Help Advertisers Win the Local SEO Landscape

Your advertisers have significant competition in any market. That’s why they rely on advertising and marketing to get customers’ attention. As a valued partner to them, you’re the one they look to for advice and recommendations. One area with a lot of potential for attracting and converting audiences is SEO (search engine optimization). Helping advertisers win the local SEO landscape involves a variety of tactics, including paid and owned channels.

It’s time to have a new or first conversation about local SEO and how they can position themselves at the top of the options for searchers.

SEO vs. SEM

For any local business to be prominent in search results, they’ll need SEO and SEM (search engine marketing). These two tactics are interrelated but aren’t the same. It’s a good idea to clarify how they work together and differ. SEO is a long-term strategy based on optimizing content on their websites for keywords their audience searches for. SEM is bidding on those same keywords, with ads displaying when people search for them.

Get more insights on SEO vs. SEM by viewing this infographic. One part of your SEO recommendations will be to launch ongoing SEM campaigns for the keywords that are most valuable in driving leads and conversions.

Local SEO Best Practices

Providing SEO tips to your advertisers doesn’t involve you selling anything. Rather, you’re offering expert guidance for them to improve their website. Here are some essential best practices to include:

Ensure their website pages have all the correct meta tags: Search engines use these to understand the content. It’s also what displays in the search results and can offer a quick review of what people will see if they click. They need to insert an engaging meta title and description that includes the keyword for every page.
Optimize their Google Business Profile: Local companies can gain SEO favor by claiming their profile and completing it with relevant information, including business category, hours of operation, descriptions, images, and details on products and services. It’s also a place where customers can leave reviews. Inform advertisers that they should request these, as they demonstrate “social proof” that the company is credible.
Suggest individual pages for products and services: Instead of lumping all these together, they’ll get more search exposure with multiple pages, which should include details, imagery and more.
Review website quality: A business needs to do several things with its website to improve rankings. First is checking site load speed. If it’s too slow, people will leave quickly. They can often improve loading time by compressing images or removing unnecessary code. Additionally, their site needs to begin with “https,” which indicates it’s secure. You also want to make sure the website has the correct tracking codes from Google Analytics to measure views and visits.
Recommend content marketing: When businesses consistently publish new content through a blog or resource center, they have more ways to rank organically. Blogs can often be an entry point for customers versus the homepage. This content leverages long-tail keywords that relate to their audience’s specific needs.

Along with these best practices, there are other ways to boost local SEO.

Other Ways to Boost Organic Search Rankings with Digital Tactics

One critical aspect of organic ranking and traffic is the distribution of content. Whether it’s product pages, blogs, events or other landing pages, businesses have to make them visible to their potential customers. A common channel is through their social media pages or with Google Business Profile postings. Those can drive some traffic, but if they want to accelerate this, you can propose these tactics along with SEM:

Paid social posts to targeted groups that link to website content they want to improve rankings for and offer the potential to convert the prospect
Display ads that also send traffic to these pages and provide an incentive, offer or valuable information for the audience
OTT ads that have a CTA (call-to-action) link at the end of the video leading to a page for people to learn more about a service or product
Radio spots, which can lift search activity for a brand and contribute to more traffic

All these paid vehicles deliver traffic, and as that grows, it becomes an indicator to search engines that the content on the page is relevant to searchers.

Help Local Businesses Rise to the Top with Local SEO

Anyone who uses a search engine to resolve a need focuses most on what appears on the first page. That’s where the majority of clicks come from, so your advertisers must have a presence there with paid ads, organic content and as part of Google Business Profile results. With these best practices and tactics, they can rise to the top and realize greater brand awareness and revenue.