When you hear the word SEO, what do you think of? Your website? Backlinks?

The acronym for “Search Engine Optimization” derived its official launch in 1997, where it was a revolutionary way to have your website/landing page show up on a search engine. This is what most people now refer to as ORGANIC/WEBSITE SEO.

Fast-track to June 2014 when Google My Business officially launched, a new form of SEO came to be referred to as LOCAL SEO, which is entirely different to traditional SEO. The difference?

The simplest way to put it, Local SEO deals with Google Maps ONLY.

Traditional SEO (Website SEO) deals with your website ONLY.

Let’s dive into the specifics on how they’re completely different.

LOCAL SEO

Three words, local, local, local.

Google My Business is a specific service for businesses to target local customers via Google Maps. For instance, let’s say you’re hungry, and you’re craving Italian Food; what do you do?

Well, chances are you’re going to go to Google and search, “Italian” or “Italian near Me.”  When you type that in, Google will display 3 options in what is called The Local 3 Pack. This section is the holy grail of Local SEO. It’s the peak of a mountain. It’s the best thing that can happen for a business to attract local customers.

As you can see, Local SEO is much less competitive, which makes it realistic to get real business in a short time-frame. Website SEO, on the other hand, is incredibly competitive, expensive, and will take years to see one customer walk through your door.

The other major contrast is where a business would target. Going with the Italian Restaurant example again, if you’re using Website SEO, you’re targeting people worldwide. So if your business is based in Toronto, Ontario, you’re literally targeting people in other countries to get business, which doesn’t make any sense. Local SEO (you guessed it), is targeting people in the local area to your business address.

WEBSITE SEO

Three words, expensive, competitive, unprofitable.

Website SEO was made for businesses that rely on a worldwide market like Nike, Amazon, and various eCommerce sites.  Here’s a scenario for you.

Let’s say you just started your website SEO campaign, through backlinks (a link on the back end of your website) you will think of various keywords to put (#restaurant, #shoestore, #TorontoStore, etc.) and once you go live your site will be dead last. Now, if you remember the infographic from earlier, there were over 2.7 billion other websites competing for “Italian Restaurant.” So the long story short is, website SEO is an effort to try to improve your website’s ranking from 2.7-billionth to the top 4.

So hey, if you want to shell out $20,000-$40,000 per year on that, then by all means, but we know small-to-medium-sized businesses can’t wait five years to have a customer walk through their door.

LOCAL SEO IS A NECESSITY

Local SEO is not an easy process by any means; there are hundreds of factors that go into ranking a business top three 24/7 in their local and surrounding area. But we’re so confident to rank your business top three in the local area for one keyword minimum that we don’t have to tie you into a contract.

Everything is based around the local and surrounding area. Take the image above; for example, you will see there’s a two-kilometre radius around the address. That red circle is the area that we target, which effectively is your local and surrounding area.  Our job is to ensure that your web presence grows within the communities and suburbs within this radius through Google Categories. A Google Category is NOT a keyword; it’s an umbrella word.

For example, when you type “Italian Restaurant” into a Google Search, “Italian” ends up being the category, and “Italian Restaurant” is an associated keyword below that category.

ITALIAN (Category)

Italian Restaurant, Italian Pizza, Pasta, Lasagna, Spaghetti, Carne; these are all associated keywords.

Now remember one of the most powerful tools a business has in today’s age is Google, and to rank top three organically just means that no matter what time of day that people are searching, you’re showing up.

Are you tired of spending money on Google Ads and not getting a return? Are you sick of companies over-promising and under-delivering when it comes to Google?

Our tech team is dedicated to your company’s success on Google Maps, which is why we have four different radius packages to choose from to get your business your local exposure.

Get in touch with us, and one of our experts will walk you through the process and customize a package that fits your business. We wish you all the best of health and can’t wait to work alongside your brand!

(437) 317-4451 | info@yourlistingexpert.com

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Citations

www.google.com/italianrestaurant