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Publisher growth tactics for election season | WEBINAR
Publisher growth tactics for election season | WEBINAR
After going through this guide, you’ll know what location-based SEO is and why it’s important, as well as some of the challenges that local publishers face with this strategy.
You’ll also learn about the core components of an effective location-based SEO strategy, how to avoid some of the most common mistakes and how to implement it well.
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3.11.1 What Is Location-Based SEO?
Location-based SEO involves optimizing a website or web page so that they better match search engine queries that focus on a particular geographical area. The geographical area can be either local — a city or a region, or hyperlocal — a suburb or neighborhood.
For example, when someone in the Sydney suburb of Balmain types “Italian restaurants” and “Sydney” into Google, page 1 of the search results will list any Italian restaurants in Balmain and nearby suburbs whose sites incorporate location-based SEO. Similarly, for a local publisher, location-based SEO ensures that their publication is listed prominently when a search is made in their area.
Also known as geo-targeting, location-based SEO enhances the relevance of a site or page to its readers, making it a critical part of any business’s SEO strategy.
Location-based SEO can help ensure that readers will find local publishers’ content more easily. This will not only help raise your profile, but as your number of readers grows it will help win over locally-focused advertisers and sponsors.
Businesses actually have more to gain from location-based SEO than publishers, given they can enhance footfall traffic. How is this relevant to digital media? Well, if businesses are looking to boost their local clientele, then a publisher with a strong local audience count will become an attractive destination for ad budgets.
With 56% of US consumers favoring local businesses in the wake of the pandemic, advertising with local publishers is a compelling proposition.
In addition to the financial rewards of a strong location-based SEO strategy, it also allows local and hyperlocal publishers to compete against much bigger rivals for the top spots in both Google News and Google Search results.
Local publishers are unlikely to outrank regional or national publishers in major news. Where they can shine, however, is in local news coverage.
Even if larger publishers pick up a local story, smaller outlets can still see their coverage rank higher. Google has outlined the ways it helps local publishers to achieve greater visibility, as well as the factors it considers when evaluating news stories.
In spite of Google’s support for local publishers, there are still some challenges they can face with location-based SEO.
Local publishing lives or dies on how well you connect with a comparatively small pool of readers and viewers. Covering local events blindly isn’t enough, you need to already know what your community values.
This requires keyword research as well as market research to understand whether there’s demand in the market for the content you intend to publish as well as limited competition.
And remember, even though you may be the only outlet providing local coverage that doesn’t mean you’re operating in a vacuum. Regional and national publishers are also competing for your audience’s time and money.
It can also be easy to overlook other, more basic, information about your business — that is, your name, address and phone number, otherwise known as your NAP details.
To ensure that this information remains up-to-date across Google and other search engines, as well as any industry-specific platforms, it’s worth using an appropriate SEO tool.
Local publishers don’t enjoy the same luxury of anonymity as regional, national and international media. Instead the community needs to know who you are if they are to connect with and trust your content.
There are obviously advantages to implementing location-based SEO for your business. But to realize those advantages, incorporating certain strategies to underpin your site’s content is key.
Any location-based SEO is based on a specific area, which means that you’ll need to clarify whether your coverage will focus on a local area or a hyperlocal area.
The nature of your publication will help you determine your target area, but so will the size of the immediate area in which you operate. Are there enough readers and advertisers in your area to warrant location-based SEO? Ensure you research whether either a local or hyperlocal focus is justified.
What kind of words and phrases do your readers typically use when searching for stories? Having an insight into the language they use will allow you to tailor your content so that it matches their needs.
There’s a host of tools that you can use to research keywords, from popular tools marketed by Semrush and Google Keyword Planner to more sophisticated ones offered by Ahrefs and SECockpit. Whichever tool you choose, knowing which words to use will be critical to your location-based SEO.
We’ve created a module that examines the nuances of keyword research as well as another that provides a step-by-step guide to the process.
Keep your content locally focused and write original material. We’ve covered the importance of original reporting in another module, so we won’t rehash it here.
While it may seem obvious to provide local news for a local audience, the truth is that most audiences have a global outlook and it can be tempting to try to cover major national and international events. Avoid this unless absolutely necessary, as local publishers will never have the clout of the mainstream media outlets.
Your content needs to both inform your audience about local events while also driving their curiosity about their area. Covering local events, trends and business updates covers the former, while listicle content can attract readers to specific features, places or activities in your area.
Consider creating local news-related content that’s regularly updated. For example, a one-stop shop guide for voters in the lead-up to a local election, which includes links to media coverage of the election.
Content freshness is key to any successful publishing strategy regardless of whether your site provides news or evergreen content.
For more on content freshness, we recommend reading our dedicated module on the subject.
Once the essential strategies have been implemented, it’s worth considering these strategies to strengthen your location-based SEO.
Provided that their ads marry well with your site’s content, it’s worth promoting ad opportunities to local businesses. This will not only increase your revenue and drive traffic to your site but will also reinforce your local profile.
Up-to-date and regularly published information addressing local business needs will help build a connection with your local business community. A simple example would be a concise monthly bulletin that outlines IT problems and provides solutions.
Such coverage can be used to showcase local solutions providers as well as cementing your position as a credible media presence in the community.
User-generated content (UGC) has more value to local and hyperlocal publishers than their regional rivals, as the former benefits more from community building. Depending on your site, such content can be anything from product reviews and opinion pieces.
Publishing UGC from the local community builds ties similar to those we discussed with local businesses.
Use social media to engage with your readers. Try to determine which platform they tend to use, then share location-specific content with them on the relevant platform — a post about a local business conference on LinkedIn, for example, or an Instagram post promoting the coverage of a new niche.
It’s also worth following local businesses on social media. Their posts could provide you with a snapshot of what’s popular with your readers and, therefore, ideas for your own content.
Contact other publishers in your area about guest posting opportunities. Provided that they’re not directly competing for the same readership pool, this can be an effective way to drive more traffic to your site.
To ensure that your site addresses the needs of your local readers, avoid making these common mistakes.
Using the right keywords, as we’ve mentioned, is important, and this includes location-specific keywords.
Avoid using generic terms such as “best restaurants”, making sure to add the location you’re targeting, in this case it might be “New York”. In other words, ensure that your content speaks the exact language your readers speak.
Avoid publishing content about national or regional subjects. Your audience is local and they want to know what’s going on near them.
Whether your readers are looking at your Google Business Profile or a local directory listing, your name, address, phone number and URL should always match.
This conveys professionalism, so it’s important that you check your contact details and fix any inconsistencies.
Have you written a proper bio on your social media accounts? Do you even have an appropriate social media account?
If your answer to either of these questions is “no”, you’re neglecting what could be a gold mine for potential site traffic. In short, set up relevant social accounts, then ensure they properly link to your site.
In addition, publishers’ social media profiles can be added to their Knowledge Panels, another Google SERP feature. These panels appear in SERPs to provide a “quick snapshot of information” held on an entity by Google’s Knowledge Graph database.
Below you’ll see how these social media profiles appear in the BBC’s Knowledge Panel.
Google automatically generates the content for these panels so it’s worth ensuring that your site clearly points to your social media pages. Consider placing social media buttons on your site, this will not only help direct your users to your social media pages but will also send clear signals to Google about your social media presence.
If Google doesn’t update your Knowledge Panel with your social media profiles you can always send suggested changes to Google for review.
Below are two case studies where the publishers have used steps we’ve outlined already to build business models that focus on local audiences.
Canadian media group Village Media not only owns and operates 26 local news sites across North America but also provides a variety of services to strategic news media partners in both its home market as well as the US.
The media group’s sites enjoy on average a gross margin of 20-25% after three years in operation. Village Media has been able to deliver this success by following a systematic approach to the local news scene that blends business strategy with a focused content road map.
The publisher picks geographically distinct and isolated markets to enter with a populace — typically between 20,000 and 200,000 in size — that has strong community ties. It also is looking for audiences that consume news regularly, but are underserved by the current market.
Using the above as parameters for site selection, Village Media then surveys the local population using SurveyMonkey and Facebook to create a shortlist.
The group’s editorial strategy revolves around publishing upwards of 10-15 stories per day for every five journalists on staff, with newsdesk coverage slanted towards evenings and weekends.
Village Media embraces content freshness when covering local news, always striving to be first to cover a story and then continuing to update it as it evolves. This approach means that while only 15% of Village Media’s published articles involve original reporting, these stories drive almost 70% of the group’s page views.
The publisher only uses press releases and rewrites for around 5% of its content, and yet these drive 10% and 13.7% of its traffic respectively.
It’s clear that original reporting on local issues is the engine of Village Media’s success, but that’s not all that can be seen from studying how it operates. The group first conducts market research to evaluate whether it should enter a market, leverages social media to understand its audience and then delivers local and original content using a content velocity model to establish content freshness.
Australian publishing house Local Publishing Co provides small-format hyperlocal print magazines covering different areas of eastern Sydney.
The publisher pivoted into the hyperlocal segment in 2020, spinning off the Local Paddo, Local Bondi and Local Bayside publications from flagship magazines Local East and Local North.
The business case was driven by demand from local advertisers for inventory in media that targeted more local audiences. Local companies were using social media to connect with audiences but were looking for additional channels to expand their reach.
Local Paddo focuses on news and lifestyle topics in the affluent suburb of Paddington. The publisher has noted that the magazine’s audience was easy to identify and cater to, through a focus on local personalities and business.
Targeting a more diverse community brings its own challenges. The Local Bondi magazine has had a harder time pinning down a content strategy because of the mix of legacy and new residents as well as tourists.
This challenge provides additional insight to Local Publishing Co’s decision to target audiences the majority of which identify with the phrase “born here, live here, and work here.”
Nevertheless, Local Publishing Co has managed to carve out a space in the magazine sector by focusing on local journalism that appeals to both audiences and advertisers alike. The company has doubled down on producing hyperlocal print magazines that share a similar standard of quality as national magazines.
This sets it apart from traditional local or hyperlocal outfits that are now for a rather utilitarian approach to storytelling and production values.
After working through this guide, you should now have a solid foundation of what location-based SEO is and how such a strategy might fit within your editorial strategy.
It’s essential to do your market research before diving into this segment. Limiting your geographical options limits audience reach, which means the margin for error is so much smaller. Major global trends and interests don’t hold any value in the local space, what’s local is what matters.
Nevertheless, some best practices are universal, such as keyword research, content velocity, original reporting and content freshness.
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