Building Local SEO outside your core location where they need to attract customers within the core territory are crucial for any local business. What if I want to expand across neighboring towns, cities, or even states? Building your local SEO outside the core location may bring additional prospects for customer acquisition and expanding your brand. Here, we will dive into major strategies that could help building local SEO outside your core location.
Why Building Local SEO Beyond Your Core Location?
Building Local SEO outside your core location will open doors to access new potential markets and therefore a new customer base. This is particularly the most important key for huge multi-location franchises, service providers, and e-commerce companies having regional delivery.
The reach of your local SEO becomes more extensive as:
- Reaching out wider to towns and cities around
- Greater brand awareness across a wider geographical area
- More leads from other customers who may not be aware of your main location
- Establishing trust by being visible and focused on specific, relevant communities
Building local SEO outside your core location puts your business out there in more ways than one, making you highly visible online and also puts your business as the go-to provider in more areas.
Strategies That Could Help Building Local SEO
Create Location-Specific Landing Pages
For every place you wish to reach, make a landing page. Every page needs to be optimized with locale-specific keywords, community-centric information, and content centered on the location. With just a few localized landing pages, Google has a pretty good idea of which locations your business fits in.
Landing Page Requirements for every Location:
- Location-Specific Keywords: Utilize phrases that are specific to the region of interest, such as “plumber in [Target Location]” or “lawyer near [Target Location].”
- Unique Content: Every location page should have unique content describing your services, experience, and success stories in that location.
- Testimonials and Case Studies: Add testimonials or case studies from the clients belonging to the location you are targeting. This gives authenticity and builds trust with the potential customers.
- Clear Calls-to-Action: Drive users to contact or visit you in their location with calls-to-action on every page.
Pages that are relevant to local searches will rank better when they have area-specific information; therefore, the attention of potential customers is drawn.
Optimization of Google My Business for Multiple Locations
Businesses that have physical addresses in different locations should have a GMB listing for each of the locations. Each of these listings should contain correct information, quality images, and descriptions specific to the location. These are important to ensure an appearance in Google’s Local Pack—a prime placement in search results for local businesses.
To optimize GMB for multiple locations:
Set up separate listings for each location if you have stores or offices across different locations.
- List your service areas: For business places that do not have multiple addresses but very large service areas, you would create your GMB as a “Service-Area Business” or SAB so that you can reach the customers without having to be physically located.
- Use Local Keywords in Descriptions: Write descriptions for your GMB profiles with keywords relevant to each location.
- Collect Reviews for Each Location: In fact, positive reviews will give you more credibility and probability of ranking better in local search.
An optimized Google My Business profile will help you appear more visible and establish a solid presence across the geographies you want to address.
Create Citations for Every Target Location
Citations are web mentions of your business name, address and phone number (NAP), which appear primarily in online directories like Yelp, Yellow Pages, and industry-specific directories. Most importantly, consistency in citations will have a great impact when trying to rank well locally.
To build citations effectively:
- List in local directories: List in the local directories of those places you want to get into. If you expand into cities that are very close to you, put your business into regional lists for those cities.
- Monitor NAP consistency: Make sure that your business name and address and phone number are correct on all the lists that are available for your customers.
- Update and maintain listing regularly: Update your business listings if you change or move.
Correct citations by credible local directories let Google know that your business exists in these places and enhance your search visibility in terms of those places.
Target Local Keywords with Location-Based Content
Another way to rank for searches in other areas is by doing location-specific keyword research and including location-based content in the process. Understand what are the most popular keywords by researching them and optimizing that content.
Steps to target local keywords:
- Identify Location-Based Search Terms: Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and Moz to find keywords relevant for each target area.
- Incorporate Keywords in Website Copy: Start using these keywords in the page titles, headings, meta descriptions, and body contents to increase your chances to rank.
- Create Locally Relevant Blog Posts: Write blog posts that deal with news, events or guides specific to each locality you serve. For example, if you are in the home improvement business going to Dallas for expansion you could write an article of “Top Home Renovation Trends in Dallas.”
Locality-based content will hook the attention of the target local audience while increasing its search ranking.
Link Building in Local
Local link building is another very effective tactic for expanding the reach of your SEO campaign. Links from authoritative location-specific sites can enhance the authority of your business within each target area, alerting search engines that it is a relevant and trusted source for those communities.
Examples of local link building ideas:
- Partner with Local Companies: Partner or sponsor a local company, charity, or community event to attain backlinks from their sites.
- Guest Blogging in Local Newspapers: Produce articles for local magazines, newspapers, or community blogs. Every article you produce must link to your website, so locals can get to know about your presence and create backlinks.
- Support Local Events or Groups: Sponsor events, support local causes, creating buzz and link opportunities. So, if you happen to be a restaurant trying to expand into a new city, sponsor a local sports team and link over to your website from their webpage.
Local link building creates a valuable traffic stream into each area, and the search engines will take note of the relevance and authority built in those locations.
Gather Customer Reviews in Every Target Location
Customer reviews are a powerful local SEO signal that can greatly impact your ranking. Engage with customers in every target location to request reviews on your Google My Business profile, Facebook, and other review sites.
How to gather reviews:
- Follow Up with Customers: Email or text customers after the provision of service and humbly ask for feedback.
- Make Reviewing Easy: Connect your review profiles on Google My Business and other review sites.
- Respond to All Reviews: Be thankful for positive feedback and respond professionally to the negative ones. Interacting with customer reviews will make you believable in front of local audiences.
Consistent, positive reviews at all locations will boost the reputation of your business and show up more in searches.
Social Media Reach Local Audiences
Social media can be a very useful tool in enhancing your multiple-location local SEO. Create local content, share community-centric posts, and use geo-targeted ads to engage the audience in your target area.
Social media tips for local SEO
- Post location-specific content: Highlight local events, promotions, or community news for each of your target areas.
- Use Location Tags and Hashtags: Tag your location and also use relevant local hashtags to get more visibility in the local audience.
- Geo-Targeted Ads: Run ads to targeted users at specific locations. This helps gain more followers for those areas and also increases engagement for those areas.
Social media signals are sent to search engines. This means that your business is active in those areas too. So, it will increase rank for those areas as well.
Track and Analyze Your Local SEO By Location
Record all local SEO activities in a selected location and monitor the actual results of those efforts on various metrics. This can all be done through Google Analytics, Google Search Console, or other tools like BrightLocal.
Monitor the following metrics:
- Local Organic Traffic: How many users have been visiting from each area you targeted.
- Keyword rankings: Monitor your rankings against the location-specific keywords being searched in that area.
- Conversion Rates by Location: Determine how each location page is doing in terms of generating leads and conversions.
With this, you are able to make the right strategies to increase your presence in each location.
Conclusion
Building Local SEO outside your core location requires a great deal of planning, strategy, and constant analysis. Create dedicated landing pages, optimize Google My Business profiles, build citations, and use localized keywords to capture more customers and build a presence across multiple regions. This will drive greater visibility, build trust, and ensure your business’s growth across different markets. Start building local SEO outside your core location today, and watch your reach grow.