Timothy Carter

While certain SEO fundamentals, like maintaining a regular and high-quality content strategy, still apply to local businesses, entrepreneurs also need to take measures to optimize their online presence for a local community. If you’re looking for simple, local SEO tips, try some or all of these 15 actionable ideas for improving your local SEO and Google business profile: 1. Optimize your site with location-based keywords. First and foremost, use onsite title tags and metadescriptions to maximize your geographical relevance. For example, if your homepage’s title tag currently reads “Unique coffee shop,” change it to read “City, State unique coffee shop” or something similar. Use variations of your location, such as Seattle, Seattle Washington, and Seattle WA to avoid duplication and optimize for multiple potential queries. 2. Create location-relevant blog posts. This is a long-term local SEO strategy that will improve your ranking in local search results and win you more local customers as well. Blog about things that are currently happening in your city that might have to do with your business or industry. For example, if you own a coffee shop and the city is making renovations to a park down the street, talk about how it’s going to benefit your community! And of course, use lots of location-specific keywords. 3. Make sure your contact info is consistent, everywhere. Sometimes referred to as “NAP” (standing for name, address, and phone number), your onsite contact info is vitally important for SEO. If Google detects even the slightest formatting inconsistency, such as displaying “Rd” in one area and “Road” in another, it could penalize your local rankings. Ensure its consistency across all your pages, and on your offsite profiles as well. Titles and Descriptions The first things to look at are your titles and meta descriptions. Are they narrowly local to your area? If not, then you need to change them so that they are. Example: If you have a page for Kansas City Events in 2013, you want that to be specifically portrayed. You don’t want a title like “Local Events in 2013.” You want it to say specifically: “Kansas City Events in 2013.” Meta descriptions may not be a ranking factor the way they once were, but more often than not they are what’s seen on the search results page. The terms you use will show up as bold text in the title and as the description on the search results page if they match the words that someone was searching for. 4. Create a specific location page. Google will penalize you if you have too many pages that only exist to boost page rank, but it’s a good idea to have one page that details your physical location. You can include this on a contact page, but it’s better if you title your page in line with your physical location. Include map integration, and multiple ways to contact your business. Optimizing your images is something you should be doing as well. That goes for every website, but it can work wonders for local businesses. Next time you’re at an event or out on a job, take photos. Use them in your blog posts. Before you upload them to your site, make sure that the filename, description, and ALT tags mention your local area. Using Google Maps can be tremendously helpful for your local site. But most businesses don’t realize just how much you can do with them. Do you offer a service of some kind? Let’s say that you specialize in kitchen remodeling, okay? Now that you know you should be taking photos on every job, you should have lots of photos of your work to show. This is where it gets good! (I do have to mention that this does cost a bit of money, but you’ll see why it’s so worth it.) You can use a map of your local area to highlight jobs you’ve done. Each one gets its own placement on the map. Each one will have a thumbnail of the photo for that job and a link to a post or page that goes into more depth about it. So essentially, you’re creating localized pages for each job, which gives you that many more pages of localized content on autopilot. Each map icon of each job also gets indexed as a page in Google! The posts that are created for each icon are done so in GEO-Tagged microdata format, which Google, Bing, and Yahoo! all love. So how’s all this possible? It’s done with a WP plugin. (Sorry, you’re kinda outta luck if you aren’t on WordPress). It’s called WP Map Folio. 5. Set up all your social media profiles (if you haven’t yet). You probably already have a Facebook page, but you need to go the extra mile. Even if you don’t plan on updating every profile regularly, it’s important to claim as many profiles as you can. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn are the power players in social media, but don’t neglect your other options. Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Snapchat can all help improve your local authority. 6. Ensure your listing with Google Local or Google My Business Google Local Businesses recently combined with Google+, so if you already have a Google+ profile, you’re halfway there. Fill out your profile completely—Google is a stickler for details. Make sure your name, address, and phone number are all consistent, and post your business hours so your potential customers can easily see them when they search for you. 7. Create local listings wherever you can. After Google’s recent so-called “Pigeon update,” the importance of local directories has significantly risen. In fact, some directory pages on Yelp! are actually outranking company pages in branded local searches. Check out every local directory that’s relevant to your business, such as Yelp!, Urbanspoon, and TripAdvisor, and make sure your business has a presence there. It’s also a good idea to make sure your information is up-to-date. There are a number of local SEO tools available to assist in automating much of the setup here. We provide

Search engine optimization (SEO) is multi-faceted and complex. Measuring the return on investment (ROI) of an SEO campaign is even more daunting, especially when direct results cannot always easily be tied to specific inputs. It’s the old John Wanamaker conundrum: Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half. Fortunately in today’s paid marketing, it’s much easier to target waste and bloat by knowing how your PPC ad spend is working (or not). But not when it comes to organic search traffic. In SEO, correlation is often inappropriately tied to causation, which may not always be the case. In this guide we discuss the specifics of measuring the ROI of your SEO campaigns, particularly your off-page SEO in building links and promoting content. In doing so, we assume your site passes the table stakes metrics required for optimal on-page SEO including quality content, Core Web Vitals, internal linking, proper title/meta/h1, etc. In the next several sections, we’re going to teach you how to measure both the costs and the value of your link building (and link outreach) campaign, and determine which of your links and offsite content are making the biggest impact. From there, you’ll be able to optimize your link building campaign for a higher return on investment, or ROI—and much more impressive long-term results. SEO Link Building Value: More Than Higher Search Engine Rankings Understand that the true value of your link building campaign is about more than just higher search engine rankings. It can’t be tied to any single variable. Instead, your link building outreach campaign must be considered in a variety of different performance areas: Organic rankings (and traffic). Though not the only barometer for value you’ll use, there’s no denying the importance of search engine rankings and the organic traffic they generate. Google and other search engines measure the relative “trustworthiness” of a site in terms of domain authority, or DA, which is calculated with a complex formula that heavily depends on existing links pointing to various sites. Generally, the more links a site has pointing to it, and the higher-authority those links are, the higher its DA will be. Referral traffic. Organic traffic isn’t the only source of traffic generated by links. Depending on the publisher you use, the audience to whom you’re writing, and the positioning of your link, it’s easily possible to generate more visitors in referral traffic than you generate in organic traffic—especially early on in your campaign. User behavior. Traffic is always nice to earn, but the value of that traffic can vary. For example, if you’re running an SEO or PPC campaign on an eCommerce site, your conversion rate will be directly linked to sales, and it’s going to play a massive role in your eventual success. In scenario 1, you’ll get 35,000 visitors a month with a conversion rate of 1 percent, resulting in 350 conversions total. In scenario 2, you’ll get 25,000 visitors a month and a conversion rate of 2 percent, resulting in 500 conversions total. Scenario 2, despite lower traffic, is the favored option. This is important to consider because the nature of your link building campaign can influence user behavior once they’re onsite. Secondary effects. SEO also has a host of secondary effects, most of which are much harder to measure than the primary benefits preceding this list item. For example, if you have a guest author profile on a publication site, you could generate referral traffic from this blurb. If you mention your brand name consistently enough in your links, you’re going to improve your search visibility and reputation—even for people who don’t click your links. Plus, building authority on small- to mid-sized publishers can set you up for even bigger opportunities, resulting in a kind of ladder-climb; in this way, every link you build carries value in supporting the future of your campaign. Some of these impact variables will matter more to you than others. For example, your brand may be especially eager to outrank your top competitors in search engines. However, it’s hard to argue with objective outcomes; if it’s possible to generate more total traffic, as well as traffic more likely to convert, from referrals than organic traffic, it will benefit you to optimize your approach accordingly. The Big Picture of SEO ROI Let’s turn our attention to the main premise of this piece: SEO ROI. The high-level view is that SEO ROI is a function of two variables: costs and profits. If you spend $500 on a campaign and you generate $600 in revenue from it, that’s an ROI of $100, or 20 percent, depending on how you want to measure it. In the realm of link building, costs can be tricky to measure, since you’ll need to factor in both time and money. If you’re working with a link building agency, things get a bit simpler, since you’re only dealing with one cost variable. In the next section, we’ll explain how to accurately project your costs. And as you can see from the previous section, outcomes can also be difficult to measure; there are many benefits of link building, both direct and indirect, and you’ll need to factor all of them into your final SEO ROI equation. In several sections that follow, we’ll explore how to measure the impact of your links, including how much traffic they’re generating, how they’re improving your search engine rankings, and how they’re influencing user behavior on your site. For both costs and value, you’ll need to consider both your overall SEO strategy and each individual link; for example, if your strategy is performing well, but a certain type of link seems to be underperforming compared to the others, you can weed out whatever strategy is producing that link in favor of something more in line with what’s generating your results. Some publishers will outperform others, and some pieces of onsite content will be more rewarding as link destinations than others. Measuring Your Off-site

Digital marketing for startups and new websites is more difficult than it has ever been. Competition is more fierce, existing budgets are more robust and customers are more distracted, but that doesn’t mean it can’t or shouldn’t be done. It can now take 3+ years for new websites to emerge out of the hypothetical Google Sandbox and start ranking for thousands of keywords: How to Promote a New Website Marketing a brand new website can be a challenge, but with the right strategies, you can drive traffic and increase conversions. Here are six effective tactics you can use: Optimize your website for search engines using relevant keywords and meta tags. Leverage social media to build a following and engage with your target audience. Invest in pay-per-click advertising to target specific keywords and demographics. Collaborate with other websites and influencers in your industry to gain exposure and backlinks. Utilize email marketing to build relationships with your audience and promote your offerings. Offer incentives or promotions to entice visitors to take action on your website. “The Dip” for New Websites Seth Godin has a best-selling book titled The Dip. And while it’s certainly shorter than most of his other books, it’s arguably one of his best. It centers around the concept of knowing when to quit on an idea and when to continue pushing through. The basic premise is that most people have an unrealistic idea of what growth in business looks like. They believe it happens exponentially from the start (something Godin calls the “Naive Curve”). But this is rarely true – even with the best ideas. In reality, most people start with lots of energy and excitement. And as they launch a new business or even prepare for a new website launch, they experience an initial jolt of results, which sends positive feedback and encourages the entrepreneur to put in more effort. But then something inevitable happens: Results flat line while effort simultaneously increases. It’s at this point that people experience “The Dip.” Unfortunately, most people throw in the towel at this point. But as Godin puts it, this is a “bad quitting point.” Because the dip is typically followed by a rebound (which is where the real results occur). One of my favorite quotes from the Godin’s book: A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner When launching a new website, you have to resist the tendency to believe in the “Naive Curve” and instead embrace “The Dip.” This isn’t a pessimistic outlook – it’s just a realistic one. If you launch a website correctly, you’ll experience your fair share of results over the first 24 to 72 hours. But then things will flatline a bit. And if you aren’t careful, you’ll be tempted to throw in the towel. However, as you now know…true growth is just on the other side. By developing a proactive site launch plan to market your new website, you’ll reach this point faster and more efficiently. In this article, I’m going to show you: The What and Why of a website launch plan How to set yourself up for a successful new site launch by doing all of the right things before going “live” What to do on launch day to maximize your traffic and long-term results Post-launch website marketing tips for scalable traffic and conversions How building the right team makes all the difference when marketing a brand new website If you’re ready to learn the correct way to launch and market a website for maximum impact and lift, you’re in the right place. Keep reading and I’ll dish my favorite secrets for success. The What and Why of a Website Launch Plan I’d venture a guess that 95 percent of new websites don’t have any sort of formal launch plan. They simply hit “publish” and then take a wait-and-see approach. But I’d also venture to say 95 percent of most websites flop faster than a middle-school boy jumping off the diving board at the neighborhood swimming pool. All of that to say this: A website launch plan is not a requirement, but having one typically improves results and could even put you 90 to 180 days ahead of where you’d be if you just started publishing content without any real marketing or promotional strategy. When you first launch a website, nobody knows you exist. Google doesn’t know, strangers on the internet don’t know, even most people in your personal and professional networks don’t know. And it’ll stay that way for several months if you don’t develop a plan to intentionally systematize your launch. A launch plan is basically a formalized website promotion strategy for announcing and promoting your website to the right people in an effort to gain initial traction that can be parlayed into exponential growth over the following weeks and months. As the classic saying goes, a failure to plan is a plan to fail Without any formal launch plan, you’re basically publishing content for an empty room. It’s possible that some people will eventually wander into the room by accident, but why not send invitations? There’s no singular formula for developing a website launch plan, but it’s typically going to encompass three major phases: Pre-Launch. These are the steps you take just prior to launch to ensure your website is ready to go live. It’s a very specific set of steps that need to be checked off in order to ensure your launch day and post-launch processes go smoothly. Launch Day. On launch day, all cylinders are on fire. Assuming you were intentional with your pre-launch approach, you’ll see a pretty decent amount of lift in the first 24-72 hours. The more you can take advantage of this traffic and exposure, the better. Post-Launch. While launch day is certainly important and full of excitement, it’s just one day. What you do after launch day is even more important.

Everyone wants to be #1 on Google. The objective is always to rank as highly as you can as this will drive exponentially more traffic to your site, which ultimately means more sales and reaching your target audience. One of the top ways to boost your search engine optimization (SEO) and Google rankings is through guest blogging and this has been a strategy used for many years now. Getting guest bloggers and using backlinks from high authority websites is a way in which you could move up through the Google ranks and show your own site to be authoritative and was using legitimate strategies for link building. Google Sends Businesses into Meltdown Over Guest Blogging     Back in 2014, Matt Cutts, the former Head of Web Spam at Google said that “guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy’. This sent many businesses into a panic. Would their website be affected by this type of update if they previously featured guest bloggers? You never know when the next Google algorithm update is going to come along and set back all your SEO hard work!     Although this was said back in 2014, now as we are heading into 2021, is guest blogging dead? The objective of guest blogging has always been about backlinks. This is still fundamental to Google’s algorithm on how it assesses the authoritativeness of a website. If you are faced with a competitor who has lots of high authority backlinks and you have none, chances are they are going to beat you in the rankings for the best targeted keywords! This means that anyone with a website has had to re-evaluate the effectiveness of their own guest blogging and achieving backlinks. So, is guest blogging dead? The answer, overall, is no. However, there are specific rules to adhere to if you want to ensure that your guest blogging backlinks help your ranking and don’t hinder them. The Basics of Guest Blogging   Source: visual.ly Before we go on, it’s important to establish the basics of guest blogging. Essentially, a guest post is, is written content which is published on a third-party website with the author’s name. Alongside the author’s name, there is normally a line of two of information about who the author is and a link to their website, which is the backlink. In a guest blogging piece, the backlinks are also often included throughout the main body of the content. This type of strategy to get authoritative bank links on your website is one of the most popular, although there are still other options available. Now, you may be asking yourself, what is the problem with this method of obtaining backlinks? It appears great! The problem is that when an SEO technique is popular and widely used, it can be abused. Furthermore, Google catches on to this popularity and will look to weed out the spammy content that is bad practice. While bad content is targeted, it could still end up affecting your good content which is, of course, not what any website owner wants. What Guest Blogging Content Does Google Punish? There are a number of ways in which Google will penalize guest blogging content. These are some of the bad practices that you should avoid. Content with No Value If you are publishing guest blogging content that has no value, or very, very little value, then Google will recognize this and punish you for it. If a guest content piece is purely being written just to include a backlink and does not contain any helpful information, you can be sure this won’t help with your rankings. When creating guest blogging content, at the forefront should always be informing your readers with valuable information. This will then, subsequently, help your SEO. Re-publishing Content If you are thinking about creating one piece of content and then just simply editing it a little to create more backlinks – don’t! When you republish content and spin it a little in order to post it on another website for extra backlinks, Google will recognize this and punish you for it. Overloading Content with Backlinks Many sites that accept guest posts make the mistake of cramming in as many backlinks as possible into an article, however, this is a big mistake. Google will be able to pick this up immediately and see that you are trying to cheat the system and you will be penalized for it. Don’t Go Crazy with Anchor Text Keywords Another common error that is made with guest blogging content is using overloading the backlink anchor text with a tonne of keywords. This isn’t natural and makes your backlink and article appear spammier. To be clear, less than 1% of your anchor text should be exact match, according to Ahrefs. Using Low Authority Guest Blog Sites A big no no when it comes to backlinks and guest blogging is publishing content on low authority sites. You’ll know exactly the types of sites that we are talking about such as the news sites that are very low-quality and look like spam articles. These sorts of sites use very poor content and simply a way to make quick money. In the long run, this will only damage your SEO efforts using these types of websites. Repeatedly Using the Same Websites Guest blogging can be extremely time consuming and so it seems easier just to repeatedly use the same handful of sites that you are on good terms with. However, this is wrong as it can, again, appear like spam. Instead, you need to take the time and effort to build relationships with a wide range of different sites and do blogger outreach. Not Knowing the Subject You’re Writing On If you want a piece of content to appear reputable, knowledgeable and authoritative, then it has to be written by someone who knows about the subject you are writing on. This ensures that your content provides value to the audience it is intended for

You might have heard that SEO is dead….a waste of money. Depending on your views of the matter and what you expect, it MIGHT be a waste of money. However, if you grasp how SEO (search engine optimization) has changed over time, you’ll see that SEO still has plenty of value. But some parts of traditional SEO have gone the way of PDAs and bag cell phones. If you’re still paying for old-school SEO tactics, you’re wasting your money and could decrease your Google ranking. How to know if your SEO strategy is worth it or not? Let’s look at some outdated tactics that some scammy SEO companies still promote. Link Building Having high-quality backlinks is indeed vital to your website and its ranking. So, link building isn’t dead. But the old idea of having hundreds of poor-quality links on your website IS dead. When the idea was new, SEO companies did use link farms, and websites rocketed to the top of Google. But that all changed when the Penguin algorithm dropped in 2012, and it’s changed several times since then. Quantity doesn’t impress Google anymore. Now it’s all about quality. Your site’s backlinks’ quality and relevance are much more critical than the quantity. The bottom line here: Invest in link building, but only if the SEO company’s strategy involves obtaining authoritative links. Getting a #1 Ranking Being #1 isn’t a waste of money, but the idea that you can achieve a top ranking and keep it indefinitely is a pipedream. Many companies obsess over being #1, and tons of them check the results every day to ensure they’re still there. Who is #1 for any search phrase can change daily. Another related scam is guaranteeing a high ranking in two or three days. The ONLY way that can happen is through illegitimate means or PPC advertising. Whatever they’re doing, they’re dishonest with you, so avoid them. Instead of focusing on your rank, look at your user experience. Lean on analytics data and learn what your website visitors want. Focus on giving your users the information they crave. Regularly review your bounce rate, click-through rate, and duration of sessions. When you spend time improving your site’s experience and lowering your bounce rate, you’re telling the search engines your site is better than others in your niche. Invest your energy in improving your content’s quality and structure, and you’ll notice over time that your Google ranking will rise. Free Trial A legitimate SEO service takes a ton of work and time. The process is complex, and the time to obtain terrific results takes months. That’s why no serious SEO company will give you a free week or hook to get you in. It’s also why SEO is expensive. If they want access to your hosting account during the free trial, take a hard pass. You need to work with a company on a paying contract for them to be legit, and never give a company your vital login credentials unless you’ve signed with them. Website Design Services Offered Google ‘SEO services’ and be amazed at the number of companies that offer web design and SEO. You’d think every marketing organization on earth is offering search engine optimization! Beware, especially if you don’t see staff charged with SEO specifically. Many of these firms have little expertise in the field and simply package SEO with other services (e.g. web design) to make no money. You’ll rarely get the same quality of SEO from a do-it-all type of company. Hire a specialized SEO company, and you’re better off. They Want Ownership of Content Anything you’re paying someone for should be yours. Be sure that any contract you sign doesn’t give ownership of anything to that firm. This could hold your content client, and it could even be sold to someone else. Keyword Stuffing Eons ago, you could get a high ranking by repeating a search phrase many times on a page. Thankfully, those days are behind us. Google tries to understand what your intent is behind a keyword. It isn’t giving top ranking to a page with the keyword’s most mentions. What’s that mean for your business? Forget keywords. Instead, focus on topics relevant to your niche and audience. Content optimized by the subject provides the best-quality answers and a superior user experience. Plus, when you focus on a critical topic, you’ll also get the advantages of semantic variations of the keyword phrase; this means your money page might rank for multiple keywords on various search engine results pages (SERPs). We Can Do It All For Less Than ‘Those Guys’ If you’re working with an SEO company and someone tells you they can do it cheaper, it’s probably a scam. First of all, they don’t know what that company is doing for you, so how do they know they can do it cheaper? SEO always takes time. If you have tangible results from your current provider and switch, it can take months to know if the new guys are doing a better job. They could come into your life and do nothing, and you won’t know for at least 60 days. Business owners might not see a reduction in traffic even after a year of paying the new SEO company. It looks like they are doing the same thing for you for less. What Should You Do? To ensure you aren’t wasting your money on useless off page and on page SEO, you need to focus on what works. Many experts today say focusing on page speed is critical. Why? Unbounce tells us that 50% of visitors will bounce if your site takes 3+ seconds to load. Let’s say your site gets 300 unique visitors monthly. If the website is slow, you might miss 300 more visitors because of slow load speeds. About 7% of new site visitors become patients in the healthcare field. Your site could cost you ten or more clients per month, If each new client is worth about $400

Google doesn’t use the same algorithm for its national search results and its new local 3-pack, which displays three relevant local businesses for your local query. There are some overlapping ranking factors, of course, but the algorithms themselves and the target results are somewhat distinct. However, some experts in the industry have taken this to mean that local and national SEO should be treated entirely separately. For example, a local business might focus exclusively on trying to rank in the local 3-pack while disregarding national search, or a national company might ignore local ranks altogether. Approaching search engine optimization (SEO) from one side or the other, despite the schism in Google’s algorithms, is a flawed strategy. It’s far better to use one group of strategies for the purpose of generating inbound traffic. When starting out online, small businesses attempt different strategies. Some seek to tackle the whole world as their market; others start small by targeting their local region. As the online world has grown to become saturated with businesses all vying for the top spot in global reach, some are turning to smaller, concentrated markets through national and local search. In theory, national and local search are indeed much more promising to target. In the same vein, international SEO can be even more lucrative if your product is ubiquitous around the globe. But you need to be aware of certain key differences between them to determine which you should aim for. The following is a discussion that should help you distinguish between national and local SEO. National SEO National SEO, on the other hand, refers to the process of optimizing a website for broader, national search queries. It is relevant for businesses that operate on a national or international level, such as ecommerce stores, large corporations, or tech companies. National SEO, being broader, allows you to use broader search terms. This can make it harder to rank for because the competition is inevitably fiercer at this level. After all, there are only 10 spots on Google’s first page. If you are competing against 30 or 50 companies nationally, and all the metrics are the same, it’s going to be tough for your business to get ahead just in terms of creating solid backlinks. Local SEO Local SEO refers to the process of optimizing a website for a specific geographic location. It is particularly relevant for businesses that serve customers in a particular city, region, or state. Examples of such businesses include restaurants, real estate agents, real estate lawyers, plumbers, and hair salons. So it’s probably safe to say that cornering local search is a lot easier. There’s much less competition in this area compared to national search. Optimizing for home improvement contractors by city or state is apt to be far less grueling than optimizing for a broader reach. But if you are just starting out, you could be facing a fairly substantial amount of work to land local citations and get listed on small business directories in your city. Major Differences Between Local and National SEO So, what are the main differences between local SEO and national SEO? Let’s take a closer look. Keyword targeting: Local SEO strategies typically focus on optimizing for location-based keywords, such as “plumber in San Francisco” or “Italian restaurant in Seattle.” National SEO strategies, on the other hand, tend to target broader, industry-specific keywords, such as “best laptops” or “luxury fashion brands.” Content creation: Local SEO requires businesses to create content that is relevant to the specific needs and interests of their local customers. This can include local news, events, and promotions, as well as location-specific guides and resources. National SEO, on the other hand, requires businesses to create more generic, industry-focused content that can appeal to a wider audience. Link building: In local SEO, businesses need to build high-quality backlinks from local directories, websites, and blogs. This helps to establish their credibility and authority within the local community. National SEO, on the other hand, requires businesses to build links from a wide range of authoritative websites across the country or even the world. Shameless plug: hire our link building services for the best backlinks in the industry. Google My Business optimization: Google My Business (GMB) is a powerful tool for local SEO, as it allows businesses to appear in Google’s local search results and on Google Maps. To optimize their GMB listing, businesses need to provide accurate and up-to-date information about their business, such as their address, phone number, hours of operation, and customer reviews. National SEO, on the other hand, doesn’t rely as heavily on GMB optimization. Competition: Local SEO tends to be more competitive than national SEO, as businesses are vying for the attention of a smaller, more specific audience. This means that businesses need to work harder to differentiate themselves from their local competitors and offer unique value to their customers. National SEO, on the other hand, is often more about standing out from the crowd within a broader industry. Separating the strategies adds needless complication Occam’s razor suggests that when solving a problem, the simplest solution is likely the best one. Similarly, in SEO, the simplest approach is likely the most meaningful. That’s not to say that SEO can be handled with only the basics (even though I’m a proponent of the minimalistic approach to SEO), but the fewer unnecessary complications you add to your strategy, the better. Adding another “wing” of SEO could potentially confuse your local SEO efforts, especially if you assign different team members to those responsibilities. For example, if you have one set of people working only on national SEO and another set working exclusively on local SEO, you could end up working toward different goals, ultimately weakening the possible success of each one. Every business can find value in both worlds Rather than focusing on both national and local SEO as separate entities, some businesses completely eradicate one side of the spectrum to focus on the other. For example, a restaurant that only