HOW TO ACHIEVE BETTER SEARCH EXPOSURE IN LONDON AND BEYOND
How does a London-based business stand out from the crowd in this enormous city? The answer is by using a mixture of local and national SEO marketing.
Companies based in the capital need a strong online presence to really achieve their full potential in 2016. This means investing in SEO in London in order to maintain a top position in the SERPs and attract customers from within their local area, as well as from the rest of the UK and overseas. To survive in this fast-paced digital market at the moment, it is important not to ignore the opportunities that advertising on the internet can present to a company.
LOCAL OR NATIONAL?
The issue for London-based companies is that the capital is so huge. When trying to decide upon the perfect terminology for key phrases that you wish to rank for, ‘London’ is not always the ideal starting point. Inner London alone is made up of 118 different postcodes, therefore anyone searching with the term ‘hairdresser in London’ could be pointed in the direction of any one of these different London areas in the search engine results.
When embarking on a new SEO campaign, it makes a lot of sense to try to win the local market first by ranking for keywords within your vicinity. Search engines such as Google place a great deal of significance in returning valid and relevant local search results to users. Therefore, ‘hairdresser in Crystal Palace’ would be a much better keyword to target if that is where your business is based. It also eliminates a great deal of competition from the outset, giving your business a better chance of being positioned in Google’s local pack, which will list three local businesses in a small box at the top of the organic or natural search listings.
NATIONAL SEO CAMPAIGNS
However, optimising for local SEO does not mean that you need to ignore the opportunity of attracting a national or international audience. There will be many instances when it is important to promote your company’s products or services on a much wider scale, so of course you will also want to rank well for ‘London’ keywords in order to gain web visitors from the rest of the UK and from overseas.
INCORPORATING LOCAL AND NATIONAL SEO ELEMENTS
However, a quality SEO company won’t make you choose between wanting to rank for a local niche or a wider set of keywords. They will be able to perfectly incorporate the requirements of local and national SEO into one campaign. SEO companies are able to optimise your web pages for both types of market by applying a multi-layer approach to your search marketing strategy.
The content of your site can be enhanced to include elements of multiple geographical locations. Examples of optimisation could include the incorporation of local business markers within Google Maps as well as publishing individual pages for each location that your business operates from. Relevant keywords will be worked seamlessly into the content of each page, with particular attention being given to tags and links.
When starting an SEO campaign, you need to prepare to run with your investment in the long term. Whether you want to rank well for London searchers or are keen to achieve nationwide exposure, it can take a few months or more to craft a strong online presence, but the overall results are worth the wait.
