Host Claire Carlile is joined by Melissa Popp to discuss how brands can connect with their local audiences through customer-centric storytelling. They also cover the importance of authentic and unique content, how to get buy-in from various departments, common content creation shortcomings for SMEs, measuring ROI, and so much more. Seriously, this episode is jam-packed!

If you are a local marketer looking for an effective way to connect and engage with your audience, this is a must-listen.

What you will learn in this episode:

• What is meant by the terms ‘local narratives’ or ‘storytelling in marketing’
• Why unique and authentic content is important in today’s SERP landscape, and the impact of the recent Google leak
• How ‘brand’ and ‘storytelling’ complement one another
• How to get that all-important buy-in from various departments
• What the common shortfalls in content creation are for SMEs (and even larger brands and enterprises)
• How to do storytelling at scale for multi-location businesses and how to effectively measure ROI
• Plus so much more…

Watch the Video:

Podcast episode timestamps:

02:16 – Explanation of ‘Local Narratives’

03:13 – Importance of unique content

03:29 – Google leak and its impact on unique content

06:15 – How brand and storytelling work hand-in-hand

07:49 – Content volume is the wrong metric

09:15 – Common content marketing shortfalls for SMEs (and larger brands)

14:27 – How tone of voice can be a challenge

15:40 – Melissa’s ‘Buyers Journey Process’ specific to SEO

17:47 – Finding your origin story

24:07 – The role of customer stories

25:00 – Being too hung up about keywords

26:10 – ‘Room 404’ segment

29:00 – How to do it at scale

35:00 – Measuring ROI

36:38 – ‘Recipe for Success’

About Claire Carlile (Host)

Claire Carlile is a Chartered Marketer (MCIM) and is BrightLocal’s Local Search Expert. Her work at Claire Carlile Marketing, where she helps businesses of all sizes make the most of the local search opportunity, allows her to provide real-world skills and expertise to what BrightLocal does.

Where to find Claire

• Website
• X
• LinkedIn

About Melissa Popp (Guest)

Melissa is the Content Strategy Director at RicketyRoo. In this role, she oversees all content initiatives for clients and her responsibilities span from creating high-level content strategies to diving into the minutiae of content creation.

Melissa says she lives and breathes everything related to content. Writing has been her passion since she first picked up a #2 pencil, and she takes pride in making content relevant to readers and illustrating to clients how crucial this connection is for reaching potential customers.

Where to find Melissa

• Website
• X
• LinkedIn

Room 404 & Recipe for Success

“And every time someone says we’re going to _________, I love you all in this industry. But I want to punch each and every one of you in the face.”

Can you fill in the blank? Find out what Melissa decides to put into ‘Room 404’, as it makes her heart race, but for all the wrong reasons. She also shares her ‘Recipe for Success’ with storytelling.

Want more from Adventures in Local Marketing? We highly recommend checking out these episodes:

• Embracing AI with Marie Haynes
• Conversion mindset with Aaron Weiche
• Staying people-first with Julian Hooks

Resources from this episode:

• BrightLocal’s Brand Review Index
• Mastering Franchise and Multi-location SEO with Steve Wiideman
• Try BrightLocal FREE for 14 days
• Book your personalized BrightLocal demo
• Create Once, Distribute Forever by Ross Simmonds
• The Power of Local Narratives in Content Marketing by Melissa Popp
• Join Women in Tech SEO community

FAQs

Below, we’ve answered FAQs related to topics discussed in this episode. For a more detailed understanding, make sure to listen to or watch the episode.

How is storytelling used in marketing?

Storytelling in marketing is using an engaging or compelling narrative to communicate messages with customers. It’s an effective way for brands and companies of all sizes to connect on a deeper level with their audience.

Is storytelling a strategy?

Yes. Storytelling is one of the most effective and memorable ways to communicate with others. Many brands and organizations use storytelling in their marketing and content strategies, and achieve better results.

Why do brands use storytelling?

Done correctly, brand storytelling can help you stand out from your competitors. It’s all about crafting a compelling story that is authentic and engaging. One of the key goals of brand storytelling is to increase brand loyalty and advocacy.

What are the 5 C’s of storytelling?

The 5 C’s are commonly used to ensure the story being crafted is both engaging and compelling. The 5 C’s include Character, Context, Conflict, Climax, and Closure.

What is meant by customer-centric?

Being customer-centric, or adopting customer-centricity, is a strategy where brands put customers first, in order to create positive experiences and build stronger relationships. To be able to do this, brands and businesses need to understand customer’s situations, perceptions, and expectations.

About Adventures in Local Marketing

Adventures in Local Marketing is *the* podcast for local marketers, hosted by industry expert and popular speaker, Claire Carlile.

Claire chats to a smorgasbord of marketers from various different backgrounds, who each bring their unique insight into facets of the local marketing landscape.

To work alongside your current efforts and local SEO tools, here’s a rundown of what local digital PR is, how it can help your client’s business to grow, and how you can measure its success. 

What Is Digital PR? 

Digital PR is the combination of traditional PR and an SEO strategy that works to increase a brand’s online presence. With its roots in link-building (or even link-earning), the practice looks to secure relevant media coverage and backlinks to a site, to improve the site’s ranking on the SERPs. 

Brands and businesses of all sizes employ digital PR strategies. While it originated as a way to generate links, and so boost ranking positions, it has broadened into an effective marketing strategy to improve public perceptions of brands and heighten visibility. In other words, the perfect mix of SEO and PR. 

A successful digital PR campaign will earn topical links to your client’s site from relevant publications which can help to elevate their ranking positions and experience, expertise, authority, and trust (E-E-A-T).

How Is Local Digital PR Different?

Local digital PR differs from other types of digital PR because of its focus. Rather than trying to boost a brand or business in front of the whole world, it focuses on where that brand operates. This way, the added awareness will be more meaningful, often directly translating into leads.

While international links will still help local businesses shoot up the rankings—and contribute to a healthy link profile—it is the targeted aspect of local digital PR that works so well alongside your existing local SEO efforts. 

While the campaigns themselves can be national, they are designed to establish a business as an expert in a local geographic area. This is done through gaining links from local publications, boosting SERP position generally, and ensuring the website ranks for local keywords. Any good SEO company should be able to do it, but it’s often best performed by a specialist local SEO company. 

Creating a Digital PR Strategy

In most cases, a digital PR strategy will highlight ideas and plans to secure external links, gain off-site coverage and boost brand awareness. Technical audits, backlink profile analysis, and competitor backlink investigation are typically included in local digital PR strategies in the analysis phase. We’d always recommend performing research on what you need to do, before going full steam ahead.

Cornerstones of an Effective Digital PR strategy

There are many aspects of a solid digital PR strategy, each worthy of dedicating time and attention to.

Identifying Target Publications

Not all links are created equal. Links from high authority websites are always appreciated, but aren’t super helpful if they’re not from a relevant website. Links from websites that are relevant to your client’s niche will always be more beneficial because they tell search engines that your client’s website is an authoritative one in that industry or for that topic.

With local digital PR, you can add another layer here, too: localization.

While a link from a high authority international website would do amazing things for brand awareness, it may not do quite as much for your local visibility. For instance, if you’re a restaurant looking to improve your local rankings, getting a link from a local press site or blogger could do more for your SEO than a link from a huge international news site.

The sweet spot would be a site that’s local to your area and thematically relevant to your niche.

This is why digital PRs will target specific outlets, to ensure they are sending the digital PR campaigns they create to:

1. People who will be interested in the campaign
2. Journalists who will be likely to share it
3. Publications that can get them in front of their target audience

Decide on Your Target Pages

Once you’ve identified your target publications, you’ll want to think about the pages of the website you wish to target. Links to the homepage are, relatively, easier to earn. But links to deeper pages, where product pages and content reside, can be more valuable in terms of SEO. 

By encouraging links to deeper pages, search engines more easily crawl the whole website, and are more likely to rank them for niche searches that are relevant and that the page seeks to answer. It also helps pass authority and equity to deeper pages that are more likely to convert customers.

You will need to consider that some publications may not link to deeper pages, and will only offer homepage links. Others may not link at all, or only supply ‘no-follow’ links. This doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying to target specific pages, though.

Consider Your Target Anchor Text

Anchor text is the written part of a hyperlink. It will fall naturally within a sentence, but when clicked it will take users to a separate webpage. A great tip for SEO and digital PR is to use the keywords for the page you’re linking to as the anchor text. This tells both search engines and users what the page is about, but also has the extra benefit of helping search engines to categorize the page. 

An effective local digital PR strategy will include campaigns to target different anchor texts. For example, while you may target your client’s homepages for most of your digital PR efforts, you can make sure you keep a healthy link profile by including variations of the anchor text. 

By including the links you desire with targeted anchor text within a press release, you encourage journalists to simply use it the same way. Out-and-out asking for specific anchor text can get a bit murky, as various laws and Google link spam guidelines touch on this. Many journalists and writers may not like it either, so using optimized anchors in your outreach can give them the gentle nudge they may need without having to specifically ask.

Create Story-first Content Ideas

Before you’re able to send out any digital PR campaigns, you need to come up with ideas first. These need to be interesting enough that your target publications will want to cover them, but also relevant to your client’s niche to help boost their authority.

We’d always advise you to think story-first when you’re creating an idea, rather than format first. Rather than thinking ‘We need an infographic!’, think ‘What would resonate with our target audience?’ or ‘What would our target publications, and their journalists, find interesting?’. Then, once you’ve worked this out, you can consider the type of campaign you’ll want to create and whether you’ll need to get things like data.

Do You Need Data?

Data isn’t necessary for all digital PR campaigns, but it can provide the basis for great ones. Data-focused campaigns offer irrefutable information on compelling topics. There are generally three types of data campaigns:

• Internal Data that only your client has access to. This data is completely unique to you or your client, and as such can provide exciting opportunities. Whether it’s anonymized customer data or a data set that only you can scrape. It also provides unique linking opportunities, as well as the potential for organic linking opportunities.
• Commissioned reports. If you haven’t got any internal data that’s newsworthy, you can still get your hands on data that’s completely unique to you, whether that’s commissioning a survey through a reputable company or running focus groups.
• Open-source or third-party data sets. There’s a startling amount of data available to tap into online. Again, you don’t always need to have access to your own. In the UK, for instance, the Office of National Statistics releases data on all kinds of things, from road usage to housing statistics. This is just one example, too, and many are free to use. You can put in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, scrape other data sources, and create your own story or angle.

Each of these will come with its own advantages and disadvantages. Often this could be cost or lead time, which is why internal data can be so useful.

Create Graphics or Visuals

Graphics and other visuals, like tables, are a great way to provide information in an accessible way. Reams of numbers and jargon can be mind-boggling, but a cleverly designed graphic can hold all the same information and look great at the same time. 

Whether it’s graphs and charts to show the data, tables with all the data laid out clearly, or images that drive a point home—visual aids draw attention and help to keep it.

A clear and simple data visualization can be the difference between a passing mention in a piece and a proper feature with a link, where they’ve sourced the image. So always consider that, too.

Not only that, but in some cases, a truly beautiful data visualization could be the reason you get links at all. A bit of design flare can make a real difference.

Craft the Perfect Press Release or Outreach Email

Press releases are packets that digital PRs send out to journalists. They include a summary of the information and the data, as well as pointing toward any particularly interesting findings. Journalists can use these directly to craft their articles, though usually, the press release provides a link to further information.

Press releases themselves aren’t quite as widely used as they were. Some digital PRs opt for a shorter and punchier outreach email that gives the receiver as much information as possible up-front. It’s down to you to decide which you think is better. Some publications will prefer a press release, for instance.

Perform Your Outreach

Once your campaign is ready, and you’ve written your press release, it’s time to send it out. 

Even the most brilliant digital PR campaign, rich in data and insight, needs to be seen by the right journalists if it’s going to do what it’s created for. This is why digital PR experts will curate a list of contacts while the campaign is still being developed, so they will be able to send it out as soon as it’s ready and the information is at its freshest and most relevant.

Companies that specialize in local digital PR should have studied the local area, picked out publications where the target audience hangs out, and tailored their outreach to these to provide maximum SEO and awareness benefits.

A good campaign may even have multiple angles that let you tailor specific stories for each individual publication or niche that you outreach too.

Different Types of Local Digital PR Campaigns

Expert Comment

Expert comments are pretty much what they sound like. They are a comment from an expert in the industry being discussed. This could be a case of the CEO of a cleaning firm offering advice in an article on tackling carpet cleaning, or a manicurist offering tips on caring for dry cuticles.

In this example of an expert comment, the experts at Construction2Style offered advice and styling tips for a post by MidWestHome called “2022 Ideas to Steal”. Their advice focused on wood, in particular a brand of furniture that uses wood, and how it benefits their clients and themselves. 

This helps to establish Construction2Style as experts in home decor and house styling while earning a link back to their own website. So, not only is their website positively affected but their brand reputation too. 

Reactive and Newsjacking

Reactive campaigns, also known as newsjacking, are digital PR campaigns that piggyback onto current news or events. This could be a chocolate company reacting to Valentine’s Day, or a sportswear company taking advantage of the Super Bowl.

In response to the warmer weather returning, the experts at First Choice Environmental released an infographic on battling pests in the garden. This also leads to data-led digital PR campaigns, as it contains both expert comments and some useful statistics. 

This led to more links for First Choice Environmental, as well as establishing themselves as experts in their local area. 

The ideal reactive local digital PR campaign focuses on your client’s realm of authority and expertise. This typically takes advantage of trending news or holidays, and pairs this with information only experts in your client’s industry would know.

An example of this kind of reactive, and local, digital PR campaign is the one below, on how damaging pumpkin guts can be to drains and pipes. It is reactive because it was created in response to a national holiday or occasion—in this case, Halloween.

The plumbing experts at Roto-Rooter released a statement, advising the public of the dangers of flushing pumpkin guts down the drain. 

By writing about Roto-Rooter in conjunction with some important keywords, it establishes them as experts in the area. It also results in their website earning more links and more traffic, and has the benefit of directing customers to the expert they need if they do flush pumpkin guts down the drain.

Product PR

Do you think all those lists of ‘the best pillows to buy 2023’ are all just organic? I mean, in some cases they may be. But the reality is that many lists just like that one will include PR products and a link back to a product or category page.

This will often work in a similar way to expert commentary or reactive PR. Often a journalist will put out a request for products, whether that’s the dehumidifiers or places that do afternoon tea in a particular city. Then PRs have an opportunity to submit their client for consideration. Many people do this proactively, which is a staple of more traditional PR.

Sending out gifts and samples or inviting people along to try out an experience or meal can get you featured when these sorts of lists are created.

This can get you links to product or category pages that would otherwise be awkward to create, and it’s not just limited to people with physical products.

Data-led Campaigns and Reports

A data-led campaign focuses on information or statistics—this can be from a survey, scraping websites like Twitter, or from reputable external sources. This could be a review of hygiene ratings in local restaurants or sentiment analysis of the nearby green spaces.

In the above example of data-led digital PR, or content marketing, Blacktower US Financial Management Group looked into which US states were best to retire in. By looking at the crime rate, the average age of the population, cost of living, life expectancy, and property prices, they ranked US states from best to worst. 

A data-led campaign brings a multitude of benefits. For one thing, providing data that no one else has brings exclusivity, so even competitors will link to your client’s site if the information is compelling enough. 

Being so heavily data-focused makes the content more believable, even though the information may be surprisingly astounding. As with any statement in the modern age, you need to bring the receipts to back it up. This also makes the content more interesting and compelling. 

Providing new, highly relevant data also shows your client as actively contributing to their industry, establishing themselves in the eyes of audiences and Google as thought leaders.

A thoroughly researched data-led campaign can end up being cited long after your outreach phase has ended, gaining links over years rather than just weeks.

Examples of these kinds of campaigns from BrightLocal include their annual Local Consumer Review Survey, which doubles up as a valuable industry report offering unique insights into consumer reviews, and a piece that can attract links from respected publications.

Another is BrightLocal’s Big Brand Review Showdown on which states prefer McDonald’s or Burger King, based entirely on Google reviews, which taps into a slightly more wide-appeal, consumer-focused type of data-led campaign.

Benefits of a Robust Digital PR Strategy

Credibility is hugely important to any brand, including local businesses. In today’s digital world, most of that credibility needs to be established online. Gone are the days when you’d hire a service or make a purchase based solely on word of mouth—87% of consumers used Google to evaluate local businesses in 2022.

Google is becoming smarter every single day, whether it’s shutting down fraudulent business profiles or fighting against disinformation. It’s more able to filter out any dodgy businesses, so it’s important to differentiate your client from their competitors. 

If you can showcase on your client’s website all of the wonderful publications and outlets that they have been featured in, your client will gain instant credibility with all site visitors.

1. Digital PR Increases Online Presence 

Improving credibility is just one of the benefits a robust digital PR strategy can bring. A great digital PR strategy will also grow your client’s online presence, making it easier for customers, old and new, to find you. 

Digital PR uses proven SEO techniques to rocket your client’s brand up the SERP and into the spotlight. The higher a SERP position, the more likely a result is to be clicked. 

2. Digital PR Improves Brand Recognition

Digital PR doesn’t just improve a website’s standing in terms of SEO—it can also be used to boost brand recognition across the board, whether that’s by getting your brand’s name into national papers, or ensuring their status as an expert in a certain area. 

3. Digital PR Provides Audience Connection

Digital PR can be laser-focused. What we mean by that is, you can target the exact audience or demographic you want, and tell them exactly what you want them to hear. This helps your audience to understand exactly what your brand is about and what to expect from you. 

4. Digital PR Drives Traffic

As your brand is noticed more and regarded as an expert, more people will visit your website. This begins a cycle of more websites linking to yours, which only boosts your SEO and SERP standing, which leads to more visitors to your website. 

How Digital PR Ties In With Local Link Building

Link building is the process of earning links to your client’s website from other websites. Digital PR is just one way to do this. 

Digital PR is a process of truly earning links, by providing useful or interesting information that others will want to write about and share. The idea is, when they share this information, they provide a link to its source—your client’s website. 

Local digital PR and link building go together like peanut butter and jelly, and the same is still true when it comes to local link building. The tactics just shift slightly. By focusing efforts on publications, outlets, and other trustworthy resources in a specific area, a brand gains credibility and authority in that region. 

Whether this is a full on-site asset, laden with data, on a local-area-based blog, or an expert comment in the local paper, getting your client’s brand name out there works wonders. 

Which Metrics Should You Track in Local Digital PR?

Historically, digital PR has focused on links and links alone. While counting the number of links is still important, there’s a lot more to digital PR success than sheer volume—there’s a lot more nuance than that.

Keyword Rankings

Improving a brand’s or website’s SEO is one of the primary reasons that digital PR exists and is practiced. A healthy backlink profile is the stuff that SEO dreams are made of!

Relevant links are the bee’s knees. When a website ranks for the keyword they are targeting, the cycle begins. The higher the ranking, the more likely the website is to be referenced and linked to. 

Social Media Engagement

If the digital PR campaign you’re crafting for your client has a social media element, then tracking social media engagement is vital. The specific metrics vary depending on which social media you will be focusing on. 

For Instagram, likes and follows will be the most significant. On LinkedIn and Facebook, shares come into play more. 

Overall, tracking the audience size and the number of impressions, as well as what sort of post earns more impressions, will be vital to ensure further success. 

Keeping an eye on social media is also important if you’re relying on potential customers to perform social media searches to find your client’s business! 

Leads and Conversions

It’s not always the case that blog posts and social media lead to sales, but it can happen. That’s why it’s important to use Google Analytics to keep track of your client’s leads and conversions. By monitoring those who come onto the main campaign page, and seeing the pages they navigate to next, you can keep track of campaign successes. 

Referral Traffic 

Links are awesome in helping your client’s site rank for the keywords important to them, but that’s not the only benefit to measure. What is also important is the number of people who click on those links, also known as referral traffic. 

Referral traffic will indicate how many real human customers out there find your campaign interesting, and monitoring things like bounce rate as well as referral traffic will give a clear picture of that. 

Inbound Links 

The number of total inbound links a campaign earns (and the number of referring domains they come from) is one of, if not the most, important metrics to measure. 

By monitoring the backlink profile for a campaign, you can track how many links are earned. This can be used as a metric for success. It’s also possible to monitor the quality of the links earned. 

The key for any campaign is to look beyond the sheer number of links. You want to aim for links from the target sites you identified earlier, then measure all links by their value to the website you’re working on, asking yourself how relevant they are. Are they in the right niche and the right location?

Don’t always simply look for overall stats like domain authority when you’re performing local digital PR. You need to look at the whole picture. Some niche local sites may have lower overall authority but incredibly high relevance to your local area and industry. 

This backlink profile also allows monitoring the sentiment of those linking to your client’s website. Are they waxing lyrical about the amazingness of the campaign, or are they saying “look what these clowns did”? Google doesn’t seem to care either way, but it can help to know how people feel from a traditional PR standpoint, especially if they’re your client’s neighbors and potential customers.

Local Digital PR for Your Clients

Local digital PR can have an incredible impact on your client’s website standing and business overall, and there are many approaches to get there, to suit all brands and businesses. 

Whether your client is a local gym that wants to do a data-led piece on how much protein that protein products actually contain, a hairdresser who wants to jump on a reactive about Zendaya’s latest look, or a therapist who wants to lend an expert comment on Christmas stresses, the benefits of local digital PR will ensure an ROI. 

Update March 2023. This article was written when ChatGPT was still in its early stages and Google was yet to unveil Bard. Both of these technologies have since been launched or, in the case of ChatGPT, updated and both are ever-evolving. Learn more about AI in local search.

The year is 2023. A robot skeleton is walking across an apocalyptic wasteland. It turns to you, and while you quake in fear, its eyes glow red and it points a finger in your direction. Its mouth opens and…

It drops a battle rap about local SEO, with some sick bars.

So, er, while the early forays into AI aren’t exactly what everyone imagined them to be in movies, AI is most certainly advancing at an astonishing pace. The above screenshot from OpenAI’s ChatGPT is solid evidence of this. The question is not really a ‘what if’ but more of a ‘how can I use this to improve my work?’, and a lot of marketers are already doing just that.

Now we’re in a position where AI is readily available in the marketing and SEO industry, we want to see how it can help or hinder, and how it’s already being used by thousands of people.

AI and SEO

There are a number of reasons why the conversation around AI has become so prevalent in SEO. First of all, ChatGPT is owned by OpenAI, who are in partnership with Microsoft thanks to heavy investment by the tech leader, and there’s already talk about what that means for Bing.

Secondly, there’s been conversation about what services like ChatGPT mean for search in general. For instance, if you can ask AI a question and it gives you the answer, then what does that mean for search engines themselves and informational queries? If someone can ask it a question and not have to click through several different links, then what does that mean for informational searches? Is this the return to the “answer engine” as many predicted back in the day?

And then, finally, there’s the automation aspect. In search, this takes on a few different faces. These automations can save marketers hundreds or even thousands of dollars, as well as plenty of time and the cost savings that come with that.

Where is AI already being used?

The truth is that search marketers have been using forms of AI for years, it’s just ramped up with recent updates. Sure, ChatGPT has brought the conversation to the forefront, but there’s a bunch of other software that already uses AI. A few examples of where it’s already been used, specifically in search, include:

• Autocomplete and writing support. Google has had an autocomplete functionality for years, whether that’s in the search bar, Gmail or Google Docs. This uses AI and machine learning to guess what you want to write next. Not only that but all sorts of tools from Grammarly to Hemingway support writers by improving their copy.
• Google Vision. This is a pre-trained machine-learning model that allows developers to assign labels to images. This helps improve Google image search by identifying things within images like text and objects.
• Search algorithms themselves. It’s pretty safe to say that Google, and other search engines, have been using AI and machine learning in their algorithms for several years now, for both text and voice search.
• Spammy content creation. There have been reports of major sites using AI to make content, and sometimes the reaction has not been good, especially when the AI has extensively plagiarised other work. In reality, content farms have been creating spammy content for a long time; AI simply allows anyone like this, for whom cost trumps quality, to make massive cost savings in the labor department.

There are a number of other ways AI has been used specifically by marketers, though, and we’re going to touch on that a little later in this article.

Pros and Cons of AI in Search

Potential Uses for AI in Local SEO

As we’ve already established, search marketers are already using AI, but what they do and how they do it is evolving.

Are you already using AI for your local SEO activity?

What are you using it for? Let us know in the replies.

(And no, we don't just mean using Chat GPT to write humorous poems)

— BrightLocal (@brightlocal) January 6, 2023

But how are local businesses and local marketers using AI? Sure, everyone’s had an infuriating conversation with a chatbot that goes round and round in circles, but how are people using them specifically to do the jobs that help their visibility?

Let’s dive into just a few potential uses for AI in your local marketing.

AI for Content

One of the biggest uses for AI that’s often talked about is content creation. Many people are divided on this, but it’s still being used for each of the following tasks every day.

Writing Blog Posts

You know it’s happening. Whether it’s right or not is another issue. There are a lot of ethical considerations to be made, and while you’re unlikely to get something truly unique, many people will be doing this to generate content quickly.

The simple truth is that people already outsource huge amounts of content to cheap content farms, so if they can speed up the creation of spammy content, they’re going to do it. If you choose to do this, just be very careful. Google is investing in spotting AI content, remember? And, as you’ll see below, industry experts advise a great deal of caution when using ChatGPT for content.

Creating Scalable Content for Multiple Local Landing Pages

On the flip side of this, if you’re creating content for a huge number of location pages, AI like ChatGPT could be a quick way to make content for these without having to do extensive research.

You’d still need to take steps to differentiate your local landing pages, but automating a section could save you a whole lot of time when you’re creating large numbers of pages at scale. The below, with a few simple edits, could form the basis of one page. Then, with a few other prompts, it could let you create content at scale for multiple landing pages that only need a few additional things to make them truly unique.

Writing Simple ‘How To’ Content

Brands across the world spend many hours a year writing simple ‘how to’ content. Some of these brands will see something like AI as a real time-saver. As always, though, the question is whether the pieces will always be accurate, and how much time you’d need to spend tweaking them.

Creating Article Outlines

A more sensible approach that many are already using is consulting AI tools for article structures. This is better because you’re using the tool for inspiration rather than relying on its at-times-questionable ability to churn out accurate content.

Give the AI some keywords or prompts and it can spit out a proposed structure of headings and subheadings, much like Jasper’s Blog Post Outline feature, seen below.

Source: Medium

Ideas for Headlines or Email Subject Lines

Crafting the perfect headline or subject line is an art. AI, when given the right prompts, can spit out a bunch of different ideas for your piece that you may not have thought of yourself. At the very least they can be a kickoff point.

Ideas for Local Content

Inspiration is key here. If you have a subject or topic but aren’t sure what to write, you can simply ask. This is the kind of automation that could help busy content writers, or people without a team to bounce ideas off, to generate a variety of different things to write about.

FAQs

Along with metadata, creating FAQs is a least-favorite task for many a content writer. It’s something that feels like it saps the creativity out of you. Now, with a few simple prompts, you can get a list of FAQs for pretty much any page. Then, if you’re feeling brave, you could even get the AI to write the answers for you!

Metadata

Another task that can feel endless when you’re doing it at scale, writing metadata should be done with care to try and help your click-through rate, but when you’re doing it en masse, AI like ChatGPT could be a real help. You can even set parameters for length and tone in the prompts, too!

AI for Research and Insights

Quick Local Keyword Research

ChatGPT and other AI platforms open up all sorts of new handy ways to perform localized keyword research:

• Discovering ‘near me’ keywords
• Finding how people are searching for a particular service, in a particular area
• Refining the intent behind a particular search, with tools like KeywordInsights.ai

Strategy Development

It’s safe to say that this one should be taken with a pinch of salt. I wouldn’t base your entire strategy on something ChatGPT gives you in 5 seconds, but it could offer some inspiration if you’re struggling to get started.

Automation for Regular Local SEO tasks

Writing a Google Business Profile Description

Look, writing isn’t for everyone, and your Google Business Profile will need some copy. If you’re stuck for a way to describe your own business, or that of your client, then AI can help. A number of local SEOs have commented on their surprise at the quality of the GBP descriptions they’ve seen come from AI.

As ever, though, you’ll probably need to add a few things to make it properly personal, as you probably know more about your own business than the bots do (for now).

Generate Local Schema Markup

Yes, you read that right: you can even use AI to generate schema for your website. All the different kinds. While this may sound great, it’s also not necessarily any more powerful than a standard schema generator, and you’re probably more likely to have to triple-check it.

Much like generating website code with AI, this option is best used by people who already know what good, accurate schema looks like!

Responding to Reviews

Whether or not you respond to reviews can play a big part in how much consumers trust businesses. However, if you’re doing particularly well at review generation, you might have far too many to deal with.

As Steady Demand’s Ben Fisher explained in our State of Local Search 2023 webinar, you can prompt ChatGPT to write detailed review responses for you—as always, though, be careful to check and edit before posting.

Creating a Site Structure for Local Content

If you’re not sure of the best way to lay out a section of your site, AI can help here, too. With the right prompts and questions, you could ask it to help with your services or even local content.

AI for Art and Design

It’s a cliché that a picture paints a thousand words, but in the world of prompt-based AI image generators, the opposite is finally true.

With tools like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Lensa AI and DALL-E now mostly available to the public and more advanced than ever before, anyone and their dog can create professional-looking images quickly and (sometimes) completely free.

For example, we created the image of our in-house AI, Randall Bott, using the simple prompt “40-year old male SEO expert in plaid shirt, headshot, professional lighting” on the Midjourney Discord server (yes, we leant heavily into the SEO stereotype, there).

Beyond the dizzying array of AI artists creating fictional and creative worlds (some, artists embracing new technology, and some, less visually-artistic people creating images for the first time), there are many using AI image generators to create uncannily photorealistic images in order to illustrate their content.

There are plenty of potential uses for AI image generators in local SEO, including:

• Blog post headers
• Location page “photos”
• Website backgrounds
• Inspiration for logos

However… due to the nature of visual art, in that it is immediate (and therefore immediately recognizable), the conversation around the ethics of these image generators is a far more heated one. Firstly, there’s an inherent bias towards non-minoritized people, due to the AI’s source material being skewed by images of white people. Then there’s the issue of copyright: who owns the copyright of these images when they’re based on, well, everything?

While some argue that AI art always creates completely new variants and mutations, there are plenty of examples (like the one below) of platforms clearly leaning into well-known imagery in its datasets:

The images below aren’t @McCurryStudios “Afghan Girl”.

They are AI generated images via Midjourney’s latest V4 release. Yet another example that AI models can *heavily* plagiarize. pic.twitter.com/XeeKqwsyrs

— Karla Ortiz (@kortizart) November 5, 2022

The short and skinny of AI art for local marketers: You can go ahead and use it to generate images if you like, but be prepared to have tough conversations around ethics, copyright, and more. You’ll need to decide for yourself whether it’s worth the potential backlash, which is admittedly a greater risk when working with larger brands.

Other SEO Tasks That You Could Automate

• XML sitemaps
• Creating a robots.txt
• Generating breadcrumbs

What do local marketers think of AI?

With subjects like this, it’s always good to get another opinion. Local SEO is a wider world than you may think, so we asked a few industry experts for their thoughts.

Andrew Shotland

CEO at Local SEO Guide

When you are using AI to produce local content, there are a few considerations to make for your approach: 1) What data do you use to create prompts? 2) What’s your method for refinement and editing? 3) How do you test your AI content?

AI shines when it’s being used to speed up the scale of content production with templates that have a find-and-replace type of copy for different versions (e.g, location pages). Ideally, you would use AI to make these kinds of repetitive pages more unique, as this can have an impact on their indexation and ranking.

At Local SEO Guide, our process includes code for fact-checking, fine-tuning, and avoiding plagiarism. We start with content written by people and then fold that into data we have about the location, subject, and so on. Through some careful editing and having checks in place, we make sure our content is good and original, and simultaneously avoid repetitive work.

Like Terminator 2, amazing results can happen when humans and machines team up against SkyNet.

Melissa Popp

Content Strategy Director at RicketyRoo

I have a few thoughts on ChatGPT/OpenAI and how content marketers could (and should) be using it now.

If anyone doubts AI is part of the future of SEO and content marketing, I don’t know how to convince them otherwise. So many are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, worried about the impact of AI-written content on our jobs and work. However, low-quality content has always been in our space; it’s always ranked, and it’s always found its way to the top until Google catches up, and it’s not there anymore.

This is the nature of our work as SEOs and content marketers with search engines. Something new comes along and knocks us around—then we find a way to use it to our advantage, for better or worse. Search engines do the same.

Where ChatGPT and OpenAI-based content platforms are going to succeed is with the guidance of content marketers and SEOs like us to build on the foundation of AI-generated content starts as. Anybody publishing the first draft of what they’ve written on the internet is lying to you—or shouldn’t be writing in the first place.

This is work we should already be doing to help ourselves, and our clients, create the best possible content. We’re just now going to be using ChatGPT as our “first draft.” From there, the possibilities are endless: where we take that content, how we add to it, or even how we leverage AI to help us create more around a given topic. With feedback from subject matter experts and our clients, we can create something unique from something that starts out as a diamond in the rough.

Ben Fisher

VP Marketing, Founder at Steady Demand

We need to tread very carefully. We need to understand the impact on our workflows. … Google, historically, had a huge spam department. They’re … probably looking at this with a fine-tooth comb right now. They’re tweaking their algorithms, they’re feeding the machine and they’re basically coming back and saying ‘okay, what kind of heuristics can we create to test and filter’.

There’s been some conversations in the back rooms with Google … They’re going to get good at this. Be really careful, don’t be too overzealous.

Amanda Jordan

Director of Digital Strategy at RicketyRoo

I see ChatGPT as an unreliable intern. ChatGPT … is a stepping block to make tools or things to make your job easier, but it should not be what you depend upon and rely upon for your final answer. If you’re depending on ChatGPT to give you any output and you’re just copying and pasting that, you’re gonna have a bad time. Even when it does things like schema, it’s not exactly correct. It has issues with it and you have to fix it.

Joy Hawkins

Owner at Sterling Sky

It’s a tool to help you do your job better and faster and pick up where it might be difficult. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out how to put the words ‘near me’ into content naturally … and it’ll do that, and probably do that faster than I could do it. The one tip I saw … was asking the AI to make something NLP friendly. That was really fascinating. What came back was very different to how I would have worded it. So using “semantically friendly”, “NLP format”, those kinds of prompts can really give you insight into “oh, maybe I should reword it like this.”

I do not suggest using it to spin out 50 pages of content without editing. But keep in mind that that’s not new … SEOs have been doing that for decades.

Things to Consider

When it comes to AI there are a few things you need to consider before you dive in and start using it for absolutely everything like a crazy person.

The Database for ChatGPT Has a ‘Knowledge Cut-off’

This means it only knows things up to a certain point in time (2021, to be exact). Therefore new products, changes in laws, or other updates just won’t be something it answers. In some instances, it even suggests using traditional search engines for a query instead.

Double-or-triple-check Everything

It’s one thing if the out-of-date knowledge gives you bad information in content, but if you’re using it to generate code or create markup, you need to be very careful, especially as language models can do what is known as ‘hallucinate’ and spit out complete falsehoods when it doesn’t understand the prompt.

The time it takes you to check over it may not save you as much time as you think, and in some cases, you may only spot an issue if you happen to be well-versed in the topic already.

Miriam Ellis, of Moz, touched on a number of times ChatGPT was just flat-out wrong when she gave it a try recently.

Be Careful with Tone and Personality

If you ask a basic ‘please write me something on [subject]’ prompt, you’re going to get something that’s (probably) factually correct, but lacking any kind of personality.

There are ways around this, sure, like you can ask it to write in a particular style or voice. But it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to get it to speak in your brand tone of voice without major edits. AI content is functional, but you’ll struggle to rely on it when you’re building a brand. Even the stuff with a bit more ‘personality’ isn’t always great:

Things Could Get Tricky, Legally

As you can probably tell from the tone of this piece, we’re not here to expressly endorse using AI for all your tasks. We believe AI has the power to make mundane jobs more fun and hard jobs easier, but we’re also keenly aware that, as with any emerging technology, the legal ramifications (particularly around copyright) will only be truly understood once the waters have been tested via landmark court cases.

As such, there have already been a number of concerns about plagiarism and even a lawsuit directed at AI ‘art’. Things are still in their early days, and as AI uses existing content from around the internet to develop its knowledge, there’s a chance things could get murky in the future. For example, there’s already talk of a digital watermark being created to help identify AI content.

If this is a particular concern for you, the tool Originality.ai comes recommended as a plagiarism checker.

Google Has… Opinions… About AI Content

It’s not even a new subject for them. Historically, they’ve said it goes against their guidelines. Obviously, they have to identify that content first, but based on the potential of a watermark, and the fact that a number of people are already working on software to identify AI content, I think we can probably trust that Google isn’t too far off it. These are the folks, remember, that built an AI that one developer genuinely believed was sentient.

Final Thoughts: There’s Opportunity, but Be Careful

AI offers some really exciting opportunities for local marketers. Whether it’s speeding up your boring tasks, offering inspiration, or simply just a new outlet for creativity, there’s something it can help you with.

While that’s the case, though, you need to be extremely careful how you’re using it. If you’re generating anything technical, like code or markup, you’ll need to create new processes for checking accuracy.

Meanwhile, if you’re using it to generate content, you need to make sure you’re properly reviewing it to make sure it’s unique. There have already been issues with some AI-generated content and plagiarism. Running it through a plagiarism checker like Grammarly is a start, but uniqueness isn’t simply about the order of words. You need to make sure that you’re bringing true personality and expertise to the table.

Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust) parameters are more crucial than ever, especially since the rollout of the Helpful Content Update. So if you are truly keen to use AI, make sure you’re ready to make changes to the content. You’ll also need to be wary of those digital watermarks mentioned above.

Finally, it’s worth noting that, thanks to the widespread access to the legitimate phenomenon that is ChatGPT, this conversation is just getting started. We had to revise, redraft and expand on this piece multiple times to react to the AI news pieces that flew into our inboxes at gatling-gun pace.

But because it’s new, and because it’s fast-moving, it’s naturally exciting. That doesn’t mean you should abandon your tried-and-tested local SEO strategy just to play with the shiny new thing. Baby and bathwater, and all that…

Content silos help you leverage proximity, relevance, and prominence, as they’re some of the most important local SEO ranking factors. 

For relevance and prominence, a content silo helps your client’s content and business show up in relevant search results and, when you’ve showcased your expertise on your subject, it offers you a chance to earn backlinks from reputable websites. 

This increase in relevant rankings can help your client’s business earn more qualified organic traffic which, in turn, can increase conversions. 

If your client’s local business has several branches in different locations, creating a content silo with location-specific content helps you to optimize for proximity. It also makes it easier to track local rankings when you have specific pages optimized for important terms.

In this article, I’m going to share four actionable ways to create content silos for local SEO, provide examples of local businesses with these silos, and show you how you can build them for your own client’s local business. 

Strategy 1: Build a Content Silo Around Service Verticals 

Searchers looking for specific services that a local business provides will end up frustrated when they can’t find the service they’re looking for. 

So, having a content silo that dives deeper into the services your client’s business centers around is key. This also allows you to align with the searcher’s intent by answering the questions searchers have, and helps them move to the next stage of the buying journey. 

Content silos around the service vertical also help you create content that addresses specific pain points that potential customers have, which can help them convert. Answering any objections or questions gives them a better understanding before they click the ‘buy now’ button or take that highly sought-after medium of communication: a phone call.

How do you make sure that the content silo you create around a service vertical stands out?

Step 1. Narrow Down Your Services

Start by narrowing down the services that your client offers and compare that with the services the competition is offering. As you do this, you may identify services your client can provide that no one else is providing, presenting you with the opportunity to fill in the gap.

In some instances, it may even highlight a chance to narrow down three to five services your client can focus on providing and do better than anyone else. 

Step 2. Identify Major Topics

Once you have a list of services your client provides, identify major topics around each of these services and then create different types of content on each of them. 

If your client has customers already, you could run a survey asking them what they would like to learn about each of these services, and then build content around these topics.

Performing keyword research around your products or services can also unearth a number of potential topics, as can viewing the ‘People Also Ask’ in Google for related keywords. Each of these can help you spot topics you may want to include in your silo. 

For example, Southern Premier Roofing provides six types of roofing services, and when you click on each service, you’ll read a detailed description of what each service entails:

Digging deeper into each of these services, you’ll find a landing page describing each service in detail. On the roof repair page, for example, you have a section talking about different signs that point to a worn-out roof and the process that they rely on when repairing your roof.

Readers who need a roof replacement might start with more basic questions, and won’t convert simply by arriving on the roof replacement landing page. That’s where the content silo comes in.

Southern Premier Roofing has organized the content silo around this service by creating different types of content that first educate them on roof vocabularies, such as roof underlayment and roof membrane, and then different types of roofs that customers can consider. 

Then, there’s comparison content that dives deeper into comparing different roof types; for example, hip roofs vs gable roofs. We also have more bottom-of-funnel content such as ‘how to prepare a house for roof replacement’ and identifying different signs that point to someone needing a roof replacement. This helps nudge the reader towards considering roof replacement services.  

While this might seem like a linear path, the different types of content in this silo make it easier for Southern Premier Roofing to get hold of more readers who might be interested in their services and, crucially, keep them on their site so that eventually some become their customers. 

Strategy 2: Build a Content Silo Around Each Location You Serve

If your client has offices in different locations, build a location-based content silo by creating web pages for each office and linking to it from the “main locations hub” page on your client’s homepage.

If your client has a service-based business where they have to go to the customer’s location, build out individual neighborhood, community, or local landing pages and make them subsets of the main city page in the city that your client operates in. 

Here’s how Baker Roofing does it: 

They provide roofing services and have a list of different locations they operate in with a search bar that you can use to set your preferred distance to see how far they are. There’s also a map showing you the different locations.

How to Create Location-based Content Silos

To create a location-specific content silo, have a list of the cities or locations your client serves, then create specific web pages for each of these locations. 

Once you do this, link them to the main locations hub on your client’s homepage so that web visitors can navigate to their preferred location easily.  

Once you have created each of these web pages, go ahead and create different types of bottom-of-the-funnel content such as competitor comparison content and listicles. Performing localized keyword research can help you identify topics and questions around a specific area.

Some queries that searchers use are not only satisfied by writing content that matches the search intent. You need to match the context around each search. 

For example, a searcher who just bought a new house in one of the locations that Baker Roofing serves will need more than just a list of different locations. 

They would also benefit from content that talks about different roofing services and even content that provides comparative data that pits Baker Roofing against the competition to help them make an informed decision. 

Strategy 3: Build a Content Silo Around Localized Content for Specific Services and Locations 

Another content silo you can build contains localized content for different locations and services that your client provides. 

For example, a real estate company in a given state has to comply with state and local laws for each county of the state they serve. The content they create needs to help potential homeowners understand these laws based on their location. 

This is very useful for businesses that serve a large area where localization is important based on different laws. Pay It Forward Lending has a section on FHA loan limits in each county in Nevada:

When creating localized content for specific locations, focus on what makes each location unique. Here’s how Smith and Wollensky do it:

Once you click on any of the locations above, a new tab will load and you’ll see a different header image that matches each location that the steakhouse serves. 

Swapping your copy and inserting a different location won’t cut it. Not only will you have lots of duplicate content, but you’ve not said anything different to highlight real expertise about an area. Ask yourself what’s special about each location that would resonate with the readers in those locations. 

There could be a few nuances in terms of language, specific challenges your client’s customers face, and geographical landmarks that influence the needs of the people your client serves. 

Bonus Strategy: Optimize Your Google Business Profile to Augment Your Silo Strategy

Local Pack results will include your client’s Google Business Profile, which potential customers are likely to see before your website.

If they’re in the decision stage, the content of your client’s Google Business Profile could determine if they choose to work with your client or go to a competitor. So, how do you make sure it complements your silo strategy? 

Optimize your client’s Google Business Profile by adding links that point to specific landing pages. 

For example, this law office’s Google Profile Post links to each landing page that’s relevant to the post’s subject. For example, this one leads to the Medical Malpractice page:

If your client is running a brick-and-mortar store, you could include photos of the area surrounding the business and inside the business to give your customers a feel for what it would be like when if visit the premises.

If it’s an outdoor service, include photos of your client or their team at work. It helps bring the service to life and potential customers can then decide whether that’s what they need.

Here’s a handy checklist that you can use to help you optimize your client’s Google Business Profile to complement your content silo strategy: 

What else should you consider when implementing silos for local SEO?

When creating content silos, consider the different stages of the local customer buying journey, and create content that resonates with them at each stage. 

You may decide to build your silo by creating content targeting customers who are in the decision stage. That will yield quick wins in the short term, but you also need to play the long game. Consider creating content for other buying stages to drive awareness of your client’s local business, and help those in the evaluation stage to learn more about the solutions available to them. 

Going back to our roofing example, Southern Premier Roofing creates content about different types of roofs to drive awareness: 

You can also provide a list of different services for potential customers in the evaluation stage, sharing different features, and the pros and cons of each of these services: 

What stands out about this review piece is that, in addition to providing a list of virtual mailboxes, it is up to date. It talks about the best mailboxes and business addresses in 2022, so the reader doesn’t have to wonder whether they’re still in service.

Alternatively, you can create actionable content that empowers your client’s customers to solve an immediate problem they have, such as learning how to create better marketing strategies for their business: 

Once you have published content for readers in the awareness and evaluation stages, link it to your main location, service, and localized content pages. It will improve the user experience by helping readers naturally progress to the next stage of the buying journey. 

Consider having a simple URL structure for your content, and work towards earning backlinks from service directories and from other reputable blogs that are relevant to your client’s customers. 

Make sure you keep your on-page SEO consistent across all pages within the content silo. Optimize your content for H1, H2, and H3 tags with relevant keywords to include location, city, and services they need. For location pages, embed maps, and keep your name, address, and phone number details up-to-date on relevant pages. 

Lastly, make your client’s content accessible through proper formatting, adding relevant alt text to images, and using keywords in your title tags to help the reader have an easy time reading your content.

Conclusion

You now have what you need to get started with creating content silos for your clients. As a quick recap, the content silo you choose to create will help you leverage ranking factors and increase the amount of traffic and conversions your client’s business gets. 

To get started, pick any content silo that we’ve discussed and start building it by creating content and optimizing it for readers and search engines. Keep tracking and optimizing the results you get from your efforts to identify areas of improvement.

That’s where this article is here to help. Unfortunately, we’re not going to offer you tips on creating an amazing Christmas campaign from the ground up or help you come up with heartstring-tugging adverts for Hannukah or New Year. What we are going to do, however, is help you get the basics right for your digital marketing, so you don’t have anything to worry about.

Google performed a study with Ipsos in November 2022, which showed that 86% of consumers say online sources helped them make informed decisions for the holiday season. The same study highlighted that 32% of searchers used maps to find businesses.

With this in mind, we want to make sure you’re ready for whatever comes. Be prepared for potential influxes of reviews, or season-specific questions your customers may have. Get your emails scheduled for the right times, your sales pages optimized and ready, and know exactly what you’re posting on X (formally Twitter).

So, without further ado, here’s our holiday marketing checklist to help local businesses navigate Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas, Hannukah, and the New Year.

Social Media Checklist for the Holidays

On social media, the key is to communicate what you are doing for the holiday season effectively. This could be as simple as a special menu or updating your opening hours or as complex as creating a whole campaign, like an advent calendar. Our top tips for social media in the holiday season are:

Communicate your offers

Let customers know if you’re offering gift cards, holiday offers, or discounts. Use social media channels to get the word out about what you’re offering, and how your audience and customers could benefit. 

Share any updates to opening hours

Even if you’ve updated your GBP for the holidays, you should share when you’ll be open on all your channels. You can’t rely on someone googling your business. For many people, your social channels are their first port of call. If you’re going to be closed for a night for a Christmas party, for instance, or open for longer during the holiday period, make sure you let people know.

Share any updates to your menus

If you serve food, there’s a good chance you’ll have some special items on your menu. If you’re updating your whole menu for the next couple of months, make sure you share it on your social media platforms for people to see. This works in a couple of ways, it gives them access to something up-to-date but it can also get people excited about that deep-fried cranberry & blue mac n cheese you’ve spent all year planning.

Here’s Starbucks announcing its holiday menu on Instagram for some inspiration.

Consider adding new photos of any holiday offering, like decorations

If your store is offering holiday products like decorations, gift ideas, holiday menus, Santa appearances, boiler maintenance Christmas deals, seasonal products like Christmas tree delivery or disposal services, let your customers know! Here’s a great example of how Zabar’s & Co. announced an exclusive product and discount for Hanukkah via social:

Share any special events

If you’re running one-off experiences or events, or even just know that you’ll get particularly busy on certain days, let people know in advance to help them plan.

Consider a holiday-specific campaign

This doesn’t have to be something complex that you’ve spent 6 months planning, either. Social can help you put something simple together, like an advent calendar, with 25 days of offers, or 25 days to share services, menu items, or gift ideas. Unveil a new product over 25 days, or something completely new.

@connie.mp4 Toronto local small business gift guide part ii #toronto #wishlist #christmasgiftideas #holiday #shoplocal ♬ original sound – Connie ❀

It’s just as easy to create videos for Reels as it is TikTok too, doubling your efforts across social platforms with minimal stress. Plus, the holiday season means you can add timely and relevant sounds to your videos. Think Mariah, Brenda Lee, and Michael Buble—the perfect soundtrack to your holiday marketing.  

Run a competition on social media

Want to get people excited about your new offering? Consider a “like and share to win” for a holiday meal, experience, or gift.

Consider adding holiday designs to any of your social graphics

This could be as simple as a dusting of snow on your cover photo, or you could go for something more advanced in any of your promotional images. It’s up to you (or your brand guidelines!).

Offer a gift list/gifting suggestions

This is particularly important if you’re a retail store. Getting on TikTok to show off your holiday products and services could be a great way to kickstart your holiday campaign in an authentic way that doesn’t require much huge investment in time and money. From the 2023 Local Consumer Review Survey, we know that 20% of consumers find out information about a business on TikTok, making it an obvious choice to spread the word about your holiday offering.
This example from a local gas station works well:

@maryledbetter9 Check out Reeder’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma! #tulsaoklahoma #shoptulsa #localbusiness #christmasshopping #familybusiness ♬ Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree – Brenda Lee

The creator shares each holiday-themed product that can be found in her business, makes use of a popular Christmas hit as the video sound, and uses local keywords throughout her video and through hashtags in the caption.

Partner with other local businesses to offer something unique, or share content with

If you’re offering locally sourced food, consider partnering with a local brewery to create a food and drink gift basket people can buy. If you’re a landscape gardener, consider partnering with Christmas tree wholesalers to deliver Christmas trees around the local area.

Remember to wish people a happy holiday season

If your audience is from a range of backgrounds, it’s a good idea to share the love this holiday season. Don’t just limit yourself to the holiday you’re celebrating yourself.

How to Get Your Google Business Profile Holiday-ready

learn more

Get Your Website Ready for the Holidays

While many local businesses still forgo a website, they’re a key aspect of your digital presence. At this time of year, there are a number of things you can do to help you prep for potential heavy traffic moments, like end-of-season sales, or increase your online visibility.

Prepare for heavy traffic

Do you need to check your server, or consider a queue system? Basically, if you’re expecting an influx of additional traffic, can your current site hack it? This won’t affect everyone, but for those who know it could happen there are a few things you can do. Make sure your server can cope with the potential additional traffic, or even consider investing in queue software if you’re expecting particularly high demand.

Pin seasonal posts in your blog

If you create seasonal content that’s relevant every year, then make sure your customers can find it! A simple way to do this is by pinning holiday posts to the top of your blog page for the duration of the season. This means you may not have to write whole new posts every year just so people can find them again.

Showcase seasonal reviews

If you regularly offer different services or have seasonal products there’s a good chance you may have reviews for these. This is the time of year to put these front and center. Showcasing reviews is something you should do all year round, as it’s excellent social proof, but at this time of year, it could be worth reviewing the ones you’re using.

Update posts for freshness

That being said, if you are pinning old posts to the top of your blog, you need to make sure they’re up-to-date. This applies to any of your seasonal posts. There’s a chance that most of the information in your holiday posts could be absolutely fine, but it’s worth checking to make sure data, dates, or other information is still accurate and relevant. Avoid simply re-publishing with a new date, though. Google watches out for this kind of activity with its Helpful Content Updates. If you’re going to do that, make sure you’ve genuinely added new content.

Prepare your sales & promotional pages

You should already have pages created for these that you use every year. If you don’t, this is your cue to do that. You should have an evergreen page for your holiday promotions and sales. This page should remain live all year, just not linked prominently from your homepage. This way your main promotional pages for key events will gain authority from links and age over time, and you won’t be trying to rank a brand new page every time. Now that you’ve got your evergreen pages, make sure they are completely up-to-date with this year’s information.



Bed, Bath & Beyond has had its ‘Holiday’ category live with the same URL structure since 2015, with other subfolders coming off it. This has allowed it to gain links and rank for related keywords.

Check for consistency

Make sure your promotional messaging is consistent across your entire website. If you have a banner saying one thing and your landing page says another, you’re in trouble.

Check metadata is correct for this year

If you’re using your evergreen pages, there’s a good chance you optimized your meta titles and meta description for the previous year. Make sure each one is accurate for this year. Consider optimizing them to include what the deal actually includes, too. Are you offering cut prices, a special service, or free shipping? Your meta title or description could be your customer’s first impression of your deals or events.

Communicate key information where applicable

If you’re running special menus or deals, make sure you communicate these where you can. Similarly, if you have restricted opening hours or a final postal date, make sure you clearly communicate this.

How To Smash Your Email Marketing This Holiday Season

In an ideal world, your holiday email marketing communications would be all-singing, all-dancing campaigns with seasonally appropriate designs and GIFs galore, right? But in reality, when it comes to communications as a local business, the most crucial elements of your holiday emails will be the need-to-know items.

Opening hours reminders

Don’t give your customers a chance to tell you they didn’t see your holiday opening hours! As well as on your website, GBP, and social channels (plus any in-store signage you may have), come at your clients from all angles and reinforce any changes to opening hours or contact details in your email marketing. Much more active on IG stories or your Facebook Page? Direct email subscribers to the most relevant channels for regular updates.

Communicate service or product ordering and delivery deadlines

Likewise, for any significant holiday deadlines, ensure your customers have plenty of notice—whether it’s the last order and delivery dates for gift giving, seasonal food ordering ahead of any big days, or your availability for particular services.

Prepare the ‘signing off’ email

If your business is closed during any of the holiday periods, it’s always a good idea to send a ‘signing off’-style communication. This is a nice opportunity to wish your subscribers happy holidays, whilst communicating key reminders about how and when customers can expect to receive support throughout this time. You can also use this as an opportunity to recirculate helpful resources such as FAQs or any guides you might have created.

Sharing the joy of shopping local

The winter holidays in particular can be a great opportunity to reinforce how much the support of your community makes a difference to your business, as it catches consumers at a time when they’re feeling generous and bighearted. Create content to remind them of all the reasons to shop local, such as highlighting the uniqueness of independent gifts and personalized services, or sharing a personal story behind your business.

Automate key messages and prepare ahead of time

Even if you’re going to be out of the office for certain periods, the importance of timeliness never diminishes. For example, the period between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is prime for discounts and sales promotions, so in the run-up to key holiday periods, ensure these key emails are planned, created, and scheduled.

Make Sure Your Promotions Are Optimized

Need-to-know information aside, these busy promotion periods do call for some creativity. As commercial dates like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas approach, the need to stand out from the hundreds of notifications pinging your customers’ inboxes or sponsored ads filling up Instagram feeds comes into play. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

Be descriptive with your offers

Absolutely everyone is going to be bombarding users with ‘BLACK FRIDAY SALE’ messaging, and it’s more than enough to just turn people who aren’t actively looking for something off. In emails, use your subject line or pre-heading text to be descriptive about what you’re offering and therefore why it’s such good value. 

Creating a sense of urgency

We can’t all be like Glossier, which so rarely holds sales that it causes the internet to go into meltdown, but we can learn a thing or two about how it creates urgency. If you aren’t the kind of business that usually discounts products or services, you can utilize messaging to create excitement or a sense of urgency (AKA incite a sense of FOMO). Some brands make good use of ‘flash’ offer messaging, which can be made all the more effective via app push notifications, while others utilize a live countdown in emails or on-site to drive urgency.
Can you handle demand?

This applies to both the what and the how of any promotions you’d like to run, so not just the product or service that your customers are buying, but the logistics of fulfilling them and your business being able to keep up with any issues. Consider the following:

• Do you physically have enough products in stock?
• Is there a limit on purchasing?
• Do you have adequate customer support in place?
• Is your site set up to receive discount codes?
• Can it handle significant traffic and amounts of transactions?
  

Rewarding loyalty / high-value customers

Some consumers see pre or post-holiday promotional periods as a free-for-all and, while it can be a great opportunity for you to grow brand awareness and gain some new customers, it’s worth considering what value they will place against your brand as a one-time promotional purchaser. Why not consider how this could be an opportunity to reward your existing, loyal customers? You could create an exclusive customer discount, an early-access event, or a live interaction via social channels that seek to reward your most engaged users.

Be smarter around timeliness

UK health and beauty retailer, Boots, has already kicked off the 2023 winter holiday season with discounts and loyalty point boosts for its Advantage Card members with a clever twist: some personalized vouchers can be used twice, some combined with others, and some reward you for ‘getting ahead on gifts’ for purchases during a specific period. However, it’s especially smart as it’s teasing promotions well ahead of time, while also encouraging customers to spend over longer periods, rather than inciting a rush around Black Friday that dwindles ahead of Christmas.

How to prepare your local business for Black Friday

Learn more

Preparation Is Key for a Relaxed Holiday Season

So, are you feeling ready? Our checklist should help every local marketer get the business ready, whether you’re launching a festive menu, closing on different days to everyone else, or simply optimizing your promotional pages

We hope our tips for the holiday season will have you feeling prepared to tackle everything that comes your way over the next couple of months.

Before you get started with your holiday marketing strategy, why not run a Google Business Profile Audit or benchmark your visibility with Local Rank Tracker? Make sure you can measure the impact of everything you’re doing across Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, and beyond.

There are a lot of mixed messages about the best ways to approach this, which can make it difficult to know where to turn and how to get started.

Luckily, we’ve enlisted local SEO expert, Claire Carlile, to create a brand-new BrightLocal Academy course—How to Create Website Content For Local SEO—to help you.

In this course, Claire looks at important types of local content, such as regional landing pages, service and product pages, blog posts, and evergreen content types.

During the eight lessons, Claire shares her wisdom on: 

• why content is important; 
• how to match content with searcher intent;
• how to use keyword research to inform a content strategy;
• types of content to create for the top, middle, and bottom of the marketing funnel;
• and what to include on pages to make them successful.

Here’s Claire with an overview of the course:

Who is this course for?

This course will suit organizations and businesses looking to build out their understanding of local content strategy and on-page optimization with a local SEO focus. 

How can I join?

Whether you’re a BrightLocal customer or not, you can get access to this course. You can also be among the first to find out when new courses drop by enrolling for free. Here’s how…

If you’re a BrightLocal customer, you can access the academy via your BrightLocal account. Simply log in, click ‘Learning Resources’ at the top of the screen and select ‘BrightLocal Academy’ from the dropdown menu.

You’ll need to create a free BrightLocal Academy account before you can enroll in the ‘How to Create Website Content For Local SEO’ course.

If you’re not a BrightLocal customer, you can join BrightLocal Academy for free here and follow the same steps above to enroll in the course.

Want to know more about BrightLocal Academy? 

Check out the official BrightLocal Academy FAQs here: 

What is BrightLocal Academy, how does it work, and how can I enroll? 

What courses does BrightLocal Academy offer and how long do they take? 

If you have any questions of your own, feel free to get in touch with us or leave a comment below. We hope you find this fresh new course useful, and can’t wait to hear how it’s helped you improve your local SEO skills.

However, when creating a content silo, copying what competing local businesses are doing won’t cut it. 

You need to differentiate your content silo by identifying the underlying core terms behind local searches and aligning them with your client’s business objectives to create relevant categories. Then, once they’re live you’ll want to set up rank tracking to see how you’re doing.

Throughout this article, we’ll explore several ways to create a differentiated content silo that will outrank the competition. 

What is a content silo and why do you need one?

A content silo is a website structure that allows you to organize, create, and publish content around specific categories. A silo lets you structure your content more efficiently for both search engines and users, by grouping content into clear sections on your site.

Content silos take different formats that vary from one local business to the other, depending on needs and goals. 

That said, why do you need a content silo?

With 88% of customers equating the buying experience to the quality of the products and services you sell but only 57% of small businesses pursuing any content marketing, you have a competitive advantage when you can unify the buying experience with relevant content. 

You should then make sure that they can find said content whenever they need it on their buying journey. A content silo will help you do that.

Let’s assume you have a content silo based on the products your client sells locally. For example, let’s look at Hunter Douglas:

Source: Hunter Douglas

Potential customers won’t start by landing on the homepage if they don’t even know whether the company exists. 

Depending on their needs, their search will reflect a specific intent. If a searcher looks for energy efficient window treatments, here’s the search result they might get: 

Notice the search result coming in the first page leads to Hunter Douglas. Once the searcher visits the page, they’ll join one of their categories, “Browse by Need.”  

All the content in this category is linked together. This means once a reader clicks on one category, they get all the information they need based on their intent. 

For example, if clicking through the search results for energy-efficient window treatments, the links in the blog content point to their product page listing different energy-efficient shades. 

A potential customer then has an easy time finding what they need. They view the business as one that understands their needs, which opens the door to conversions and sets the stage for customer retention. 

Besides, from a branding perspective, being the local business that has structured their content to ensure ease of access and unifies their buying journey. They don’t have to move from one place to another to find what they need. 

Even in a local setup, the customer buying journey isn’t linear. Still, customers look for solutions to their problems and prefer using the most convenient path to arrive at these solutions. 

If you create a content silo with content that acts as the vehicle to their destination, then the experience you deliver is as good as the product or service your client sells.

Why is creating content silos a challenge?

Creating content silos is a challenge for two reasons:

1. Bad advice that’s hard to shake off

In previous years, “publish content daily at a specific time of the day’’ seemed like sound content marketing advice. After all, if your competitor was publishing two or three times a week, then all you needed to do was to hustle and increase your publishing frequency to outdo them.

The problem with taking only this advice is that initiatives around publishing quality content don’t feature anywhere in your content operations.

2. A lack of clarity on where each piece of content fits

This problem comes up when you’re either publishing too much or too little content. Potential customers are at different stages of the buying journey. What you publish needs to satisfy their intent to help them move to the next stage of the buying journey. 

If your content strategy and content don’t align with their needs, then creating a silo seems impossible. 

Creating content silos is an approach based on principle (quality over quantity) and being mindful of evolving customer expectations and an effort to deliver better buying experiences. 

How to create content silos for local SEO (with examples)

The first step when creating content silos is to identify core terms for your client’s site and make sure they align with your client’s business objectives. 

If you’re working with a window cleaning business serving local clients, the core term in Google searches will be based on the different types of services your client can provide such as “power washing services”, “residential washing services” and “commercial washing services.” 

Source: Next Level Window Cleaning

You can also create categories based on the type of content you want to create for your client’s local business. For example, Lawn and Weed Expert has several informational categories based on what potential customers look for:

Source: Lawn and Weed Expert

Or, create categories based on location, if your client serves different locations: 

Source: CorePower Yoga

A point to note is that when creating a content silo for a multi-location business, make sure that the Google Business Profile links point to the corresponding landing page for that location within the same silo.

Lastly, differentiate your blog content by creating categories based on frequently asked questions about the product your client sells: 

Source: Budget Blinds

Once you identify core terms that make up your categories, identify relevant modifiers for each of these categories to expand them to find content ideas. 

Use the Five W’s (Who, What, When, Where, and Why) to create more ideas covering different types of search intent. Here’s an example of lawn care questions with an accompanying content idea: 

• Who: Who is the best lawn care service provider? 
  Transactional search intent: “Best lawn care service providers in South Wales”
• What: What is lawn care? 
  Informational search intent: “Ultimate guide to lawn care”
• When: When should I take care of my lawn? 
  Informational search intent: “How to maintain your lawn during fall”
• Where: Where can I find lawn care services? 
  Navigational search intent: “10 locations that [business] provides lawn care services”
• Why: Why is my lawn dry? 
  Informational search intent: “How to treat brown patches on your lawn”

Use a keyword research tool to identify long-tail keywords and start creating content around them. They’re easier to rank for since fewer local businesses are trying to rank for them. 

Besides, long tail keywords indicate more clarity in intent, which is often transactional. 

Once you create content for each core term and its related modifier, organize the content in different folders using relevant URLs and tags, and then link the pages together. Using our lawn care example: 

• Core term: lawn-disease-protection
• Relevant content sub-category: Red thread, Fungus/Mold, Dry Patches, Brown/yellow patch
• Example of related content with relevant URL: /lawn-disease-protection/yellow-patches/

Pitfalls to avoid when implementing content silos for local SEO 

By now, you already have some ideas about what type of content silo to create. Before you get started, here are a couple of pitfalls to avoid:

Creating too many silos at once

Most of the examples we’ve shown above are from established local businesses with several silos. 

Their content strategies have evolved over time, allowing them to create more silos and get better results from their efforts.  

If you’re working with a local business that launched recently or has never had any content silo before, start with one category, improve on it, and then create a new one. 

Creating content that doesn’t satisfy search intent

After identifying a core term that reflects what potential customers are looking for, create content that satisfies search intent to improve the quality of your silo and establish credibility. 

Otherwise, you won’t be able to capitalize on the benefits of increased organic traffic to your website. 

Poor internal linking

The goal of the silo is to make sure relevant content is linked together for proper crawling and indexing by search engines. 

Link relevant content together by using relevant anchor text that makes it easier for crawlers to index all your content properly and for readers to understand the context behind the link. 

Conclusion

A solid content silo helps you achieve your content marketing objectives by helping you focus on creating content that drives business objectives. 

And if you’re creating your first silo, start with one silo and build up from there. Identify your core terms and relevant modifiers to use and then create content that satisfies search intent. 

Once you do this, add relevant tags, URLs, and add links to relevant content within your category to help search engines index your content so that it shows up in search results. 

As you go, keep an eye out for improvements you need to make to location-based content, new categories you need to create, old content to update, and so on. Doing this will make sure all your content is fresh and relevant to your readers. 

You’ll find a wide range of competitor analysis SEO tools out there, many of which excel in a particular area. For example, one tool may be especially strong at sniffing our competitor citations. Another may be better suited to identifying your rivals’ best-performing keywords. 

Having a couple of these tools in your arsenal can help fill gaps in your strategy. Use them to quickly identify what works well for others without having to invest time and resources of your own. 

The data gleaned from these tools can also explain why competitor sites might outperform your own in certain areas. With this knowledge and our library of local SEO resources, you can begin to revise your approach and put together a plan of action to drive improvements. 

Pairing your chosen competitor analysis tools with other specialist local SEO tools will give you an even bigger advantage.

iSpionage 

iSpionage is an excellent tool for finding out information about your competitors for both PPC and SEO. It is suitable for both in-house marketers and larger agencies. It offers both monitoring and research functionality. 

You can use iSpionage to monitor other companies’ multi-country paid search ad campaigns and benchmark competitors’ share of ad impressions. It also shows the results of competitor A/B testing, so you can apply their lessons to your own ad campaigns at no cost to you. Additional features include keyword research and information about competitor advert effectiveness, including ad spend.

Want even more insight?  Use iSpionage to explore how your rivals funnel visitors through to conversion.

iSpionage: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost?

$59-$299 /mo. Custom solutions are also available.

Does it have a free trial?

Yes. You can register for a free account and receive 10 competitor reports per day and three complimentary alerts. 

What makes it unique? 

Extensive monitoring and research functions mean you can deep dive into the nuts and bolts of any competitor’s SEO or paid search activity. You can also uncover profitable keywords, landing pages, and ad copy.

Website

https://www.ispionage.com  

Spyfu

Spyfu can be used for both PPC and SEO competitor research. On the SEO side, you can search competitor domains and find out where they are showing up on Google. It will tell you how many clicks they get, what their backlink strategy is, and how their rankings have changed. 

Spyfu is also one of the most impressive competitor research tools for PPC. Use it to discover every keyword your competitor is bidding on and how much they pay. Another nice feature is the ability to see what split tests rivals have performed. 

In addition, Spyfu will flag up keywords that competitors use that you don’t already bid on, including the keywords that are most profitable for rivals.

Spyfu: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost? 

$33 – £299/mo. 

Does it have a free trial? 

No, but they do offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. 

What makes it unique? 

The Backlink Kombat feature is a favorite, allowing you to compare up to three competitors and find keywords you might have missed.

Website 

https://www.spyfu.com 

Rival IQ

Rival IQ is a powerful social media competitive analysis tool. Use it to track your competitors’ performance across social media and beyond. With Rival IQ you can  monitor competitor activity, such as when they boost a post or share a new update. 

The ability to track mentions of rivals means you can see where their customer service has failed or take inspiration from what is resonating with their audience. Use this knowledge to inform your own social media activities. 

Looking for influencers? Use Rival IQ to search keywords and hashtags and identify top-performing content within your niche. For help scheduling posts, study your competitor engagement metrics to uncover optimal post times.

Rival IQ: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost?

$239 – $519/mo.

Does it have a free trial? 

Yes. 14 days.   

What makes it unique? 

Powerful social media analytics include the ability to monitor for boosted posts and easily identify content popular within your niche. There’s also the option to benchmark performance across your industry. 

Website

https://www.rivaliq.com 

Crayon 

Crayon is an award-winning competitor analysis tool. You can use it to track any company’s complete digital footprint, both on and off its website. This covers online branding, content, news articles, review profiles, product updates and pricing changes. You can additionally see everything from a company’s social media activity as well as case studies and new partnerships. Awards they’ve won and press releases they’ve issued will also be reported back. This allows you to keep a complete competitor portfolio and track all their intel in one spot.

Crayon: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost?

Variable. Pricing is tailored to the needs of each user. 

Does it have a free trial? 

No. 

What makes it unique? 

Crayon’s degree of competitor intelligence information is exhaustive. It tracks every aspect of competitor activity, from sales and marketing to product development and pricing changes. Crayon also means you won’t miss executive team announcements or audience engagement information.

Website

https://www.crayon.co

Google Similar Pages  

This Chrome extension lets you see other pages similar to the one you’re currently browsing. Google Similar Pages is useful for discovering other sites within your niche that may not already be on your radar. You can build a list of businesses that you may not have been aware of by visiting a known competitor’s site and then exploring the similar pages suggested. You can plug those new business names into your preferred competitor analysis tools and build a more complete picture of the search landscape. 

Google Simple Pages is an extension for Chrome, so you’ll need to download it to your device before using it.

Google Similar Pages: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost? 

Free.

Does it have a free trial? 

NA

What makes it unique? 

You can quickly discover other businesses in your niche that you may not otherwise have been aware of. Even better, you don’t need to perform time-consuming Google searches manually. 

Website

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-similar-pages 

Similarweb 

To get an idea of how your competitors are doing in terms of traffic, Similarweb is the perfect free tool. Just type in any domain, and you’ll receive average traffic, referrals, and social media performance. The report also covers referring sites, keywords used to access the site, and more. You can use it to explore how any given brand is performing online and monitor for changes in digital strategies. Need more help? Similarweb will identify which channels are most effective for customer acquisition within your industry. 

Similarweb’s benchmarking features also make it easy to understand how your site measures up against competitors. Easily compare data such as monthly visitor numbers and time spent on site to get a feel for where you stand.

Similarweb: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost? 

Free with a premium version available. 

Does it have a free trial? 

Yes. Seven days. 

What makes it unique? 

Similarweb’s competitive benchmarking provides industry-level context making it easier to see where you stand and where improvements can be made.

Website

https://www.similarweb.com 

Adbeat

Adbeat will reveal your competitor’s advertising and marketing strategy. It will also identify their best converting ad copy, landing pages, and sales funnels. You can then take those successful ideas and create your own, more profitable ad campaigns. Adbeat also goes behind the adverts, to discover how ads were purchased and which platforms or publishers displayed the ads. 

If you’re an agency, use Adbeat to uncover what your client’s competition is doing. Or, use it to see what copy, landing pages and publishers are most profitable. It can also be used as a lead gen tool because you can see which companies are already spending money on digital marketing.

Adbeat: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost? 

$249 – $349/mo. 

Does it have a free trial?

No. 

What makes it unique? 

If you’re looking to advertise with new platforms and want to know which converts best without spending your own money, Adbeat can help. It makes light work of  discovering new sources of high-quality traffic by telling you where competitors advertise.

Website

https://adbeat.com 

MOZ

Moz is one of the best-known competitor analysis tools. As a complete toolset of both free and paid-for tools, you can use it to benchmark your rankings against competitors. Use it to audit competitor websites or explore competitor link profiles to find new opportunities for your site. 

MozPro can help you improve your on-page content with custom suggestions based on what high-ranking pages are doing that you aren’t. The keyword research tool will tell you which search terms are generating traffic for your rivals. You can then plug keyword gaps by incorporating those exact phrases in your campaigns.

Moz: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost? 

$99 – $599/mo. 

Does it have a free trial? 

Yes. 30 days. 

What makes it unique? 

Enter your domain name, and MOZ will tell you who your true SEO competitors are. It does this by identifying domains competing for the same search results as your own site.

Website 

https://moz.com

Buzzsumo 

If your competitors have a strong content game, BuzzSumo is the tool you need to level up your strategy. Use its Content Analyzer to discover the most popular content on any given topic and then use that insight to refine your own approach. You can also enter a competitor’s web address to discover the most popular content on that domain. From there, you can see how much engagement each piece of content has generated and how it’s performing on social media. 

A dedicated Facebook tool allows you to compare your page with competitors. Use this to understand what works, and discover influencers to refine your social activity further.

BuzzSumo: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost? 

$99 – $299/mo.

Does it have a free trial? 

Yes. 30 days. 

What makes it unique? 

You can easily see the best performing and most engaging content from across the web by adding that term to the Content Analyzer. Or use the Trending Content tool to see what’s hot right now to inform your content strategy. 

Website

https://buzzsumo.com

Pathmatics

If you’re a brand, you can use Pathmatics to aid in your advertising decision-making. Use it to learn what messages competitors are using and how they are targeting audiences. It will also help you to understand how they are choosing publishers, what they’re spending, and how many impressions they’re receiving. 

By getting a clear picture of competitor ad strategies, you can revisit your own ad creatives, targeting options, and channel selection. This will ensure you aren’t operating at a disadvantage. You can also use it to quickly see what promotional offers rivals are running and what creative they are using across social media, ad networks, and the wider Internet landscape.

For agencies, you can use those same tools to unpick the strategies your clients’ competitors are successfully deploying. Then, use that information to perfect your own approach. 

Pathmatics: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost? 

Pricing on request.

Does it have a free trial?

No.

What makes it unique?

You can quickly get a snapshot of the most compelling ad creatives across various channels. Place that in context with data gathered around ad spending, buying strategy, and media placement. 

Website

https://www.pathmatics.com

Social Blade 

If you’re keen to know how your rivals are performing on social media, Social Blade will tell you exactly how popular your competitors are. It covers a wide range of channels, including TikTok, Facebook, Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram. By choosing a network and adding the social media handle, you’ll be able to access a snapshot of that profile’s social media activity. Stats include follower gains and losses, the average number of comments, engagement rank, average likes, and new posts. 

Social Blade: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost? 

Free – $99.99/mo. 

Does it have a free trial?

No.

What makes it unique? 

You can compare a number of competitors directly against each other for any supported social network.  Social Blade also keeps a day-by-day record of follower gains and losses. 

Website

https://socialblade.com

Phlanx 

Phlanx is an Instagram engagement calculator. Input any Instagram handle to learn how many interactions, likes, and comments that account earns from each post. You can use this information to keep tabs on your competitors and monitor their social strategy’s success. To go deeper, benchmark your own performance against your closest rivals. 

Other useful tools include the option to track brand mentions. This means you can easily see what’s being said about your competitors online and capitalize on any negative sentiment. For YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, you can create social media audits for competitor profiles to analyze performance and learn from their mistakes. 

Phlanx: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost?  

$25 – $50/mo. 

Does it have a free trial? 

Yes. 30 days.  

What makes it unique? 

The engagement calculator function and ability to compare results across multiple competitors make it easy to see which brands have the most successful social media strategies. You can then use the audit function or additional competitor analysis tools to go deeper and pinpoint gaps in your approach. 

Website

https://phlanx.com 

Sprout Social

If you’re looking to improve your social media performance, you can use Sprout Social to see what competitors are doing across their social channels. Use it to track competitor posts and engagement levels to get ideas for your content and benchmark their activity against your own. 

The included social media listening tool means you can also explore what’s being said online about your competitors and compare it with your share of voice. This activity can shed light on what competitors are doing right and wrong, allowing you to adjust your strategy accordingly. 

Sprout Social: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost? 

$89 – $279/mo. 

Does it have a free trial?

Yes. 30 days. 

What makes it unique? 

Ease of social listening means you can automate the process of keeping tabs on what’s being said about competitors online. Use that intel to tailor your content accordingly. 

Website

https://sproutsocial.com 

SEMrush

With dedicated tools for SEO, content marketing, PPC, and social media, SEMrush really digs deep into competitor strategies across the board. Use the Domain Overview feature to explore your rivals’ SEO strategies by checking keywords they’re ranking for. Or, explore where their traffic is coming from and understand how well they perform on different devices. 

Helpful Keyword Gap and Backlink Gap features make it quick and easy to see where your site is missing out and how to close that gap. This means you can shut down any advantage your competitors currently enjoy over your domain.  

On the PPC side, use SEMrush to identify your closest competitors, uncover which keywords they’re bidding on and review their ad content. 

SEMrush: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost? 

$119.95 – $449.95/mo. 

Does it have a free trial? 

Yes. Seven days. 

What makes it unique? 

SEMrush offers more than 55 different tools for competitor research, SEO, PPC, and social media marketing. It’s a versatile suite of solutions for marketers and agencies. 

Website

https://www.semrush.com  

Citation Tracker

Citation tracker makes light work of building and studying any competitor’s citation profile. You can enter their business information for a complete list of all their citations. This makes it easy to uncover new citation opportunities to help in your local SEO strategy. It also removes any local SEO or referral traffic advantage they may enjoy by being visible on a site where you don’t currently have a presence. 

Citation Tracker will also show you the top business mentions five of your most important competitors have built that you don’t have. This opens the door to you creating a more hyper-focused presence. 

Citation Tracker: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost? 

From $39/mo. 

Does it have a free trial?

Yes. 14 days. 

What makes it unique? 

Citation Tracker removes the time-consuming manual legwork of finding new citation opportunities and managing existing citation profiles. You also get access to the brilliant collection of local ranking tools like Local Rank Tracker and Local Search Grid too, all in one platform.

Website

https://www.brightlocal.com/local-seo-tools/auditing/citation-tracker/

You need to come up with unique, interesting, and topical themes which provide useful information to the reader. Source images. Create video.  Pull together infographics or slide shows. Plus, you must ensure it all fits in with your SEO strategy, resonates with your audience, and goes live on a regular basis. 

Oh, and it should also be highly shareable, attract links and be a hit on social media. 

That’s a tall order. 

Adding a few select content marketing tools to your existing collection of local SEO tools can make life much easier.  For more tips and tools, don’t forget to check out our other local SEO resources or read our content marketing guides.

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo helps you to understand what content performs best for virtually any topic. If you’re stuck for ideas or aren’t sure if there is much interest in a particular topic, this can be a huge help. 

You can also use Buzzsumo to find influencers/bloggers and more. You can filter by type of content, type of publisher, language, and more. Almost every kind of content is covered, so you can specify whether you want to check popularity by format. Options include interviews, how-to articles, press releases, and even podcasts. You can see social shares, the number of backlinks, and how evergreen each piece of content is at a glance.

Buzzsumo: Cost, Trial, and Features 

How much does it cost?

$99 – $299/mo.

Does it have a free trial?

Yes. 30 days.

What makes it unique? 

BuzzSumo allows you to see which pieces of content are the most popular for any topic under the sun. Just input a keyword or topic name for useful content insights such as number of social media shares per channel. 

Website

https://buzzsumo.com  

NinjaOutreach

One of the biggest challenges for today’s content teams is connecting with the right influencers to amplify content visibility. If you want to add influencers to your marketing mix, NinjaOutreach is an invaluable content marketing tool.

NinjaOutreach is an influencer CRM with a search engine-style interface that seriously streamlines what can be a massively time-consuming manual process. You can use it to search through Instagram and YouTube influencers from any niche or country in seconds. Automated outreach and follow-ups reduce the need to email, and you can manage and track each prospect via tags, statuses, notes, and email analytics with the built-in CRM tool. 

NinjaOutreach: Cost, Trial, and Features 

How much does it cost? 

$155 – $459/mo. 

Does it have a free trial? 

Yes. Seven days.

What makes it unique? 

You can refine your search by the engagement metrics that matter most to your campaign, saving hours of time. As well as filtering out influencers that don’t match your criteria, you can immediately see each influencer’s cost per post. 

Website 

https://ninjaoutreach.com 

Snagit

Snagit from TechSmith is an oldie but a goodie. You can use Snagit to capture images on your computer screen and annotate the images with arrows, circles, text, and other markups. You can even create short videos. The annotation tools the Snagit Editor offers are fantastic: you can add call-outs, and words, resize images, and more. 

Snagit is a useful tool for internal communication too. For example, rather than giving lengthy email feedback, you can quickly record your screen to share ideas and thoughts.

Snagit: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost?

$62.99

Does it have a free trial? 

Yes. 15 days.

What makes it unique? 

After capturing your screen, you can add additional context to the grab, including text markup and images. 

Website

https://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.html 

Bigstock

Finding good quality images to match your content can be challenging, especially when you’re a very active content marketer. Of course, you don’t want the same old stock photos that everyone uses but having a photographer on staff isn’t realistic for many businesses. 

Bigstock has great images and videos that you can use in ebooks, lead magnets, presentations, blog posts, and emails. A handy directory-style index provides images and videos collated by keyword or subject matter. 

All images are supplied with a royalty-free license, so you’re free to use them for marketing and advertising purposes.

Bigstock: Cost, Trial, and Features 

How much does it cost?

$79 – $99/mo. 

Does it have a free trial? 

Yes. Seven days.

What makes it unique? 

The huge library of more than 118 million images means you’re sure to find exactly the right photo, no matter how obscure the topic.  

Website

https://www.bigstockphoto.com

Pexels

Ever wanted to find free stock photos worthy of a pro photographer’s Instagram feed? Look no further than this excellent content marketing tool. Pexels offers high-quality and effortlessly cool free photos for use across your online channels. 

Just search using your topic (or use the handy predefined ‘Popular Searches’ section) and find the right hi-res photo for your needs. Attribution requirements are clearly labeled on each photo, so it’s not a chore to find out if you have to give credit when publishing the image online. 

As well as photos, Pexels has a library of free stock videos which can be searched in a similar manner.

Pexels: Cost, Trial, and Features 

How much does it cost? 

Free.

Does it have a free trial? 

N/A

What makes it unique? 

The thematic search capability makes light work of shortlisting appropriate photos or video content. 

Website

https://www.pexels.com/ 

Infogram

If you’re investing a lot in original research, it makes sense to present it well in a visual format that catches the eye immediately. With Infogram, you can easily create stunning infographics, charts, and maps that boost visitor engagement on your website or blog. 

A library of animations makes quick work of adding special effects such as zoom or flips. Analytics are also included so that you can track viewer demographics, shares, and actions, such as any links clicked on or any tabs or legends viewed.  

You can create interactive marketing reports, sales collateral, and even build interactive dashboards connected to your data.

Infogram: Cost, Trial, and Features 

How much does it cost? 

Free – $149/mo.

Does it have a free trial? 

The basic package is free to use.

What makes it unique? 

Content creation comes with analytics capability so you can monitor how well your content is being received. Metrics tracked include time spent viewing the content, links clicked, and shares.  

Website

https://infogram.com

HotJar

Whilst Hotjar isn’t a traditional content tool, it is incredibly useful for enhancing and analyzing your existing content marketing efforts. As well as offering poll and survey options that you can embed on your site, Hotjar allows you to analyze the success of your existing content by setting up heat-mapping reports. These are great for seeing where users have clicked, moved, and scrolled on any of your pages.

Hotjar: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost? 

Free – $80/mo.

Does it have a free trial?

The basic package is free to use.

What makes it unique? 

Hotjar visualizes user behavior so it’s easy to understand how visitors are interacting with your site. A real-time suggestion box means you can easily gather feedback from users on your site.   

Website

https://www.hotjar.com 

Piktochart

With a focus on simplicity and ease of use, Piktochart is the go-to infographic, report, and chart-making tool for those dealing with large-scale or quick turnaround content. There’s also a video editor for recording and editing videos for use online and across social media. 

A lot of the speed comes from the ability to pick one of a large selection of handcrafted templates. In addition, the included collaboration features mean teams can work together more efficiently, making this a handy addition to your library of content marketing tools. 

Piktochart: Cost, Trial, and Features 

How much does it cost? 

Free – $14/mo. 

Does it have a free trial? 

The basic package is free to use.

What makes it unique? 

The drag-and-drop interface means no training is required. Plus, the video editing allows for videos to be edited in the same way as you would a text document. 

Website 

https://piktochart.com

Camtasia

Camtasia is a hugely popular screen recording and video editing software tool bordering on the industry standard for screen capture. The familiar timeline-style editing area and the ability to pull in a vast range of file types make it a fuss-free tool to use. Add professional-looking effects to take your videos to the next level. 

A library of video templates and themes means it’s easy to get started. There’s also a library of transitions that you can drag and drop to improve your video’s flow. Annotations such as callouts and shapes are also included, along with royalty-free music clips. 

Camtasia: Cost, Trial, and Features  

How much does it cost? 

$299 year one. $50 per year thereafter. 

Does it have a free trial?

Yes. 30 days.  

What makes it unique? 

Camtasia is simple to use and comes with templates, themes, audio clips and other tools pre-loaded. This makes creating videos without prior experience less daunting. 

Website

https://www.techsmith.com/video-editor.html 

Designrr

Want to create a professionally designed ebook as a lead magnet? Designrr automatically takes a blog post and creates amazing-looking ebooks that you can use to capture visitor attention and get leads. You can also use it to create flipbooks to share online with no technical knowledge required. Additionally, there is now an option to create transcripts from audio files, podcast episodes, videos, or webinars. 

Designrr: Cost, Trial, and Features 

How much does it cost? 

$29 – $99/mo. 

Does it have a free trial?

No. 

What makes it unique?

Designrr can take content from your website, or document upload and turn it into a professional-looking ebook or flipbook in just a few minutes. You don’t need any graphic design skills or technical knowledge. 

Website

https://designrr.io 

Canva

Canva is often named one of the best tools for content marketing, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a powerful graphic design tool designed for people who aren’t graphic designers. 

You can create almost any visual content item, from ebooks and leaflets to blog headers and social media graphics. What’s more, you don’t need any graphic design knowledge. Canva has a range of templates you can use as a starting point and edit to your liking. You can also create a brand kit and plan your designs using the content planning calendar. 

Canva: Cost, Trial, and Features 

How much does it cost? 

$119 – $149/year. 

Does it have a free trial?

There’s a Free version that can be used at no cost. 

What makes it unique? 

After choosing the type of content you want to create, Canva will create a canvas that’s the perfect size, whether you’re using a template or designing from a blank page. For example, all social media designs are already sized to the optimal dimensions.

Website

www.canva.com 

Unsplash

Whether you’re creating a blog image or a presentation, having great images to hand is non-negotiable. Unsplash is a free image library that has over three million high-quality pictures to choose from. 

Professional photographers, hobbyists, and brands upload images so image styles vary. All photos are free to use for commercial purposes with no attribution required. You can search by keyword or browse one of the ready-created topic catalogs.

Unsplash: Cost, Trial, and Features 

How much does it cost?  

Free.

Does it have a free trial? 

N/A.

What makes it unique? 

All photos that appear on Unsplash are hand-selected by editors to ensure they’re of the right quality. 

Website

www.unsplash.com 

Grammarly

When selecting your tools for content marketing, it’s well worth investing in a spelling and grammar checker. Even though programs like Word offer spell check, you’ll want to go a little deeper if you’re serious about creating editorial-ready pieces. 

Grammarly checks for spelling and grammar mistakes and reviews your text for delivery, clarity, tone, and engagement. Any errors it finds are flagged for your review so you can choose to incorporate the suggested improvement or dismiss the proposed change. 

Grammarly: Cost, Trial, and Features 

How much does it cost? 

$12 – $15/mo. 

Does it have a free trial?

There’s a free version of the tool which offers basic spelling and grammar checks.

What makes it unique? 

Download the app to your desktop, mobile, or tablet, and it will check emails, social media updates, and other text automatically as you type. 

Website

www.grammarly.com 

Adobe Photoshop

Created more than 30 years ago, Adobe Photoshop is one of the original content marketing tools from back when the Internet was barely an idea. It has advanced image editing, retouching, and special effects functionality. You can also use Photoshop to create graphics and 3D artwork.  

Professional photographers use Photoshop so it has every image editing tool you could want. Because of this, there is a learning curve. Using it for simple tasks such as cropping and resizing is straightforward. However, if you want to perform more detailed work, such as removing backgrounds or adjusting colors, you’ll need to invest some time in training.

Adobe Photoshop: Cost, Trial, and Features 

How much does it cost?

$19.99 – $54.99/mo.  

Does it have a free trial?

Yes. Seven days.

What makes it unique? 

It offers pinpoint precision image editing with an array of professional tools.

Website

https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html 

Contentools

Are you frustrated by missing emails and complex or out-of-date spreadsheets? If so, the content marketing platform Contentools can bring some order to the chaos. Ideal for large and busy teams, it brings together content planning, management, collaboration, and publishing into a single centralized platform. 

You can use it to deliver briefings to team members, brainstorm ideas, track the status of content in production, and schedule go-live dates. You can also use it to edit content, check optimization levels and make audience personas readily available to your team. 

Contentools: Cost, Trial, and Features 

How much does it cost? 

$199 – $999/mo. 

Does it have a free trial?

There’s a free version limited to one project.

What makes it unique? 

Contentools bring content strategy, planning, creation, and scheduling together in a single interface. It’s designed for collaboration between team members, making it ideal for remote and hybrid teams.

Website

https://contentools.com 

Optimizely

Becoming a data-driven marketer is much easier with Optimizely. A sophisticated content marketing tool, it allows you to perform A/B tests quickly and easily. Use it to understand what kind of experiences and content your audience prefers. 

Test out different headlines, images, and opening paragraphs to see which performs best before rolling out your perfected piece to a broader audience. A/B testing removes the guesswork from content creation, leading to improved outcomes from your content activity.

Optimizely: Cost, Trial, and Features 

How much does it cost? 

Optimizely offers a custom quote after assessing your needs.

Does it have a free trial?

There is a free version for small teams. 

What makes it unique? 

In addition to making A/B testing quicker, you can create exclusion groups for each test. This means you can safely run multiple tests, on the same page, at the same time.

Website

https://www.optimizely.com  

Answer The Public

As a content marketer, you’ll likely feel tremendous pressure to come up with super helpful, highly valuable, and relevant content. Adding Answer The Public to your content marketing toolkit can help to alleviate some of that pressure. First, it listens in to three billion Google search queries each day. Then, it turns those queries into useful phrases and generates every possible question that search users might ask. 

This treasure trove of suggestions is an invaluable asset if you’re looking for optimized, targeted, and super-relevant content ideas. 

Answer The Public: Cost, Trial, and Features 

How much does it cost? 

$99 – $199/mo.

Does it have a free trial?

You can perform limited searches for free on the website.

What makes it unique? 

The questions Answer The Public generates are things that you may not come up with yourself. With just a few clicks, that means you have dozens of potential content ideas to work with – all based on queries and concerns that your target audience has right now. 

Website

https://answerthepublic.com 

Wistia

Creating professional video content that doesn’t take days to accomplish can feel like a tall order. Luckily, there is a growing number of content marketing tools that speed up the process, even if you aren’t an accomplished video editor. 

Wistia is a video marketing platform. You can record videos directly from your desktop and then edit to give them a professional edge. There’s also a customizable video player, and you can easily embed your creations on your website. In addition, videos are automatically optimized to increase your visibility in search and across social media. 

Wistia: Cost, Trial, and Features 

How much does it cost? 

$19 – $319/year. 

Does it have a free trial?

Yes. You can create 10 videos at no cost.

What makes it unique? 

The Turnstile plug-in means you can collect email addresses directly from your videos to build your lead pipeline. 

Website

https://wistia.com/product 

Placeit

Creating professional-looking designs can be a big ask if you don’t have unlimited resources for photoshoots, models, and so on. Placeit solves that problem with an extensive library of mockup templates that are free for commercial use. 

There are more than 85,000 design, music, and image assets. The ready-to-use templates can also be customized so you can drag and drop your own assets to create something on-brand and totally unique. If you don’t want to use a template, there are pre-sized blank canvases so you can create a design from scratch without worrying about the dimensions. 

Placeit: Cost, Trial, and Features 

How much does it cost? 

$7.47/mo. 

Does it have a free trial?

Yes. There’s a free option that permits the use of some templates, audio, and images.

What makes it unique? 

Placeit says it has the largest collection of mockups on the Internet. 

Website

https://placeit.net  

According to the State of the Connected Customer report by Salesforce, 80% of customers argue that the experience a business provides is as good as their product or the service they deliver.

A purchase happens in stages. By identifying what happens in each stage, you understand what a potential customer is doing, what they need, and their pain points. 

While working on your client’s local businesses, your efforts are focused on providing relevant information to potential customers throughout the customer buying journey. It makes it easier for them to make informed choices and, in the process, helps you maximize conversions and revenue. 

In this post, we’ll talk about how you can optimize your efforts to improve the results you’re getting. Whether you’re optimizing local SEO or your customer journey, it doesn’t require a ton of expertise or effort. Yet, this may be the thing that has a huge impact on conversions and revenue. 

What is the customer journey and why does it matter to local businesses?

The customer journey is the buying process that starts with awareness of a service or product and ends with the purchase. The customer journey happens in five stages: awareness, evaluation, decision, loyalty, and referral.

A local business relies on an offline and online presence to drive traffic and acquire customers. 

An offline presence benefits from word of mouth and a strategic location. However, the terrain changes when it comes to relying on your client’s online presence to drive traffic and conversions. 

To stay competitive, local businesses need to create a solid online presence by understanding and optimizing the customer journey and tracking conversions. Tim Brown, CEO, and founder of Minneapolis-based Hook Agency explains; 

“If we don’t really examine how our best customers buy, we miss giant opportunities. For instance, I see a ton of local businesses whose websites seem to assume that the people already know them by the time they get to their website, meaning there aren’t really quick and obvious trust factors like badges, testimonials and ratings from well-known platforms.”

For local businesses, optimizing their customer journeys helps them identify different opportunities to help their customers have a better buying experience. For example, potential buyers who are in the decision stage want to know whether they can trust the business. And, as Tim pointed out, having trust factors responds to what these potential customers need. 

When growing the client’s local business, you want to make the best use of the resources available to make sure that you build a solid online presence for them. As you do this, you don’t want to direct the resources you have on initiatives that push you to spend more money without a guarantee of consistent ROI. Tim goes on to explain:

 “Another example is that the ‘Top of Funnel’ content often gets neglected and giant lead aggregator sites are out here aggressively answering every common question in the buying process, so the homeowner will be primed and ready to enter their contact information into their familiar and friendly branded website. You deserve to have that lead directly on your site, not pay Home Advisor or its 15 sub-sites like Angi. They often advertise for companies’ names and sell that lead back to the company.”  

How To Optimize Customer Journey Stages to Grow Your Client’s Business 

The collection of events occurring in each stage of the customer journey reveals what’s going on in the potential customer’s mind, and their behavior helps you predict the questions they have, and what they feel and think. Think with Google refers to these events as moments , stating that “consumers want what they want, when they want it and they’re drawn to brands that deliver on their needs.’’

Here’s how to be present, useful, and accountable:

Awareness  

The awareness stage typically reflects “I want to know’’ and “I want to do’’ moments, where the searcher is looking for information to understand their problem better.

While this marks the beginning of their customer journey, the information they find on their Google searches will determine how they proceed. 

If you’re relying on content to drive awareness of your client’s local services, you want to make sure that your content ranks in the SERPs. 

In addition to optimizing it for search engines, you also need to match the intent and context of the searcher. Amanda Jordan, Local SEO Director at RicketyRoo Inc explains why; 

“Don’t make potential customers search for answers. One of the most important parts of local SEO content is to understand the intent of the custom at each stage and to adequately fulfill it. A service page or location page with no opportunities to contact a business is a missed opportunity. Blog posts that focus on generic content that is not local specific or doesn’t answer the most common questions related to the topic doesn’t provide a good experience.”

Content that matches the intent and context of the searcher delivers a great user experience. A spot check of the results a searcher gets when looking for lawn care tips reveals a featured snippet: 

video content:

 …and written content: 

These results show that searchers want content related to this keyword in different formats to help them learn more about how to take care of their lawns. 

If you’re only creating written content for your client, consider repurposing it to videos or images and get hold of searchers who prefer consuming content in different formats. 

Amanda Jordan, explains the rationale behind using different content formats:

“Understanding how your target audience searches helps you determine what elements of SEO are most important for your business. For example, though photos in your Google Business profile aren’t a ranking factor, a restaurant with no photos or very few photos will see a drastic difference than a restaurant with several photos. On the other hand, an attorney or locksmith doesn’t need to focus on having hundreds of photos for success.”

By creating different content formats, these assets can then be repurposed for a number of different marketing channels today, such as social media and email marketing. This further increases the chances of boosting awareness of the local business. 

Still, on user experience, 61% of local searchers rely on their mobile devices to search for local businesses, so you want to make sure that your client’s website is optimized for mobile devices. Use a mobile-friendly checker or Google’s own tool to see how your client’s web pages show up on mobile devices.

For written content, make sure it is easy to consume by avoiding lots of distractions such as ads and pop-ups every few seconds. Instead of trying to get hold of your readers at every turn while they’re on the page, make your call to actions clear enough so that readers know the next steps they should take. 

Evaluation and Decision

Evaluation and decision stages capture two moments: “I want to go’’ and “I want to buy”. 

During evaluation, the searcher has probably identified potential service providers comparing them with the competition. If your client’s content did a good job during the awareness stage, then their business has made it to the shortlist. 

In this stage, the comparison might include things such as features of the product or what buyers get with different service packages, pricing, and reviews. 

To stand out, create content around the high-intent keywords they’re using and demonstrate why you’re better than the competition. Tim Brown has this to say about content topics in these stages:

“Another mistake is avoiding ‘spicy’ topics like money. Price is the number one objection in the sales process, but we think avoiding it will help us get MORE customers. We need to talk about the things that affect price. We need to talk about competing solutions, and we need to talk about why we’re more expensive, and other difficult conversations. Instead of putting our head in the sand, we need to act like we would in a real conversation with a prospect and address it head-on because that makes it more likely they will trust us and understand the fundamental components of the deal, not freeze up later when they see our quote.”

When you address these issues head-on in your content, potential customers will start setting the correct internal expectations around the brand, the service, and what to expect when they reach out. 

In addition to tackling spicy topics, share reviews from previous customers to demonstrate credibility and help them overcome any doubts they may have about your client’s service or brand. 

Brightlocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2022 reveals that 77% of consumers “always” or “regularly” read reviews when browsing local businesses so you need to ensure these trust factors are prominently featured on your website and other review platforms. 

Given that some of their searches will include specific locations, make sure that your Google Business Profile listing is accurate and up-to-date. You can also use a business phone service to set up custom phone numbers for different locations or advertising campaigns—letting you see how your efforts are influencing the customer journey for your clients.

Loyalty and Referral

It’s easy to pay more attention to what happens before a searcher becomes a paying customer, and seemingly fail to be proactive about what happens after the sale. 

The first three stages require you to provide content. The last two stages require you to interact with the customer and collect feedback from them. And once the deal is closed, then there’s less need to be proactive about customer interactions, right? 

Wrong.

There’s a lot that goes into earning a customer’s loyalty, and great customer service is one of them.

In addition to advising your client to be responsive to customer inquiries, make sure that the contact information that your client provides is accurate. Provide different channels through which they can get help in case they have any questions. 

You also want to have a consistent flow of feedback from customers so that you can use them on review sites and on different touchpoints, such as landing pages and on the homepage..  98% of potential customers read reviews for local businesses, meaning that what other customers say about your client’s business has an impact on conversion rates. 

Optimize your Customer Buying Journey Now

Understanding how your client’s audience behaves at each stage of the customer buying journey is the first step towards optimizing it to deliver great buying experiences. 

We’ve talked about key moments during the buying journey, how each of these moments fits in with the buying stages, and what you can do to improve your conversions. 

To get started with implementing what we’ve discussed, sign up for Brightlocal’s 14-day trial. Brightlocal offers a suite of local SEO tools for agencies, so you can track your client’s local rankings to help inform you of the next steps.