6 Easy Tips for Narrowing Your Content Strategy for a Local Focus

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12 Feb, 2021

4 mins read

The World Wide Web, as the name suggests, is a wild place that has over 1.7 billion websites. The estimated 200 million active websites are animals in a competitive jungle, and their main goal is to reduce competition. As such, whenever a small business threatens to alter the status quo, the big multinational companies will use their financial muscle and business experience to put you out of business.

Instead, small businesses can use a local focus to gain a foothold in this virtual jungle.

Will my great business start-up be crushed before it takes off?

The answer to the above question is yes and no, depending on your content marketing strategy. If you decide to swim in the deep waters before gaining enough experience in the shallow end, then the bigger companies will swallow your idea like a shark does to smaller fish.

On the other hand, fortunately, if you have a strategy with a local focus, the larger companies will have a hard time beating you there. Local prospects understand your language and you understand theirs, you know the challenges they face and the solutions they will identify with.

How Can I Narrow my Content Strategy to a Local Focus?

It is simple: create content that will help search engines locate your website and show your business’s solutions to local prospects. This should be easy if you follow the following strategies:

1. Let Keyword Modifiers Do the Magic for You

Most websites are aware of the traditional role that keywords play in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). To narrow down to specific words that your local focus prospects search for, you need to modify your keywords. A keyword modifier gives more information about the keyword and therefore makes it more specific to the solutions your business offers.  This sounds complicated, doesn’t it?

Let’s simplify things a little bit. If you are making content for selling shirts, for example, the word “Shirts” will be a keyword. All companies selling shirts will create content using this keyword, and where does that leave you? In the deep waters with the sharks.

However, if you add the word “Latest” to the word shirts, then you will have a unique keyword, which is, ” Latest Shirts.” This narrows the search results to sellers that sell the latest shirts. Now, what if you modify your keyword to, “Latest Shirts in Honolulu?”  This will not only narrow your search results to sellers with the latest shirts but sellers with the latest shirts in Honolulu. Modifying your keywords also helps you to mirror the search words used by prospective clients in the actionable stage of their buyer’s journey. 

There are three categories of keyword modifiers:

  • General Keyword Modifiers (Adding broad terms like “Top”, “Best” “Latest” etc.)
  • Niche-related Keyword Modifiers  (Adding Jargon and professional register used in certain fields like RAM in computers, recipe in cooking, etc.)
  • Geo-specific Keyword Modifiers (Location-specific like “Car traders in Houston, Hotels in Carson City, etc.)

2. Optimize Your Website for “Near Me” Searches

Your prospective clients will rarely come to your shop or office if they do not find you in the “near me” searches. Research by Forrester predicts that by 2021, 50% of businesses will make internet and cloud adaptation a priority, and so should your business.

You should take the following steps to help local buyers quickly find your website:

  • Provide the same business name, physical address, and a contact phone number throughout your website
  • Provide a detailed written direction map to your business, using landmarks, towns, and businesses near you
  • Test your website to be sure that it opens and works fast on a mobile phone
  • Take care of your customers and remind them to give you positive reviews
  • Ensure that your business details are well updated on “My Business in Google”
  • Get reviews from top review websites

Contrary to popular belief, adding the words, ” Near Me” to modify your keywords has a very minimal positive effect on your visibility. It can even damage the flow of your content when not carefully handled.

3. Make Content Specific to Your Local Context

People in different regions buy products for different reasons. Let us say your content aims at selling an SUV. If you are selling the SUV to an American who needs the car for luxury, then you ought to talk about the car’s comfort and the elevated view it gives the driver.

On the other hand, if you are selling the same car to an American aid worker whose work is based in rural Africa, then you ought to concentrate on the car’s ability to traverse rough terrain without getting stuck. See? Same product, different locations, different customer pain points.

Pay close attention to the local environment, culture, economic activities, among others.

Whatever you do, the goal should be to make the content that your local prospects find relevant, informative, and fun. Oh, and before you forget, use language that your local focus consumers can identify with.

4. Get Local Backlinks

When local focus businesses link to your website, search engines value your content and rank you higher. Therefore, the more backlinks your website gets, the higher your ranking on search engines. But how do you get other businesses to link to your website?

There are various ways to create backlinks to your website. First, you may strike a deal with another local business website to link to your website, and in return, you link to theirs as well. You can also volunteer to write content for local article directories that will allow you to link back to your website. If your business allows you to, you may develop content using a highly unique and controversial angle as bait for other websites to link to your articles. These and many other backlinking strategies will help you drive local traffic to your website.

5. Plan Your Social Media Campaigns to fit Your Local Focus Context

Before carrying out a social media campaign, ensure that you have analyzed your local population’s social media interaction aspects. You should know the time that they are most active on social media, what is locally trending and why it is a trend.

If you find social media campaigns time-consuming and hard to crack, you can hire a versatile digital marketing company to help you out.

6. Let a Highly Recommended Company Drive Local Traffic to Your Website

Successfully driving local traffic to your website requires a lot of time and experience. Sometimes this experience comes with hiring high-end staff which is very expensive, and the results are not guaranteed. On the other hand, a company that specializes in traffic creation will guarantee you quality local traffic that will easily transform into customers.

Are you looking to narrow your content to focus on local sales?  previsible.io will customize your website to suit local needs, help you develop content that is relevant to your local prospects, and build your local online presence.

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