying to rank for, but you also have the geographic modifier. And so like I just mentioned, you don't want to overdo the same keyword on geographic modifier across the site. You want to have some variation and have some delineation. Otherwise, you dilute the ability of your ranking and you will never be able to expand beyond and get into more keywords. And even though you may think you don't need more keywords to rank for, there are always new keywords and new niches of search queries that people are using to eventually get to your type of business, but you just don't realize it just yet. So in terms of keyword optimization, use the keyword, use the geographic modifier in the title, in the descriptions, in the headings and then in the content.
And then also when you go across the site into different pages and show you how unique keywords ... unique keywords, how to have geographic modify like Orange County in each page that is optimized for different variations of the topics you're trying to rank for. And then finally, of course, the internal links and anchor text must match the keyword optimizations that you're trying to go for. And generally that is a good guideline for it if you're going to rank a site in Orange County. Now, of course you need to be more exact with it when you get to your own website, but that will generally give you the groundwork for on-site SEO for Orange County. So hopefully that was valuable. You guys can go ahead and take that and start referencing your own SEO strategy on your site and if you live in Orange County you can follow our Orange County SEO Guide. See if you're doing something similar and if not, you can course correct. But if you guys liked and enjoyed the video, you found it valuable, please like, and subscribe. And I'm going to go ahead and enjoy my Magic Dragon tea now. I hope to see you guys again soon. Thanks.