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Local SEO vs Organic SEO for Your Florida Business

Are you just establishing your business but don’t know how to build authority in your local Florida area? Although you may have a beautiful, branded social media page as well as a well-designed website, you may find that the people visiting your site aren’t even from Florida!

It may be time to consider the help of local SEO services. Unlike SEO as a whole, local SEO helps you focus on a specific place so that you’ll be able to target people who live in that area. Even better, many people find that it’s easier to optimize your website for a specific location instead of general keyword terms.

Read on to learn the differences between local SEO and organic SEO as well as what would be the best for your Florida business!

What is Organic SEO?

SEO is short for search engine optimization. This is a long-term strategy to optimize your website. The goal of this optimization is for each of its pages to have a better chance of ranking higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).

With the right strategy, in a few months to a year, you’ll have a steady flow of targeted traffic clicking on your website after they’ve searched for a particular keyword. Rather than paid ads, this is a completely organic process–people are finding your website because they want to learn more about a topic or they’re looking to make a purchase.

This is why targeting the right keywords plays such a large role in organic SEO. If someone clicks on your web page for a certain keyword but finds that your website is unrelated, they’ll back out and increase your bounce rate over time.

Here are a few ways people strive to improve their SEO:

• Organizing the website’s structure and layout
• Consistently creating informative, entertaining content
• Using the right keywords in your copy, headers, metadata, and more
• Building your website’s authority with backlinks
• Writing descriptive alt text for images

The right SEO strategy takes time and patience. However, you’ll be rewarded by steady website traffic that you don’t have to pay for in the longterm.

What is Local SEO?

Now that you know all about organic SEO, what is the difference between organic and local SEO? Local SEO is still a form of organic SEO. However, instead of choosing general keywords that will show up on SERPs, you’ll be more focused on optimizing your website to show up on Google’s local map picks.

You can see how this is more beneficial if you offer local services or have a brick-and-mortar location that you want people to find. Your target audience isn’t going to be everyone across the United States that searches for a specific term. Instead, you want people to find your business who already live in the area it’s located in.

If you want to catch the attention of people who live in your area, you need to start with local SEO. Here are a few businesses that benefit from this kind of strategy:

• Retail stores
• Real estate
• Food services
• Financial services
• Healthcare providers
• Service-area businesses (contractors, photographers, musicians, etc.)

You’ll find that if you have a local business, it’s oftentimes easier to rank for certain keywords. This is because you’ll be competing against a far smaller pool. Google can also help because it can tell by default where the location is of the searcher.

For instance, if someone is searching for a good brunch place in their area, Google will provide them with highly-rated businesses on the top page of the results.

Local SEO Tips

Now that you know the importance of local SEO, how do you get started as a small business? Your first step is the easiest–sign up for a Google My Business profile and fill in as much information as you can. It will ask you to provide a link to your website and social media profiles as well as images.

Regularly updating images is one way to draw more attention to your listing. You’ll also want to fill in the correct contact information, provide accurate opening and closing times, and an address if you have a physical location. You’ll also want to sign up for a few more directories, such as:

• Yelp
• Bing Places
• Yahoo
• Foursquare
• Yellow Pages
• Chamber of Commerce
• Hot Frog

Once you sign up for as many directories as you can, your next step will be honing your website for local keywords. These are typically long-tail keywords that contain your city name. For instance, if you own a dog grooming business in Tampa, you’ll want to include the word “Tampa” in the keywords you use.

As always, optimizing your site for local SEO will take time and patience. Remember that your hard work will pay off with long-term rewards that you don’t have to keep paying for.

Establishing Your Business With Local SEO

If you have a service-based business that relies on local customers, you need to start working on your local SEO today. Through a combination of local keywords as well as signing up for as many directories as you can, you’ll be off to a good start.

Building authority in your local area starts with creating a strong digital presence, as many people find out about the businesses in their area through a simple Google search. By making it easier to find you, you’ll find that your traffic will grow as well as your business.

Looking for a local SEO company that can get your website and business on the map? We’ll cover your first month of SEO consulting. Contact us today to get started!