What’s the Difference Between Local and Organic SEO?

Are you building a new website for your company? If so, you’ve got a lot of competition. Over 500,000 websites are launched every single day worldwide. That’s a lot of sites all vying for eyeballs in the digital age.

If you want your website to help you grow your business, you’re going to need to get visitors to your website. And for the past 20 years, the most effective way of doing so has been with SEO.

SEO can drive thousands of relevant visitors to your site every month, week, and day. But should you focus on organic SEO or local SEO?

While search engine optimization is all about getting found on Google, there are different ways to actually make that happen. Wondering which option is better for your website and your business? Keep reading below to learn about these SEO options.

What Is Organic SEO?

Organic SEO is the standard approach to SEO for most websites. With organic SEO, users are not necessarily looking for a list of nearby locations. Rather, they are looking for answers to questions, relevant products, or helpful information.

In order to find what you need, a local business is not necessary. Rather than limiting a search to a geographical area, the search engine will scour the internet for the most relevant, high-ranking web page to answer your query.

Examples of organic search queries might include:

• Best golf shoes
• Who was the third president
• Buy baby carrier

When users are typing these queries into search engines like Google, a website (typically from your current country) can pop up as the most relevant search. 

Many factors contribute to the high rankings of organic searches. For one, the web page needs to be optimized for the keywords it intends on ranking for. There are many on-page SEO factors to implement to increase your chances of a higher ranking.

One of the most important factors, however, is backlinks. Backlinks tell search engines that a particular web page is worth a higher ranking. Websites and individual pages with the most backlinks tend to rank the highest in search results. 

When pursuing an organic SEO strategy, your main goal is to increase the number of backlinks to your content.

What Is Local SEO?

Local SEO, on the other hand, is a search query in which the search engine believes there is an intention to find a local business in a particular area.

For many searches, a user only finds what they are looking for if the search engine shows results in their immediate geographical location. If a user is shown an option for a business located across the country, it wouldn’t be relevant. That user wouldn’t find what they are looking for and will have a bad experience.

Search engines like Google don’t like providing back experiences to their users.

Rather, the Google search algorithm uses many factors to determine if local intent is present in the search query.

For example, if a user types in “gas station,” they are most likely looking for a gas station near their current location. They need gas now, not later.

Or if someone searches for “coffee shop near me” they expect to see a list of coffee shops near their current location, so they can visit one today.

When search engines like Google provide local SEO results, they do so in a different way. Rather than a standard list, it starts out by showing a map with all relevant results pinpointed on the map.

That way, you can see which locations are the closest and most relevant to your needs. 

Local SEO Factors

Getting featured in local search results requires different actions. First off, you need to create a Google My Business listing, that lists all of your business’s information, from address to operating hours. 

It’s imperative that the information in this is accurate, and includes as many keywords as possible without feeling like spam. 

NAP stands for name, address, and phone number. NAP citations are any places on the internet where all three of these items are found together.

This could be on a local directory website or featured on news websites. These can act like backlinks and help boost your local search results. 

You’ll want online business reviews as well. The more reviews you have on Google, the better off your search results will be. Likewise, when people “check in” to your business, this signals that your business is worthwhile. 

Having social media accounts with your business information, all linked to one another helps as well.

How to Improve Local and Organic SEO

Every company will benefit from organic SEO, while only local businesses will also benefit from local SEO. Improving efforts will require different strategies depending on which type of SEO you are focusing on first.

Either one is time-consuming, and might be best to outsource to an SEO company. By hiring SEO services, they can actually run local SEO campaigns alongside organic campaigns, helping you to achieve the best of both worlds. 

SEO companies like Direction make this as easy and seamless as possible. They can help by first optimizing your website, ensuring it’s ready to start showing up in search engines.

Then, they can write and publish additional content on your website, increasing your chances of ranking for different keywords. They can also work with other websites and publishing companies to help you earn natural backlinks through the use of guest posts and other SEO tools.

And they can do all of this while also creating your local SEO assets, generating NAP citations, and helping you find creative ways to get more authentic reviews.

If you tried doing all of this yourself, you would be quickly overwhelmed. Those who are serious about growing their organic website visitor count hire professionals as soon as possible. 

Get More Traffic Today

Both organic and SEO and local SEO are very important. While there are many other traffic-generating strategies, few are as effective and consistent as SEO. Plus, organic traffic tends to provide the highest rate of conversions online.

Looking for more tips and tricks like this? Visit our blog now to keep reading.