Super Quick One-Step SEO Tip

This might be the simplest blog post I’ve ever had to write, but this (very basic) tip could help shape your entire organic search strategy.

Here it is, one step…

1) Go and type your core product or service into Google…

or

That’s it. Look at the results, and ask yourself this question (okay, technically two steps); does Google see a local intent for this product/service?

By that, I mean is Google serving up local results before the standard organic results? For example:

If your results look something like the above (The big G is known to play around with the format), then Google believes that the user searching for this term would prefer to see a local result than a set of standard national results.

Why does this matter? Because businesses often obsess over being ‘number one’ for a keyword, and using the screenshot example above, if you ranked number one for ‘accountants’, you’d actually be in the bottom third of the page while local businesses receive the core visibility (after the paid listings, of course). That could be a lot of misspent budget.

Here’s the great bit; if your product/service does have a local intent, it means you can apply some local SEO techniques and nab one of these highly visible spots, without the huge SEO budgets of several of the brands in the standard results.

In the interest of simplicity (as promised), I won’t go into the specifics of local SEO techniques, but if you’re keen to learn more I would recommend you start with this guide.