December 22

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Local SEO necessitates Local Content

By Jason Khoo

December 22, 2020


Transcript

Hi, guys. And welcome to another edition of Zupo SEO Talk & Tea. 

Today's conversation, local SEO necessitates local content. This is a really important conversation because, really, a lot of companies now, today, are under more and more pressure or more incentive to rank locally. And I want to talk about how content comes into play with that. But before we begin, I want to introduce the tea we have today. Today, we have a Pu'Er tea that is my, essentially, daily companion. I drink this tea pretty much every day. And I'll have to be honest, I'm getting a little nervous. We're almost running out. And this is my last remaining, I guess, what would be the word, collection of it, I guess. Or the last remaining like set of the tea. But it's a Pu'Er tea, which is a fermented tea. I like to drink it because it's the closest thing you're going to get to black coffee. It's very dark tea when it comes out. And it has a kick that you may want in the morning.

But let's go ahead and get brewing and get chatting. So when it comes to local SEO, remember, local SEO is trying to rank your site in a locality or geographic area. So my company, we're in Orange County. We do SEO. We're trying to rank for SEO in Orange County. So what I said earlier was that local SEO necessitates local content. So in that case, if my site is trying to rank for SEO in Orange County, my site then necessitates local content, which in this case means Orange County content.

So what that means is like, when you have a business and you're trying to add information to your blog or whatever it might be, the thing is that people don't want to narrow the funnel of the potential people they could work with. So for example, for me, I could do SEO anywhere in the world. That's just generally like the nature of this business. I don't need to be doing it locally because there's no geographic restrictions. But in SEO sense, there is. Because SEO is kind of seen as a local search when it comes to SEO in Orange County, or SEO services, I need to optimize my site where not only it's optimized for SEO, but it's also optimized so Google understands I serve the Orange County market.

But what does that mean? Well, here's what it means. If I'm trying to rank for SEO in Orange County, I need to talk about on my website SEO topics. That's why I film these videos. That's why I write on my blog. That's why we have more pages. But the other thing is I need to add SEO Orange County content. And that's where it gets a little bit more nuanced. It's a little bit more difficult. Because when I talk about SEO, it's hard, like broken link-building, or canonical tags, or AB testing. These are pretty universal. Like they're not specific to Orange County.

But in another sense, though, if Google is trying to understand my website better, they need to understand by reading my pages and my content that I'm trying to rank for Orange County and not just SEO generally. So therefore, your blog needs to have topics like some variation of like what it means do SEO in Orange County, or unique things about doing Orange County SEO, or stuff like that. You need to have content that talks about what you do in addition to the locality that you're going for.

And this is where your content creativity really needs to come into play. A lot of my clients, a lot of people I've worked with, have had a hard time trying to wrap their head around this. And I understand why. It's like how do I talk about my trade with only my local area? That just seems very stifling in that sense. And on another level, most of my clients say, "I don't want to just talk about Orange County or the local area because I can service anyone around the world," which is also true. But if we're thinking about SEO in a sense if you want to rank in your local area, you need to have content, and lots of it, that prove to Google that you serve that local market so they'll rank you for that keyword.

So for SEO in Orange County, I need to have SEO and Orange County content, a lot of it, with a lot of links coming in, so that that can prove to Google not only do I know SEO, I optimized my site for Orange County with a lot of Orange County content. And I have links going into those pages that prove the value of them. So when you're kind of ideating your content, there will naturally be an aversion to focusing too much on the local realm. I understand that. But if you want your site to rank in the local area, you need to do that. So there's a balance between that. So understand, if you're going to go into local SEO, you will need to write local content. And in that case, you have to make sure that you understand that like how are you going to organize that.

Some of my clients, they're open to writing the local content, but they don't want it to be like shown heavily on the blog. So what we do is, on the main blog, we have all the technical topics, but when it comes to local content, it really only shows up on the local landing page. So if we have an Orange County location page, the local blog must only show up there. So there's many ways around it.

My main message today is that if you're going to do local SEO, you need to have local content. And I know there's going to be an aversion to it. I know that it's a little bit weird. But when we think about it in an SEO sense, it just must be this way. How is Google to know that you're trying to rank in your local area? It's by you proving that you have the content and the links to back it up, and your content needs to show that local area that you talk about in your content library.

So I hope, as you walk away from today, you understand that you need to write about your local area as much as possible. When you start out, it'll be a little bit weird. It will be like I can't even think of any ideas. My best recommendation is just get the ball rolling. It may sound kind of awkward at times or whatever, but as you get more ideas going, you'll find that you'll find a way to kind of talk about it. Maybe in another video I'll talk about some different ideas of how to be creative with it. But I would say you need to do it. A lot of people avoid it or they just feel like [inaudible 00:05:43] they don't do it. If you don't do it, you're just not going to rank.

So hopefully that will help you guys in your own local SEO kind of campaigns. If you guys found the video valuable, please like and subscribe. And I hope to see everybody again soon.

Thanks, everybody. Ooh, it's hot.

Jason Khoo

About the author

Jason is founder and CEO of Zupo, which is an Orange County based SEO consulting agency helping construct powerful long term SEO strategies for our clients. Jason also enjoys multiple cups of tea a day, hiding away on weekends catching up on reading and rewatching The Simpsons for the 20th time.

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