Organic SEO VS Local SEO
Search Engine Optimization, better known as SEO, involves boosting the online visibility of your website. Proper SEO helps your website to rank high in the organic or natural search results of different search engines such as Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc. However, just like any other modern tech, SEO is also a rapidly changing landscape. Local SEO, combined with Organic SEO can take your online visibility to new heights.
What Is Organic SEO?
Organic SEO involves optimizing your website to rank high on search results for relevant keywords. In other words, organic SEO is all about making your website Search Engine friendly.
These steps can help improve Organic SEO for your website:
- Having relevant content targeting search intent
- Optimizing meta-tags
- Having high-quality internal and external links
- Securing your website
- Increasing website load speed
- Making the site mobile-friendly, and more!
Organic SEO can help direct more targeted traffic to your website through matching customer problems with keyword search queries and creating highly relevant content that addresses the solution to those problems. It can also establish you as an expert in your industry. But best of all, Organic SEO is less expensive and more effective than paid search such as Google AdWords.
What Is Local SEO?
Local SEO and local intent go hand in hand. It involves promoting products and services of local businesses to local customers. In other words, Local SEO focuses on content, on-page optimizations, and link building of local brick-and-mortar businesses to appear on local search results.
These steps can help improve Local SEO for your website:
- Having up-to-date profiles on Google My Business (GMB), Apple Maps and other relevant search and maps services.
- Google reviews
- Great inbound and outbound links.
- Getting cited by other sites and verifying the name, address, and phone information in them.
If you are a brick-and-mortar store, or any local business, you cannot avoid Local SEO. Local SEO increases foot traffic to your store, and connect your business with ‘ready to buy’ customers. In fact, according to MarketingCharts, 78% of small businesses now believe that new customers find them through search engines!
Local SEO vs. Organic SEO
When optimized properly, both Local and Organic SEO efforts will help improve your website rankings. However, Local SEO and Organic SEO usually do not target the same position on search rankings.
In fact, optimizing a business for local SEO has a lot to do with location. Search Engines need to know exactly where your business is located so that when a customer does a local search, they can display the businesses that are located there.
In other words, organic search results are totally independent of the locations where local search results have a geographical component and usually helps local brick-and-mortar business.
Local SEO Or Organic SEO, Which One Should You Go For?
In Local SEO, if you have relevant and trusted locations, Search Engines will favor you more and rank you higher in search results.
If you optimize your website for both Organic and Local SEO, it will increase your chances to appear more on Search Engine result pages and boost traffic to your website. The end result of SEO is better natural access to as many potential customers as possible.
End Words
Investing time and resources in both local and organic SEO can be expensive. If you are a startup or a small business servicing a particular area, the best advice would be to integrate Local SEO and focus on it more to boost your business.
However, having a strategy for both Local and Organic SEO is the best way to drive up the online and offline traffic to your business. Blue 16 Media, a Virginia SEO company experienced in handling the rapidly changing SEO landscape, can help you implement both Organic and Local SEO and get you listed on the first page of Google’s search results.
