It’s not good enough to just market your website to the worldwide web these days. You have to market your website to locals and make sure your website has a high ranking in local search engine results. This is particularly true if your business is location-oriented and serves a local market. Local content marketing can be very successful in this aspect of your business.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a marketing strategy that uses online material to promote a brand or business. It is not advertising in the traditional sense though, as the goal of content marketing is to engage internet users through content such as videos, social media postings, and articles that interest the user. Content marketing should focus on long-term campaign results, rather than short-term results.
The Importance of Mobile Searches
Most internet traffic nowadays originates from mobile devices. As a result, search engine results have begun to give priority to mobile-friendly websites as indexing shifts to mobile-first. Most mobile searches involve local inquiries, such as a nearby restaurant, and we are continuing to see search engines provide local results for queries. Thus, tailoring your content for your local audience is a good way to catch some attention.
Goals of Local Content Marketing
There are several goals of local content marketing, but they really all come down to one main goal – to get additional customers for your business. The starting goal is to attract more traffic to your website. From there, your goal should be to get other websites to link to yours, which demonstrates your credibility as an authority on a business. Another goal is to get people to share your content through social media. The more your content is shared online, the more people will visit your website to see it for themselves. Overall, you want to increase awareness of your brand, and more exposure on the internet is the way to achieve that.
Identify Your Target Audience
Do your research and make sure you understand the demographics and interest of your target market. Informational tools like Facebook Audience Insights can help you understand the locals. You can learn where local website visitors are located, their ages, household income, and more. Looking at data such as pages they’ve liked on Facebook, purchases, and how often they use Facebook can give you further insights into their likes and dislikes. You can use their information to tailor your content specifically to them.
Generating Content Ideas
The key with content is to offer readers information that is both useful and relevant to them. Simply browsing websites of businesses that share your field, and seeing what content is popular, is one way to get ideas for creating your own content. You can explore websites that are popular in your geographical area–particularly their blog sections–and see which posts are attracting the most attention.
Use your knowledge of your area as an edge over non-local businesses. Local businesses have the distinct advantage of being able to share information that outsiders aren’t aware of. Use this advantage to demonstrate your special knowledge of the area and show how your business is different from others. You can even create reference materials for other websites as a way to get your content out there.
Keyword Analysis
Keyword research is not only good for global search results, it’s good for local results in search engines as well. Just as you do keyword research for SEO, you also have to analyze keywords with local businesses. Again, you’re looking for the best quality keywords with the least competition. Use those keywords strategically within your website and content.
Promote Your Content
The only way to ensure that your content helps with local search results is to promote it. Give your website visitors a way to receive notifications when your content has been updated. Share your content via social media when you post new things and make sure that it is shareable by users. It’s as easy as adding the share button to each new post.
Obviously, you should publish your content on your own website, but you can also ask other websites to publish your content on their sites, with due credit. The more exposure your content gets, the more it improves your business.
Build Local Resources
Optimizing your website and content for locals is a bit different than traditional SEO. Citations are particularly important. Make sure that your business contact information is exactly the same regardless of where it appears on the internet.
Even small differences in citations can result in less internet traffic to your business. Backlinks are important, as with any website, and their focus should be on quality links from trusted businesses that are also in your area. This proves that your business can be trusted. Look for local online directories and make sure your business is listed in those.
Use Social Proof
Social proof is a great way to gain local visibility for your website and content. This means using images of your geographical area, mentioning other local businesses, and highlighting local events as they occur. Showing that you have a vested interest in your community helps more potential local customers trust and want to do business with you.
While it’s definitely important to look at the big picture when marketing your business, it’s just as important to consider your local market. Content marketing that is geared toward your local community can have a dramatic impact on your rankings in search engine results, generate more internet traffic to your website, and improve your revenue. The value of content marketing should not be overlooked.
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