Building local SEO outside your core location and making the SEO effective isn’t easy. But it is also highly profitable for your business.
If you confine your SEO in your core location, it may prevent thousands of potential customers from finding you and buying your product or service.
Find out in this Innocams blog post how to easily broaden the reach of your local SEO outside your core location.
What is Local SEO Outside Your Core Location?
The answer to this apparently simple question is quite complex to understand. That’s why I’ll divide this answer into a few small chunks so you can easily digest it. Read on.
What is Local SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of helping web pages of business websites secure high ranks in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
This improves a business’s search visibility which may result in more traffic to its site and probably more conversion and sale for that business.
Local SEO is the process of helping small and medium-sized businesses achieve higher SERP visibility in local searches so their local customers can find them easily and do business with them.
Importance of local SEO
SMEs don’t have either the resources or networks to sell their products or services globally and compete with top multinational companies (MNCs).
So they need to tap their local market potential and impress and attract their local target market.
A recent study has revealed that 96% of customers find local businesses through online searches and 49% of consumers buy products and services from local companies.
So SMEs must be visible in local searches. This visibility may turn into conversions, sales and more profits.
That’s why beating their competitors in local searches by getting a higher rank than them in the SERPs is a life-saving must for SMEs.
And an effective local SEO can do just that. This is the importance of local SEO. If effective, it can yield the following benefits for an SME:
- Local SEO may help your pages get top positions in local searches and your local customers can easily find you.
- It may provide your brand with an edge over its rivals by showing up before them in the SERPs.
- It will let you reach your target customers who are searching for the product or service that you sell.
- And reaching out to your target audience before your competitors may result in your local customers coming to you first and buying your product or service.
- It will also help you put yourself in solid with your local target customers.
What is Local SEO Outside Your Core Location?
Building local SEO outside your core location means optimising your pages so they get better visibility in local search results for places outside the precise location of your business.
In other words, it is the process of helping people outside your core location find you in online searches and do business with you, even if they can’t meet you or visit your store.
Building Local SEO Outside Your Core Location: Benefits
If your local SEO can give you a high SERP visibility in areas outside your core location, the all-important benefit will be you will get more customers and more profits.
Here’s a breakdown of the benefits you may reap by building local SEO outside your core location.
Increased Visibility in Surrounding Areas
Local SEO outside your core area may improve your brand’s SERP visibility in surrounding towns, cities, villages and other localities.
This means even those consumers who don’t live physically in your core location but looking for the product or service that you sell, will find you easily in online searches.
Forceful Targeted Marketing
You can target new markets in areas outside your core location with a forceful and customised SEO campaign for each of those new areas.
A Cost-Effective Strong Marketing
Local SEO itself is a cheaper marketing campaign than traditional advertising methods.
So if you can launch an effective local SEO campaign outside your core location, it may prove to be a highly cost-effective marketing strategy that may highlight your brand to thousand’s of potential customers living in your surrounding areas.
Provides a Competitive Edge
A strong local SEO campaign outside your exact location may give your marketing a significant edge over your competitors in search results for new areas.
This edge may give your pages more traffic and probably give you more conversions and sales and profits.
Brand Awareness in New Markets
Building local SEO outside your core location may increase your pages’ search visibility in those new markets.
As a result, consumers who live in those areas may come to know about your brand’s pros and may be attracted to it.
By creating high-quality and effective content on your pages, related to your product or service, you can spread awareness of your brand among potential buyers in your surrounding areas.
Building Local SEO Outside Your Core Location: Difficulties
Expanding your local SEO effectively to areas outside your core location is a difficult job. You’ll be dealing with areas you don’t know culturally, financially and technically.
Here are some of the key challenges you will face while venturing into new territories outside your core location with your local SEO campaign:
The Search Engine Bumps
Physical vicinity is one of the ranking metrics search engines consider while showing their SERPs against search queries.
In short, they will first show businesses physically located near the area the search was made from in the SERPs.
Even shorter, your pages may not rank high in the SERP for searches made in areas outside your core location.
Firewall of Established Businesses
The new locations you are trying to hit with your local SEO will have established businesses in your industry. They will not sit back and relax while you steal the show.
They will make things as difficult for you as they can.
So be prepared to face some tough challenges from your competitors in the new territories.
Old Habits Die Hard
Building local SEO outside your core location will mean you will be trying to break habits of consumers of those new areas, which is difficult.
Your target audience in those areas will be accustomed to buying from your competitors and old habits die hard.
They won’t come to you naturally even if you rank higher than your competitors in local searches made in those areas.
You Don’t Know the Markets
The new markets you are trying to expand to will have marketing trends, search behaviour and buying trends that you are not aware of.
This lack of insight into the new areas outside your core location may gum your local SEO efforts up for those places.
Your Content Doesn’t Align
This lack of insight into those new locations may again make it difficult for you to create content that resonates well with local trends and customers.
God forbid, if this happens your local SEO game in those territories will be over even before they start rolling.
Getting Backlinks for Your SEO
To build a strong SEO presence outside your core location you will need lots of high-quality backlinks from relevant authority sites based in those areas.
This word ‘relevant’ is the real killjoy here.
This word in this context means backlinks from companies relevant to your business, in short, your competitors.
Rest assured they will not give you a single backlink, not in the beginning at least, even if you employ Mr Willian Shakespeare to write content for your pages.
Managing Business Profiles
In order for you to succeed in your local SEO endeavours outside your core areas, you need to maintain area-specific business profiles like Google Business Profiles, listing on local business directories and websites.
Managing multiple business profiles on different platforms, especially where you don’t have a robust presence, either physical or online, may be a complex maddening task.
The Reputation Management
Building local SEO outside your core location also may prove difficult due to tough reputation management scenarios.
Getting positive reviews and comments from people in areas outside your core location will be difficult. But such reviews and comments are necessary for an effective SEO.
To make matters worse, some of your clever competitors may launch a maligning campaign against your brand both online and offline.
How to Build Local SEO Outside Your Core Location
Despite these difficulties, you can still hit the jackpot with your local SEO outside your core areas.
Here is what I think you should do to make your local SEO successful in those virgin territories.
Determination, Efforts and Patience
You are wide awake to the difficulties in building local SEO outside your core location and you are determined to achieve just that objective.
And you are putting serious efforts to get your dream off the ground.
And you are patient.
This is the first principle. If you are determined, industrious and patient, your job is half done.
Now, let’s see what can be done to the other half.
Create Unique Pages for Locations
Create unique location-specific landing pages for each new area you are trying to horn in.
Do a thorough research into the business and search trends in those areas and identify appropriate keywords and topics
Then create high-quality valuable linkable content using those keywords. Remember, the success of your local SEO in virgin territories mostly depends on the quality and relevance of the content of your pages.
Create Multiple GBPs
Google Business Profile (GBP) is the next missile, carrying your local SEO payload, to hit areas outside your primary location.
Create multiple GBP listings for each of those territories. Make sure your business details like name, location, contact numbers are accurate on each of those listings.
Make each of these GBP listings optimised with images, comments to reviews and regular updates. Trust me, this GBP really works and can jack up local SEO effectiveness considerably.
Clinch Partnerships with Local Businesses
Instead of cursing companies belonging to your niche industry and established in areas you are trying to expand to, try to forge friendly ties with some of them.
First, this may give you an in into the new territories and secondly, you can exchange some mutual and all-important backlinks.
This will benefit both of your SEOs. Remember, those companies are as hungry for good backlinks as you.
Launch Tailored Advertising Campaigns
Launch advertising campaigns tailored for each of the areas outside your core location. These campaigns can be both online and offline.
Some sponsored Google Ads and a few traditional advertising through local newspapers and television channels can do wonders for your local SEO in the virgin territories.
Engage Local Communities
Building local SEO outside your core location can be a successful venture if you can make your brand known and loved by the local communities of new areas where you want your local SEO to succeed.
So take part in local events, do some charitable work, sponsor some local events. Apart from engaging the local communities, these activities may give you some press coverage.
This means, you will get some valuable editorial backlinks and good reviews by the press and your target customers in the areas outside your core location will take your brand seriously.
Conclusion
Building local SEO outside your core location with a view to taping the market potential of those virgin areas is not easy, but not impossible either.
You can make your local SEO effective if you are determined and persevering. Besides, strategies like creating location-specific pages, multiple GBPs and engaging local communities should make your efforts smooth sailing.
If successful, your local SEO outside your precise location will make your pages visible in local searches in new areas and bring in new traffic and business to you.
FAQs.
Q. What is building local SEO outside your core location?
A. It means launching successful SEO campaigns in areas surrounding your core location where your business doesn’t have online or offline presence.
Q. Why should I launch local SEO campaigns outside my core areas?
A. Because if successful, this SEO may bring in more customers and more profits than what you have now.
Q. To build local SEO outside my core location do I need GBP?
A. Of course, after all it is local SEO. You should create multiple GBPs for each of those target areas.
Q. Do I need to create new content for local SEO in areas outside my primary location?
A. Yes. Creating area-specific content is one of the key strategies for a successful local SEO campaign in a new territory.
