Taking A Hyper-Localised Approach To SEO In Essex
Competition is fierce amongst online businesses. Brands are battling out to try and gain top spot on Google’s pages. Achieving a high rank on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) takes an immense amount of work, however. One of the mistakes that many companies make is trying to run before they walk. What we mean by this is they go general or national in their keyword targeting before they’ve nailed down the local market. The team here at VerriBerri, who’ve worked on SEO in Essex for countless clients, wanted to look at some of the benefits to focusing primarily on a hyper-localised SEO strategy.
How Does Localised SEO In Essex Work In Practice?
Before we do anything further, I want to bring up a simple scenario for you. You run a hairdressing business, one that you know tops all the other local competition. You’ve had a cursory look online at what SEO is and what you should be doing. Perhaps you even start a blog page and start posting regular content. And yet. You’re still finding you’re not ranking within the top 100 for the key phrase you most want to!
As disheartening as this situation may be, it’s by no means an uncommon one. Now before we get annoyed and throw our toys out of the pram, let’s rewind for a second… What was the key phrase this hypothetical business wanted to rank for? “Best hairdresser” – that makes sense, right? You believe you’re the best hairdresser, why not try and show up for that online? Well, think about how many hundreds, how many thousands of hairdressers nationally, globally even, will be trying to rank for that one phrase. Additionally, will it convert into a sale?
In this scenario, the better strategy is to focus on longer tail keywords. An example of this would be “Best hairdresser in Essex”. If you placed this as your focus key phrase in your website’s content, then you’d find yourself ranking much more quickly. Once you’ve consistently started ranking highly for that phrase, then (and only then) should you be looking at shorter tail keywords.
Some people may think that this will return lesser results, or a smaller audience. This couldn’t be further from the truth. You need to become an industry-leader in your local area before you ever look to go broader. It just makes smarter business sense. So, by tackling SEO in Essex before you do the whole country, you’re going to perform more successfully. Furthermore, unless you are selling products, what benefit will a website visitor in say Dundee actually be worth?
Working Locally Provides More Regular Results
As a firm that provides SEO in Essex, we work with a huge number of local Essex businesses. Our networking reach throughout the county is second to none, and such contacts are immensely important to have. One of the things that most positively impacts upon a brand’s SEO value is backlinks. Backlinks are simply a URL link to your website posted somewhere that isn’t your site. If you’ve got lots of backlinks, lots of people are talking about you. IT must be said here; backlinks are not related equal. You need to be very careful in your backlink strategy.
If you have quality backlinks, Google ranks you as a more valuable, reputable website. One way to guarantee a quality backlink strategy is PR. Our PR team has deep-rooted and solid relationships with local journalists across the county’s leading publications. This means we can secure you more of those oh-so vital backlinks which Google loves. PR now works as much online as it does in print media. Any news outlet that’s worth their salt will also have an online department as well, and this extends to more regional news firms as well.
A Quick example
A few months back, we started working with a client who hadn’t previously focused on SEO. By this we mean that their website wasn’t set up with SEO in mind, content hadn’t been optimised, there were no regular blogs, etc. Working in the construction industry, their focus had (understandably) been more on their services and word-of-mouth reputation than it had been their online presence.
We took over their SEO responsibilities and set to work. Our team started writing weekly blogs and pages and optimising the website content; we also started managing the back-end of their website, creating meta-descriptions, alt tags, compressing images, etc. After only three months of working for this company, the results spoke for themselves as they went from not ranking in the first 100 pages to being on page 1 for over 20 search terms. Asides from being incredibly satisfying to see, our Essex SEO agency offers tangible results.
The Best Results
If you’ve not gathered by now, the best way to implement an SEO strategy is to incorporate it into a broader marketing strategy. One which utilises PR, for example, to boost those backlinks. Similarly, having your social media channels appearing on SERPs alongside your website content adds to that impression that it’s your brand which dominates that particular industry or sector. One of the most frustrating things about SEO is how much it changes.
That’s why SEO specialists are so sought after. Google is constantly making algorithm changes; and what may have been beneficial in terms of SEO value, one day, can be incredibly damaging the next, all thanks to one algorithm change. To give it some more context, Google averaged around 9 algorithm changes per day back in 2018. There’s no sign of them slowing down anytime soon, either. SEO strategies need to constantly adapt and move with the times, and this isn’t always something that businesses realise.
Contact Us
Good SEO value is crucial because without it you simply won’t be seen online. SEO doesn’t provide an instant result. What it provides, however, is something far greater. SEO gives you sustained growth. There are quicker forms of marketing like PPC advertising, but they’re a financial drain and provide only temporary growth. So, if you’d like to find out more about our services, including SEO in Essex, then get in touch!
Contact VerriBerri today on 01376 386 850. We’d love to talk about where we think your business can be better optimised for SEO value.
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