Local Content Marketing

Local Content Marketing

Creating Valuable Relevant Information That Grows Your Business

The race

Content marketing strategies have proven so effective for national brands but are often overlooked by smaller local businesses. If huge brands like Walmart are leveraging content marketing and now all big brands are in a race to provide the best possible content to their customers, why not use this same strategy to position your business for more visibility and growth. The right local content marketing strategy can position you at the top of search results, rocket your brand awareness to stratospheric heights and boost customer confidence in your business. 

But how to get started with local content marketing? 

Here are some of the most effective strategies you can use to get your company’s content marketing campaign on the ground.

1. Launch a blog for your official website (your domain)

Building an official website is the first step most people to get their business online. But it’s also important to create a blog for it as well. A blog can be an incredible driver of organic search engine traffic.

It’s also important to have a decent amount of helpful content in your posts. While you could get away with 300 words back in 2014, the current standard is much higher, sometimes in the thousands of words of quality, well-written engaging content. If you want to be super aggressive, go for at least 1000 words of content. And it doesn't hurt to look at the competition, keeping in mind that you want to outdo their efforts. However, don’t make the mistake of using filler words – that could cost your website dearly.  Your content must be original and top notch.


2. Set up your Google My Business Account & Get Verified

Registering your business with Google, Microsoft, and Apple are some of the most effective strategies you can use to get your company’s content marketing campaign on the ground.  This doesn't cost anything, doesn't take long and sends all the right signals to search engines that you are a legitimate business.

3. Start social media pages and profiles on the best social sites for your industry

The widespread popularity of social media means that you can amass a stunning amount of web traffic and brand awareness for your business by building a quality following on different social networking platforms.

A staggering majority of Internet users open Facebook and YouTube on a daily basis. Not having a strong social media presence could restrict your ability to reach out to more audiences. 


You can also use your social media channels to post and promote your long-form blog posts. Additionally, it also gives your website a personalized touch – something that your audience will resonate with better. 



Make sure that the social media sites that you pick are the best ones for your industry, in other words, you don't want to waste time on sites that your target customers don't use. Check out our handy guide on the best social media platforms by industry.

Best Social Sites by Industry

4. Get Postings ASAP! Build an event schedule and content calendar

Numerous studies have shown that both B2C and B2B businesses are focusing on boosting their original content creation efforts for 2020. However, that’s also a huge challenge to take on.



Professional content creators overcome these hurdles by setting up an editorial calendar, which is published well in advance for the perusal of potential advertisers. In a similar way, you can also start by scheduling your social media promotional activities, website blog posts, and other such activities in advance, thus allowing you to wield greater control over your website’s content and helping you be prepared for any extraordinary events.


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By Joel Conner 11 Nov, 2019
Content Marketing for Local Businesses Whether your business has only just launched their first website or you’ve got an established presence on the internet, there’s always more you can be doing online. There are an endless amount of opportunities to boost traffic , drive more high value leads, and ultimately convert those leads. Is there a way to do all that without spending a fortune though? Your search is over. We even have proof that content marketing can be effective. This very article you are reading right now is proof. The fact that you are reading this article shows that our own content marketing has worked. It’s something you can take advantage of to. Here is our definitive guide to digital content marketing for small businesses to help you achieve your own success. What is Content Marketing? We’ll start by addressing what content marketing is. It’s when you publish high quality content on a regular basis. The content should be consistent with your own branding and your campaign goals. It also requires a great SEO (search engine optimization) strategy. One cannot exist without the other. The Benefits of Content Marketing Much like with major brands, small businesses are able to get a lot of benefit from a good content marketing strategy. It presents a great way to naturally boost organic search traffic for key words and terms related to your business. By hitting the top spot for important keywords you will; • Boost engagement and sales As the content climbs the search rankings, more and more people will be driven to your website. A great call to action can encourage readers to buy your products/services, subscribe to a mailing list, and more. • Boost savings Google AdWords has seen businesses drop a pretty penny to appear on top of search results. Effective content marketing can get your business to the top of rankings at a fraction of the cost of buying AdWords. Organic rankings also feel more authentic to visitors. People will see your business as being more approachable and genuine when it doesn’t have that “sponsored” tag attached to it. • Better Quality Leads By searching for keywords related to your business, people have shown their interest in what you can offer them. By writing effective content that ranks high on search results and attracts those people to visit your site, you’re roughly halfway to having a sale. You can kiss goodbye to broad advertising and cold calling, which are ineffective for about 90% of the people they reach. • Build a Loyal Customer Base and RE-TARGET After you attract users with high quality content you’ll see them coming back for more. You can further boost engagement with them by including a call to action to join a mailing list. Re-marketing will prove to be effective at this. It allows you to show targeted ads to people who have visited the website before in particular. Re-targeting means that you are always online when your customers are. These constant reminders make them more likely to return to your website. Just make sure your audience loves your content, don't spam them! All in all, there’s a lot of evidence that content marketing just works. How Long Can it Take for a Return on Investment? We’ve seen people boost their Google rankings and get more online leads for their keywords through regular blog post updates across a year. Just how long it takes for content marketing to offer a significant return on investment for a small business depends on how much authority the business commands online. If you’ve got a huge presence in the industry and are ranking high on a number of keywords, the payoff for content marketing is almost instant. Google ranks websites higher if they have more “authority” and are more well-known than lesser-known sites. If you are doing great already, you might think that you’ve squeezed every drop of value from important keywords. That is when content marketing is actually the most important. There are plenty of long-tail keywords that offer almost endless opportunities to increase traffic. Cast yourself a wide net and make a huge catch with your content marketing. If you are just getting started with your small business though, then it’ll take time to build trust and authority with Google. You need to post regular high quality content. As you continue to produce online content, it makes you better established in the industry. That means that Google ranks you more favorably. You’ll notice major returns on relatively small investments over a period of time. With that said, it doesn’t mean that you can’t expect to see some big wins if you are a relatively young business. With the right amount of research and due diligence, you may notice some immediate returns. Make sure to target the best keywords and write really effective content that performs well immediately. That can be easier to do if you focus on local traffic in particular, but you can still do it on the national level and even the global level. Create a Content Marketing Plan This all sounds very good, but you still want to know how it works and how much effort is needed to make it work. Here’s our own handy guide to putting together a great content marketing plan of your own. We’ll shed some light on the tools and services you can use for an extra helping hand too. • Do Your Research You should never go into this blind. You’ll vastly increase your chances of success by doing some research ahead of time. Research is one of the first – and arguably most important – steps in the content marketing process. You should take notes now to allow yourself to make the right moves later. You should have enough notes to know your customers. You need to know who the customer is, what they want, and how they plan on finding these products and services. You should understand customers so that you can make sales. You can learn more about the customers by finding forums and discussion groups related to your industry to see what actual customers are actually saying. You can also take a peek at the competition. See what the big names in the industry are doing. Check their website to see the content they publish. What kind of structure does their website have? What keywords does it look like they target? • Target Long Keywords You aren’t done with the research just yet, as a lot goes into this area of effective content marketing. This is also the key to success though. Finding and targeting the appropriate keywords is an important part of any digital content marketing campaign. For this step, you have to take your important findings from the initial research – such as the audience and competition – and determine the right keywords to effectively achieve your goals. It's no longer a simple matter to just appear on the first page of results. With more and more businesses adopting healthy content marketing strategy, there’s never been more competition for the best rankings. If you are in the business of engagement rings, for example, you can give up on ranking for just “engagement rings”. There are around 1.5 million searches for engagement rings each month. That’s a lot of competition. You need to work smarter. It’s more effective to understand your niche and then have tools like Google Keyword Planner help put together a list of keywords that offer less competition but still good amounts of traffic. Most of those keywords are “long tail keywords” that have longer strings. These long phrases are less likely to be targeted by the competition because they are less likely to be searched. Long tail keywords are the backbone of a good content marketing campaign. When used properly, you could rank better – and get more traffic from – these keywords compared to keywords with a better search volume or more competition. If you could appear on page one for five long tail keywords with around 100 searches per month, that’s around 500 potential hits for your website. If you were to rank on the second page – or worse – for a single keyword with 500 searches per month, you are less likely to get more hits. Try to hit the target from as many different angles as you can. An effective content marketing strategy for small businesses is one where you slowly chip away at the block instead of trying to smash it in a single hit. How to Properly Implement a Content Marketing Strategy Now you have your list of keywords, it’s time to start producing the actual content. You should first make sure that the main pages of the website – all the pages in the navigation menu – are properly optimized with content that reflects the results of your research. Make sure to follow the SEO best practices too. You can start by working on on-page SEO. Make sure that the titles and H1s of pages reflect the keywords identified by your research. Also ensure that the meta descriptions are appropriately written for the page. After taking care of on-page SEO, you should make sure that the website has effective copy and a consistent design. Determine if you should add new pages so that you can take better advantage of keywords and under-utilized areas identified by the research. If you don’t have them already, then it helps to create service pages that outline all your main offerings. If you operate an ecommerce business, then managing the content for products will present its own challenge that you’ll have to overcome. Once your website is packed full of killer content, it won’t take long for your website to achieve better rankings. You’ll start bringing in more traffic and – with it – more conversions. This doesn’t mean you can stop though. This is when you start to create a regular blog. You can use the content marketing strategy and the research done before to create a blog. This blog will serve as an effective and efficient marketing tool in its own right that offers some high returns. You can target the keywords that you didn’t target through static web pages. The blog posts also work as a landing page to drive traffic that may not have found your website before. For some more ideas on marketing your small business check out this very helpful post: Small Business Marketing Ideas That Can Make A Difference Today SEO Best Practices This has been a lot to take in, so let’s turn things into a few key points. In general, Google likes there to be at least 300 words of copy per page. Aiming for 500-600 words has been shown to be effective for our clients. You should ensure that the copy doesn’t hamper the UX or design of the website though. You can get around that issue with the use of “Read More” tags to prevent things from being cluttered. While you want to include the most important targeted keywords, you should avoid keyword stuffing. Just Use the main keywords a handful of times and make sure that they are in alignment with the title tags for the page. Try to include engaging imagery and stick to the SEO best practices when it comes to alt tags and titles for said images.
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