Local Advertising - Everything You Need To Know
Having the ability to perfect local advertising is essential for businesses looking to target and sell to specific geographic areas.
When looking to advertise to a specific area it is adamant that advertising efforts are personalized and effectively resonate with an audience.
There are multiple ways to gain more visibility with localized advertising efforts. Today we will be diving into how to optimize online advertising for local performance.
- January 1, 2022
- What Is Local Advertising
- Local Advertising – SEO
- Keyword Optimization
- Technical SEO
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Local Advertising – Google My Business Optimization
- Advertising For Local Businesses
- Local Advertising – FAQ
- Local Advertising – Final Word
What Is Local Advertising
It is likely that your a brick and mortar business looking to gain more visibility to those who live within or who are visiting your surrounding area.
Local advertising is the methodology of directly targeting and marketing/advertising to that specific area and the people within. Local advertising means customers get a more personalized feeling, and who doesn’t love that.
Local advertising in itself consists of both outbound and inbound tactics. In this post we will be focusing solely on the inbound tactics of SEO and Google Advertising.
Local Advertising - SEO
Nothing is more valuable in local advertising than having strong SEO. SEO – Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing both on-page and off-page content for increased organic rankings within search engines.
Having quality SEO means that a business will be visible to the public and be held as more authoritive since its rankings where curated organically rather than through paid incentives.
SEO in itself consists of over 200 ranking factors but can be broken down into the following categories: Technical SEO, On-page SEO, & Off-page SEO.
Keyword Optimization
Before diving into any of the SEO methods desired keywords must be identified. Devdiscourse suggest you ask yourself the following before picking keywords:
- What Industry Is My Business In?
- What Are People Looking For When They Search Online?
- What Services Am I Offering Within My Industry?
- Who Are My Biggest Competitors?
- What Are Common Phrases Associated With My Business?
- Which Products/Services Are The Largest Sellers On My Website Or Store?
From here we suggest plugging in keyword ideas into SEMrush or Google Trends to validate the search volume and KD – Keyword Difficulty of the chosen keywords.
Remember to focus on the locality when performing keyword research, and to use keywords as a category grouping system.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO involves optimizing all of the technical aspects of a website this includes but is not limited to the following:
- Fixing Crawl Errors
- Switching To HTTPS Over HTTP
- XML Sitemap
- Finding & Fixing Broken Links
- Backlinks Should Come From High DA-Domain Authority URLs
- Website Speed Optimization
- User Friendly On All Interfaces
Technical SEO can be optimized using a variety of tools. We have found that SEMrush is a great way to manage performance. However, if your budget is tight, GSC-Google Search Console is a great tool to measure your mobile usability and website crawlability, and you can check out our “Ultimate Guide To Eliminating Bad Backlinks” to learn more about backlinks and how to clean up your backlink profile.
As for page speed, we have found that GTMetrix is a reliable tool and provides some great feedback on what you can do to improve your webpage load speed.
On-page SEO
On-page SEO consists of optimizing all on-page websites content. this includes the following:
- Optimizing Slug URLs For Keywords
- Optimizing Header Tags For Keywords
- Optimizing Meta Descriptions For Keywords
- Having Plenty Of Meaningful Internal Links
- Optimizing Image ALT Text
It is important to not overstuff keywords into webpage content when optimizing. We suggest having target keyword appear once for every one-hundred words of text.
Each page on a website should only be optimized for one specific keyword, as any more than this could dilute performance. Using a tool like YoastSEO is great for keeping track of On-page SEO performance.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO is the most important aspect of SEO. It consists of optimizing all off-page content, backlinks, guest posts, and profiles for keywords.
When focusing on creating off-page content, be sure to check the DA and keywords of the off-page prospects. We suggest that a prospect has at least a DA – domain authority of 25 and is ranking for a minimum of 200 relevant keywords.
In order to make the most of off-page content, focus on generating blog posts or gaining link insertions on some local blogs and sites. Be sure to add plenty of links leading back to your website and to other relevant pages. And be sure to keep in mind that off-page blog posts should follow the same protocols as on-page content.
Building a a strong backlink profile is mandatory if you want to see any results with local advertising, and should be the number one SEO priority after optimizing technical and on-page SEO.
Local Advertising - Google My Business Optimization
Having a great Google My Business profile is not something to miss when looking for more local visibility and sales. Not only will it boost the performance of local SEO, but it will also improve businesses credibility.
Make sure to encourage reviews on your GMB profile as this dictates the visibility of your business drastically.
Ensuring the location is correct and that the profile has plenty of high quality images (not stock) is also a good idea.
Advertising For Local Businesses
There is no better place to advertise a local business than Google, making Google Ads a great tool for local advertisers.
When advertising locally with Google we encourage you to keep the same keyword research protocol. This will help you stay visible for the correct searches in your area.
When structuring your Google ads campaign(s) we suggest to consider the following:
- Campaigns: 3-5 ad groups
- Ad Groups: 7-10 keywords
- Ads: 1-3 ads per ad group
- Have SKAGs
After years of advertising we have found this structure to be most efficient for maximizing performance within a budget and highly suggest it.
SKAGs or single keyword ad groups allow an ad group to place its entire budget on one specific keyword. This is good when looking to gain more visibility with a highly competitive keyword or to maximize the results of a very successful keyword.
Local Advertising - FAQ
Depending on how aggressive you are looking to grow, your business should be putting around 10% of your annual revenue into your marketing budget. We don’t suggest working on multiple methods of marketing especially if your budget is on the lower end. As for advertising ideally you are going to want to put aside $3,000-$10,000 a month for ad spend with a minimum ad spend of $1,500 a month. SEO on the other hand should require a minimum of $2,000 a month of spend.
Getting substantial online visibility is extremely important to a businesses short term and long term success. Now more than ever people are relying on Google for places to go, restaurants to eat at, and businesses to shop at. For this reason, having this online visibility is essential to continuing business growth or even just maintaining.
Starting from ground zero it typically can take 3-4 months to see consistent monetary results from Google advertising and 4-12 months with SEO. A lot of that time has to do with data analysis and integration to better target users and adapt.
The way we see it at Path-Media is that you should focus on what you’re good at, and so should we. What we mean by that is that you should be focusing on serving your clients and let an agency take care of driving and converting traffic while keeping you in the loop.
Local Advertising - Final Word
Becoming Successful with local advertising requires time and experience. When running a business, you don’t have time to waste on learning Advertising and SEO. What you need is an experienced and dedicated partner to help manage your online marketing.
At Path-Media we have what it takes to provide personalized local advertising that can get more business, track results, and increase revenue. Book a discovery call today or pick up a Free Digital Marketing Plan.
