How To Create a Winning Local SEO Content Strategy?

Why does every article online that covers local SEO puts the emphasis on local content strategy? Is it really THAT important? In this article, we are going to dive deep and discover why having a robust local content catered specifically for your local Audience is without a doubt one of the main strategies you have to nail in your SEO battle.

Some of us might think that local SEO is just having an account on Google my business, localising your keywords or having an active social media accounts. Even though these strategies can be effective, they are not the whole story. In the world of SEO, “content is king”, and we all know that. This is also true for local SEO. To rank in local results, we need to come up with a strong local content strategy.

Thoroughly identify local content keywords

Simply put, keywords research is the process of searching for proper and most used keywords that are related to your niche or the type of services you want to provide. Understanding keywords research is simple, but the process can be time-consuming. This process is the core of your content strategy and needs to be done correctly. Because even if you produce the best content, without targeting the correct keywords for your business, you won’t reach your desired results.

• Study your market

Your first step in local keywords research is to understand your own business. What are the services you want to sell? Where do you stand in the market based on your niche? Understanding your goals, plans, and the type of market you’re working in will narrow down the list of keywords that you will have to target.

•  Study search intent

The purpose behind each search is called search intent. Not every search is about buying a product or acquiring a certain service. If we want to rank higher on search engines, we need to understand the Why behind each search intent. Is the person behind the search looking to buy something? Or are they looking for a specific type of information? The expert team at local SEO Darwin assert that to rank at the top of Google result page, your content needs to be the most related to the search intent you’re targeting. If you want to sell your products, you need to make the content that will show up when a potential customer is searching for your product. This is also true if you provide other services.

• Choose long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are the kind of search queries that don’t get many searches per month. These quires are usually longer than the more specific and more popular search quires. Because you can’t compete with those businesses that are already ranking for those words, using less competitive long-tail keywords is the best strategy to target your audience and turn them into your customers.

• Take advantage of opportunity keywords

Some keywords out there have a high rate of searches each month but still are less competitive. We call these words opportunity keywords as they are a needle in a haystack. Finding these keywords can help you boost your local content SEO faster than the traditional ways, but you have to make sure you create an excellent content for it so it ranks high so you can reap its rewards.

Research keywords modifiers

Keywords modifiers are a set of words that, combined with your main keywords, make your target long keywords.

These modifiers aim to target different search intent done by users with your main keywords but with different modifiers.

Below is a shortlist of for main types of modifiers that you can implement within your long keywords to define a single main keyword in more than just one way and therefore gain more traffic for that specific word.

• The four types of modifiers

1. Quality: modifiers like “best, top, cheapest”, etc. are the type of modifiers that will make your target audience click on your links and ultimately become a customer.
2. Occasion: you can choose your modifiers to target special occasions or seasons. look at the following example:

“Best summer deals for laptops”, “birthday ideas you can use in 20202”, and so on.

1. Type: here, you can state what type of services you provide by mentioning the location you want to rank in. for example. “Top family photographer in New York”
2. Special offering: it is obvious that with this modifier, you should offer a special deal to entice your readers to buy from you. For example: “Get (your product name or brand) for $50 less than the usual rate.”

Create the content

To create click-worthy content, there has to be an organised strategy layout. A solid, well-built content strategy gives you a huge chance to compete with similar content online or any future content that your competitors might upload. It is not a surprise that we have a while business revolving around content production; yes, it is THAT important. Content marketing is a huge part of SEO and any real marketing business.

• Content workflow

To complete a piece of content, there are a set of tasks that usually a single person or, on a large scale, a team of content creators need to go through to get the job done. Content workflow, also known as content governance model or content marketing workflow, highlights the different roles, expectations, fact documentation of every step the content team take in the journey of crafting it. And it is truly a craft if done right.

A well-organised content workflow helps creators to ensure:

• The produced content is accurate, follows a consistent flow and is reliable.
• That the content goals and deadlines are met.
• Typical content production problems are addressed and fixed.
• Each team member knows their job and understands how they contribute to achieving the best content possible.
• That those who have the responsibility to develop the content itself are trustworthy and responsible.

Every company’s content workflow might be different from the other, and that’s okay. Because each company have a different set of goals, they’re targeting with the type of content they create, but in general, content workflow is there to help you reach those particular goals.

• Create a solid outline

It doesn’t matter if you’re a seasoned content creator or new to this business. It is always advised to work on an outline for your content before diving into the creation itself. Without a solid outline, it is easy to lose direction in the flow of writing your paragraphs.

Defining an outline is pretty simple. It is the structure of your content. In other words, its skeleton. It is an academic way of writing that will serve you and, for the most part, the readers in the best way possible. By defining the outline of the article, you will understand what you want to talk about what questions you should answer, and the writing process will be a lot easier.

Another great feature of implementing outlines in your articles is that the blog post will be robust and consistent from start to bottom. The flow of information is connected to each other, and the reader knows beforehand what type of information he is expecting to read.

The common steps to create a solid outline are as follows:

1. understand your Audience
2. brainstorm about an exciting topic
3. extensive research about the topic
4. content creation: choose your headline (H1)
5. define your subheadings (H2, H3, …)
6. include an introduction and a conclusion

These are some of the most common steps taken when writing an outline, but there are more ways to do this. After a while, you will get used to a way that you’re more comfortable with.

• Consider Google EAT

It is imperative that every content creator, a content marketer or anyone trying to post content online needs to understand the concept behind E-A-T. EAT means Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

Ever since 2014, the first time EAT was mentioned, Google has been implementing it in its algorithm to detect great, well-written and informative content for the readers.

• Expertise: how expert the person or the team that are behind creating the content.
• Authoritativeness: how authoritative is the created content, the website and even the creator
• Trustworthiness: is the content, the website and the creator trustworthy?

Conclusion

As with any creative job, content creation is very delicate and needs to be done right. Implementing strategies like keywords research, finding the appropriate long-tail keywords, taking advantage of opportunity keywords and following the suitable content workflow can do you wonders. All these strategies, alongside the correct practice of outlining your articles, can lead to a very trustworthy content that can rank your page in Google and other search engines. So, next time you write your local content, keep these tips in mind.