If you’re a business with a physical store or one that operates exclusively in a specific area, you’ve likely been advised to focus on local SEO.
Being told that is all well and good, but how and why?
Focusing on local SEO requires a more nuanced approach to both blog topic selection and keyword research, as well as the way you generally write your posts.
While you can shoehorn in keywords throughout a more generalised post, you run the risk of alienating readers who aren’t in that location, making them feel as though the post isn’t relevant to them.
With that in mind, let’s explore why local SEO is important and how you can effectively support it through your blog posts.
Why Local SEO Needs More Than Just a Location Page
Location pages are an essential component of local SEO.
If you’re unfamiliar, these are pages that highlight a singular location where you conduct business. For example, if you have a clinic in London and another in Nottingham, two location pages targeting each, respectively, are useful for Google to understand where you’re located.
It’s equally useful and important for users to understand with complete clarity.
While these support your focus on local SEO, they should be considered an essential component, not a “solution”. This means it would be beneficial to support these pages with a local-focused blog strategy that helps build relevance for your service areas.
Google prioritises topical depth, relevance, and supporting content when determining ranking positions, particularly for local pages. Increasing your catalogue of locally driven content helps solidify location relevance and topical depth, potentially improving your positioning for local keywords.
How Blog Posts Support Local Search Visibility
As with any content on your website, a local focus should be supported by a robust content strategy. If you only conduct business locally, I would argue that a blog is something your business needs. Their ability to support local SEO organically is unparalleled.
Let’s examine how blogs can be a core component of this strategy, including ways you can utilise them to achieve this benefit.
Reinforce Local Relevance
Providing search engines with extra signals that you’re either located in a specific area or conduct business in a specific area is valuable throughout your content to ensure you’re building traffic from the right sources.
Blogs have the added benefit over other content forms in that they’re typically long-form, which gives more opportunity to organically include relevant keywords.
Within your content, mention towns, regions, or area-specific problems to flag search engines this is your target location.
You can do this by:
- Leading with a location when tied to a solution. Example: “We help London homeowners by…”
- Occasionally including specific towns within a region, instead of only using the name. Example: “Providing housing solutions for areas within the yorkshire area, including Leeds, Doncaster, Sheffield…”
Build Authority Around Location-Specific Topics
While mentioning location keywords helps create signals for search engines, building authority around location topics themselves helps bolster your overall authority for that area.
In short, this means creating content specifically around a particular location.
FAQs and case studies can complement core location pages by creating organic linking opportunities (more on this below) and provide a means for you to answer common local questions.
Similarly, you can spin an otherwise evergreen topic into a location-specific topic. The easiest way to do this is to include the location within your main H1 and meta title.
Then, when you write the post, do so from a location-solution framing rather than a generalised framing.
For example:
Instead of: “Best landscaping ideas for your home.”
You could use: “Best landscaping ideas for your Derbyshire home.”
This immediately creates a context cue for readers and search engines. When discussing the ideas within the post, they should be written to support the chosen location.
Increase Internal Linking Opportunities
Blogs, in general, provide numerous ways for you to naturally link internally. Creating content using the first two examples will create opportunities to internally link back to your location pages, further strengthening the connection to that location.
Similarly, if your service pages have been optimised for local SEO, linking back to them can provide an additional boon should you reference services or products within the blogs themselves.
Types of Blog Posts That Work Well for Local SEO
One of the great things about local SEO is that it doesn’t have to be complicated. If you already have a content strategy that you’re looking to pivot for local SEO, chances are it only needs a few tweaks with how the posts are positioned.
Similarly, if you don’t have a content strategy in place yet, creating a framework is straightforward.
Here are a few content ideas that can help guide your blog post creation process:
Case studies: Highlight work you’ve done for clients in your area. Highlight the main location keyword alongside the results.
Area-specific guides: Such as “Your guide to the best gyms in London” or “Finding the right mortgages for your Cambridge home: our guide,” provide strong relevance and authority.
Event-related posts: While not applicable to every business, creating posts about local events helps build consistent relevance and establishes you as a reliable source for local updates in your area.
Local problem-solving posts: Posts such as “How to season proof your newquay garden” or “budget-friendly ways to heat your newcastle apartment this winter” are good frameworks for answering a local question with quality content.
When considering the format for your post, consider targeting topics for which you can provide value-driven content. While localising your posts and focusing on local keywords is important, it can be easy to keyword stuff.
Best Practices for Writing Blogs That Boost Local SEO
The final element of putting these points together is, of course, writing your blog post.
Here are a few core tips that I’ve engrained in my mind when creating this type of content. These help guide the content creation process. If you have content already published, it can be a wise idea to revisit that content and optimise accordingly with these points. While there, consider also optimising with quick blogging SEO fixes in mind.
Always write for humans first
Seems self-explanatory, but there have been many times in the past where I’ve checked a first draft and realised I used the town name way too many times.
Writing your content for readers first is always the best approach, then optimising it accordingly afterwards. This also keeps your writing consistent and engaging.
Mention the Location Organically, Not Forcefully
Harkening back to keyword stuffing here. Try to include locations organically throughout the content. In front of key solutions or issues is a good use, and sprinkling it into a call to action about how your team can help is also a good idea.
It becomes apparent quickly, as a reader, when they are injected into content without thought. Nothing pulls a reader out of the post more than clearly stuffed keywords.
Answer Real Questions People in That Area Might Ask
A great thought for content fuel is to consider what people in your area might be asking about your offerings.
If you offer gardening or landscaping services, what issues would people in your area be facing with their gardens?
If you’re a gym, consider the local fitness landscape; what activities are popular, and what do people in your area enjoy doing?
Local shops can also think about product-specific questions. Florists, for example, what flowers complement the current season where you are? What challenges do local residents face that you, as a property solutions business, can help solve?
Asking these questions, with your services in mind, can help idealise hundreds of blog post topics.
Use One Blog per Topic + Location Where Possible to Avoid Confusion
Finally, streamlining how you combine topics with local SEO is a crucial step in ensuring a seamless user experience on your website and blog.
Let’s say you create this post:
How to improve local SEO for your Derbyshire, London, and Essex business
What is this post primarily targeting?
Well, it’s a bit unclear. Which location are we focusing on more here?
Combining multiple locations into one post creates multiple challenges:
- It’s unclear for search engines what they should prioritise
- It makes it considerably more challenging to focus on a primary long-tail keyword
- Portions of the content become irrelevant for users who aren’t in that location
- A call to action can become messy with multiple redirects
That is to say, keeping local content focused on a single area directly addresses the above. The content stays more relevant for users while you have more opportunities to optimise on-page and metadata for specific location-based long-tail keywords.
Take time to consider a consistent blog posting frequency that your business can maintain when targeting multiple locations. Ideally, you want to ensure all locations get their fair share of attention, unless you have one location that is a larger earner for your business.
Boosting Your Local SEO Through Blogging
Local SEO doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Many of these points are also considerations you would take when creating an evergreen, non-location topic, focusing more on your chosen primary keyword rather than a location keyword.
The fact of the matter is that implementing the above can be as simple as doing another content sweep before publishing, ensuring you’ve adequately included your keyword without stuffing it.
Of course, blog posts are just one step of the ladder to optimal local SEO.
If you’re looking for help crafting a long-term local SEO strategy, get in touch, and we can go through all the recommended actions.
FAQ: Blogging to Support Local SEO
Do I need to mention the location keyword a certain number of times?
There’s no one magic number. Incorporate it naturally throughout the content and ensure it’s relevant to the paragraph. Two to four mentions, alongside intentional internal links, are usually enough, but this varies depending on content length and topic.
How can I make a local blog feel unique if I cover similar services across locations?
Relevant phrasing, references, or pain points are usually good to focus on. This can be more or less challenging, depending on the service or product you offer. For example, discussing specific soil types, architecture, local projects, or nearby parks and towns can be a good starting point.
Essentially, look at elements within your local area that you can reference to help build that local relevance without forcing it.
What if my business isn’t tied to a physical location? Should I still write local blogs?
Localised content signals relevance, not necessarily physical presence. This means that if you’re trying to appear in searches for a specific area, such as if you work remotely but want to offer a particular service, then you can write blogs about that location.
How often should I publish local-focused blog content?
If you’re a brick-and-mortar business that only offers services in a specific area, then it’s not a wild statement to say most of your content should be locally focused. For businesses with multiple service areas, 1-2 posts a month on each region you serve can be a good starting point to ensure each area has content.
Of course, each area should also have its own location page first.
