Need help figuring out how to NOT do local seo?

[ColoradoChris]

Hello forum friends,

So I know how important local search is, but I am very curious how to not hurt a local business trying to get nationwide sales?

So for an example of I sell dog training services in my area, but I also want to do consulting and videos nationwide, do you have any tips to not mess up a nationwide strategy when I'm also doing local seo?

For an example of a service area based business adds their nap in the footer, does this tell the search engines that your only servicing one area? Which in turns hurts a national sales strategy?

Just curious if anyone had any tips on how to rank local, but also nationally, but not hurting one or the other?

I read to hide address on Google maps or Google my business if that's still valid?

But any tips are super appreciated

Chris

 

[James Watt]

Re: Need help figuring out how to NOTdo local seo?

Hi Chris, welcome to the forum.

To my knowledge at least, having NAP in the footer and having the site associated with a GMB page doesn't limit it's ability to rank for other keywords as well. For example, say you have a blog article that you're hoping to rank for 'how to train your basset hound to fetch'. Your ability to rank is going to be based on onpage factors (title tags, images, site theme, how/where other pages on-site link to that page, and so on) and offsite (quality and quantity of other sites that link to the page, overall domain authority, etc). I think you'll find it's pretty much the same level of challenge to get your site showing for non-local keywords even if other parts of the site have local intent. There's plenty of astute local business people that've really built their practice up by becoming a thought leader nationally in their field.

The one area I can see you running into a little bit of trouble though, is having the same brand name for your videos as you do for your local business. If someone types in your brand name, you'll have the local knowledge panel showing to the right of the screen, with a service area map, local reviews, a phone number, and so on. If you're worried about having this confuse customers who are only interested in your videos and such, I'd consider branding that side of the business differently.

However you go with branding though, I'd definitely recommend using only one site. Your efforts to rank some pages nationally will actually help you rank others locally, and vice versa. It's hard enough to get backlinks coming in and building your reputation and authority online, you may as well get that work pulling you forward on both fronts. After all, these days at least, showing up in the 3-pack is hugely influenced by how well your site's ranking, so I can see the extra effort getting the word on those videos out there as having huge benefit to your local practice too.

And yes, you'll need to hide your address, unless you have a location people can drop in during business hours. Not all directories will let you hide your address though, so if you don't care about your home address being public in some places, it's better to let it show where you need to in favor of getting the most important citations.

Good luck!

 

[ColoradoChris]

Re: Need help figuring out how to NOTdo local seo?

Thank you James!

You're a Rockstar!

I just worried that I do great at local seo, but when it comes to national seo, maybe something I could do for local seo will stun my national strategy.

And I get it, say your an electrician in Denver, Colorado, I got money that says your not going to hook up a light switch in California! So I appreciate your insights James as I again had some thoughts of something people do locally can keep you out of the national spotlight!

Have a Positive Day

Colorado Chris

 

[James Watt]

Happy to help. And yeah, I don't think anything you do locally will cause problems for other pages ranking. If for example, your Denver electrician wrote a popular book about saving money through rewiring your house, and was a common expert to interview for New York Times and such when they need someone to talk on that topic, you can image that Google would have no issue at all ranking some of the pages of his site for national keywords, and they'd show his page for his book to anyone that was looking for the title. The main thing Google wouldn't want to do, is show him in the 3-pack in the wrong city, or show his site for people doing a search with local intent.

 

[ColoradoChris]

Hey James I wanted to ask your thoughts on Schema? How do you add your Schema code to get a national audience and not just local?

 

[Eric Rohrback]

Chris,

You just need to silo different parts of your site to target the appropriate audience. So if you're focusing one product on a local market, make sure you have a local landing page and relevant content built off of that. If you have another product you want to focus on a national audience, then you build off a different section of the site to target that audience. Since the two markets will be different, the messaging will be different. I've seen a lot more sub-pages rank well for longer tailed queries than homepages, because homepages tend to be more high level and general. That being said, you need to be creative in how you present both sides of the business if someone lands on the homepage.

Since you're doing dog training in your area, then you can get map placement for that. Selling videos and consulting for that could be added into the description or mentioned on the landing page, but wouldn't qualify for a separate GMB page. In that case you'll want to target ranking organically, get active on forums/other referral sites, social media, or do paid search to promote that section of your business.

Without knowing the full extent of your business, if someone is looking for dog training services that will most likely have local intent. You're not going to bring your dog across the country to receive training, you're going to find someone locally. Conversely, if you're looking to do the training yourself or find material how to become a trainer, then it doesn't matter where it's from as long as it's quality. I can view a video/read training/do a phone consultation with anyone in the country; it's not local dependent. That's how you need to think about product/service positioning. Think about the target and how you need to reach them, and then go to where the customer will be looking for the product/service. That's why you could succeed in both local and national SEO and they won't impact each other.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I only briefly scanned this so take my comments in context, but anything you do Local SEO wise shouldn't hurt your national SEO. They actually should compliment one another. For NAP specifically, national companies have their NAP on their websites all the time.

Eric is right from a conversion standpoint though. If your local and national marketing messages are different, you need to accommodate that on your website and send national people to one "funnel" and local people to another.