As a local business owner, your content creation strategy is going to be very different from that of a global company. Being tied to your local market, you’ll naturally have a smaller pool of content topics and visitors to work with so you’ll need to get creative.
Far too many websites with a local focus fall short in this regard and bore their readers senseless with uninspired, cookie-cutter content. These sites think they’re “content marketing” but all they’re really doing is turning off visitors and making them scramble for the back button.
Getting your bounce rate down is crucial for SEO so you simply have to start upping your content game to keep visitors engaged.
In this article we’ll show you how to start dominating by creating useful local SEO content that entertains your readers and satisfies the search engines.
Do you really know who you’re writing for? It’s a given that most business owners reading this will be broadly familiar with their customer base but have you gone the extra mile and created specific buyer personas to fuel your marketing efforts and connect with more like-minded consumers?
A great way to develop these personas—and uncover insights about your local target market—is to start bringing some smart tooling to the table. Both of the options below are highly recommended.
Facebook Audience Insights gives you invaluable data about your target audience in general and the potential size of your local target market in particular.
Neilson Prizm provides a breakdown of local consumer data based upon specific zip codes. These personas are pre-determined, but they’ll give you highly actionable info about the types of people living in specific areas—pure gold in terms of creating compelling local content.
This incredible tool compiles multiple data points for you to further understand your local audience.
Each of the personas can be expanded to give you further information right down to income levels and personal traits. The level of detail available with this tool is genuinely remarkable.
Before you move forward with creating any new content, it’s important to examine your existing efforts to see if anything so far has really resonated. If you’re already on to a good thing, it makes sense to double down on what you know works. Again, tooling is your friend here.
Search your own site, or the site of a competitor, to understand what content your audience loves to share.
Buzzsumo gives you a breakdown of the content that’s performing best across your website. If you don’t yet have any onsite analytics installed, running this tool is an excellent first step towards obtaining actionable data.
Just enter in your site’s URL and you’ll magically be given a list of your highest performing posts across the social media space.
If you already have Google Analytics installed, discovering which current content is attracting the most traffic is a piece of cake—and massively useful. For instance, you may have a certain post style that does really well, or you may find your list posts have the highest bounce rate. Check out our SEO turbocharge post to find out how to use this tool effectively.
The data you uncover here is incredibly valuable as it helps you craft a content strategy that’s in line with the needs of your ideal local customers.
One of the most effective methods of constructing your content strategy is to combine broad content frameworks with local topics and ideas.
Let’s start with headlines. Certain headline formats have been working for decades. By using tried and tested techniques, you’ll see your blog’s traffic and engagement levels naturally increase. Mix that up with local content and you kill two birds with one stone.
Here are a few sample headline formats to work from:
You’ll need more than just a solid headline though. Use the three tips below to keep cranking out epic local content that truly resonates with readers.
A lot of high traffic websites are built upon trending content and sensationalist headlines. Buzzfeed and Upworthy are notable examples. If you’re looking to grow your blog quickly, following that strategy is a legitimate option.
[Tweet “Successful blogs utilize clickable headlines and easily digestible content that pulls your eyes down the page.”]
If you’re looking for inspiration, or want to create more timely content, keeping an eye on Google Trends and Twitter Trends is a wonderful way of quickly finding out about what’s grabbing user attention in your area.
This is an example of what’s currently trending in Santa Barbara, CA. Adjust to your own city to see what’s hot.
To use Twitter Trends just change the location of the tool to where you are and you’ll receive a constant stream of relevant topics to spark your creativity.
If you’re completely stuck for relevant topics for your blog, consider looking for pre-existing infographics about your local town or city. Find the right resource and most of the research will already have been done for you. All you have to do is expand on each data point.
You already know this topic is going to resonate with your local audience as someone has taken the time and trouble to create the infographic. The question now is, can you extract content from it to improve or fuel your own creative efforts?
A simple Google image search can deliver dozens of potential researched infographics to pull ideas from.
Naturally you’ll want to be careful to give credit where it’s due if using the actual original content in any way.
To avoid disastrous bounce rates which can tank your SEO ratings, make every post you write incredibly valuable and hyper-local.
Perennial points of interest for your local town or city include: sports teams, local events and large groups, areas of local pride and any local heros.
If you’ve lived in your town for any length of time at all, you’re already fluent in these topics. Now you just need to put your own unique spin on these issues and events and relate them back to your business.
There are also other useful content types to consider such as directions to important landmarks and insider tips and tricks that only locals know about. Remember, your goal with your content is to be as useful as possible on a local level.
In order to create engaging local SEO content for your small business, you must have a deep understanding of your ideal customer, along with a strategy that speaks to their needs in an entertaining way.
Relevant content that attracts your visitors with a powerful headline and follows up with truly useful local information will always be timely and effective.
By implementing our tips you’ll soon have the beginnings of a local content strategy in place that you can use to attract and entertain a local audience for years. As a bonus, you’ll see search engine traffic naturally increase as they gobble up your uniquely targeted content.
Are there any local content creation tips we’ve overlooked? Or strategies you’re seeing success with? Let us know in the comments!
