What Does Google Think About Local SEO?

Because of modern technology we are changing the landscape regarding how we market our services on the internet today. Back in 1998 there were limited traffic and promotional resources, and you were pretty much on your own to figure out how to use these, especially since internet video wasn’t at a minimum back then. In fact 13 years ago only the Internet Elite were producing videos, now middle school students are getting tens of thousands of views to their youtube videos. Maybe you’ve heard of the Panda Update and maybe you haven’t. What this means is that thin affiliate content sites are getting the boot with google or at least losing a lionshare of their traffic. Sites that are generated with many long-tail keywords around a certain product or service are getting slammed hard. When I was a kid my Dad told me there was no such thing as a tunnel that was completely dark, especially if you brought your flashlight and some extra batteries.

What my Dad meant by this was when one door closes another one always opens, sometimes even wider than the first door that just slammed shut in your face. While using SEO for affiliate websites might become more vexing in the future to create, Local SEO is about to explode and for a few reasons. Before we get into the reasons lets briefly define Local SEO so we’re on the same page. At least our definition of this term are companies who are in direct competition with local companies in their area but have an internet presence online. What makes these companies different from companies that compete globally? Companies that complete globally are in competition with people all over the world. However local websites are only in competition with people in their city or county. The reason for this is all the competition and customer acquisition is obtained from customers within driving distance to this enterprise.

It is typical for a Local SEO Company to compete with anywhere from six to 100 different companies. It might sound like a lot but on the internet that is nothing. The reason I say this is because websites who compete globally or against websites located all over the world compete with thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of websites. This doesn’t mean that an SEO Company trying to help your internet business rank doesn’t have to know what they are doing. I’m just pointing out that there is a lot less work involved in ranking local SEO sites since you’re only competing with SEO Professionals in your immediate area. And there’s a good chance they might not be very good at what they do if they even exist at all. The reason I say this is because SEO is still a relatively new science. I’m not gonna say it is the hardest discipline to master but it does take some understanding of abstract concepts.

Local Internet Businesses that are working hard to stay on top of their game just don’t have the time necessary to tackle link building, social media integration as well as keeping up with Facebook and all the changes that are constantly taking place with video sites like Revver, Google Video and the list goes on. If you as a local business owner were to take the time to learn this you could, but it would take at least a year to get up to speed. Then you would have to stay up on these changes which is a full time job. Jeff West and myself (Brian Garvin) have made it a priority to stay on top of these changes because it’s what we love to do and professionally this is all we do. If Jeff and I wanted to become Doctors, Lawyers or Accountants we would have started going to school for that at least a decade ago, but SEO is what we do and is what we love. And we agree with Zig Ziglar that you become successful by assisting others in getting where they need to be.

Another concept that many will never get when it comes to SEO is that when you’ve spent the last 45 months or so like Jeff and I have studying SEO and competing in the global environment, you start to get very technically proficient and start learning what it’s like to fight an uphill battle. Making the shift from Global SEO Marketing to Local SEO Marketing becomes very easy and competing with other Local SEO Businesses on behalf of your client is similar to taking candy from a baby. Something else you’ll be happy to hear is that Google now favors Local SEO Businesses, in fact they love them. As a general rule the sites have been around a long time, and they aren’t trying to artificially manipulate the search engine rankings. By this I mean they aren’t using Black Hat SEO tactics to try to trick google. Jeff and I only deal with White Hat SEO, which is totally ethical tactics that will get your local business noticed to the rest of the world.

The great thing about SEO Marketing, especially for local businesses is that if your SEO Campaign is executed correctly not only can you dominate your competition in your specific local market, you can do it legally and ethically still. While the Google landscape for affiliate marketing and bad content is causing millions of pages of content to be moved to Google’s supplemental index, good quality content still remains right where it should be, at the top of the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages). So the Panda Update will not affect Local SEO Businesses, as long as the content you generate for your website is unique and original and is at least 500 words long. However to be safe I’d recommend going at least 750 words for your content for each article. The other thing Google likes to see when it comes to backlink building is a variety of links from many different sources. This is what takes time and expertise to keep up on, since all these places are constantly changing their submission rules and rules for keeping your links on their sites. However once you get links on these sites they usually stay forever.

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