Shauns recent article about an “experiment” in Manchester got me thinking I see a lot of SEO advertising their services as “SEO Glasgow”, SEO NJ or “SEO Ayrshire” but does it do any good to target local businesses? More importantly should I be looking to target SEO Nottinghamshire?
I got in contact with some SEO friends from around the country (UK) to ask them about their experiences with attracting local business. Specifically I asked them 3 questions :
- What rough percentage of your business comes from your local area?
(say 50 miles of your business) - Do you specifically target your local area to attract business?
- Given the most companies will have started targeting local businesses have you increased or decreased the amount of attention you give to local companies?
Percentage of business coming from local area
“A very very small percentage to be honest (I never need to pitch to random companies), we let people get in touch first. Most of the clients I've worked with who got in touch were American, more-so than European clients.” Viper Chill
On the whole the average total business from local areas within 50 miles was less then 10% with only 1 company having more then 80% of their business within such a small area. Those repolled and asked how much of their business is UK based and not just in the 50 miles the percentage of business rose to an average 70% with several companies having 100% UK clients.
Do you specifically target local businesses
“Yes I do target my local area for business, my company is listed in Google Local and local business directories and I have optimised my site for SEO and search engine optimisation Lancaster, Lancashire and England.” SEO Lancaster
Nearly 70% of respondents came back saying they specifically targeted the local area as well as nationally. When a smaller number of those polled were asked if they advertised locally online or offline nearly 60% used some sort of offline marketing campaign within the local area.
Have you increased or decreased your attention to your local companies
“I never really started off wanting to target locally - my aim has always
been nationally - I know such a big ask for a small company like ourselves
but its the table we want to be sitting at. I give every enquiry the same
amount of attention anyway no matter if its local, regional or national.” SEO Ayrshire
Overall most companies asked said they were focusing on national and regional clients though are happy to take on clients from the local area. Only a small percentage was continuing to focus their efforts on the local area. The overall feel was that as a company grew so did its target area.
So most SEO companies talked to did target local and regional areas but very few of these companies had a large portion of local clients. Very few of those asked were they hoping to increase there local targeting it seems like a small paradox has occurred!
To try and see if targeting the local area works, I got in contact with our UK clients and asked them a couple of quick question.
- Did you choose us because we were local to you?
- Would you consider a company based primarily on it’s location?
We also asked a third question to those clients within 50 miles of us, Did you know where we were based before contacting us?
Did you choose us because we were local?
Only 1 client thought our location was of importance to them, and to be fair this is not totally surprising they are based less then 10 metres away! On the whole most clients asked thought it was unimportant.
Do you consider location important?
Nearly all when pushed did not consider location to be important but the majority felt they would not work with a company outside of the UK. Sadly as is always the case when asking such questions the debate of “out sourcing” to India came up with the majority opposed to having work done by such companies even at a significantly reduced cost.
Did you check our location before contact?
Nearly all asked said yes they had heard of us and knew we were local to them, however they insisted that this was not a major factor in hiring us.
So I want to finish with another fun irony being based in Nottinghamshire I did a Google search for Nottinghamshire SEO the results produced this website, specialising in SEOing British sites for the Chinese markets.
Do you optimise your site for the local market and if so why?
If one really wanted to target local clients/local businesses, one should target them directly, as do the large advertising firms.
I’m writiing this from the US, but if I wanted larger local seo firms, I’d directly target them.
Basically, I’d review sources of local advertising such as the print yellow pages, local newspapers, etc.
I’d target the customers with the largest advertising budgets. At the very least, they have the kinds of budgets that can afford a large seo campaign.
If I were advertising myself locally, I’d want more than the clients that see my highly ranked site. I’d want the clients that would make my efforts worthwhile.
Dave
Dave, I don’t really understand your point in relation to the post, the post isn’t about the type of people to target but looking at the practice of local targeting by SEO firms and if it pays dividends.
Certainly from the client point of view the response was that being local didn’t matter as long as they were from the UK (xenophobia or perhaps just sensible practice)
What could be interesting is comparing smaller business and larger ones to see if their is a difference in their response.
Tim:
I wasn’t trying to be negative or provocative. In reference to the 2nd question within the survey….if seo’s/sem’s targeted local business, I’ve just found, after many years of doing so in one particular industry in particular…that if one does target local businesses, it is wiser to target those with larger budgets.
Some don’t care if their seo is performed locally or not; some couldn’t care less if they are meeting face to face with the seo or not.
My experience suggests that targeting local clients may pay dividends. Specifically targeting the larger of those, with a more specific program would probably provide better dividends.
Dave
Didn’t think you were being negative
just confusing but thanks for the clarification though I would think your idea to target larger budgets holds true on a national and international level. It also comes with the strings attached to it, long pay chains, levels of bureaucracy etc
One thing that I didn’t rely expand on in the post was the benefits both tangible and intangible to having a local firm. I like to meet my clients at least once which is a little different if they are on the far side of the world!
Good day Mr. Nash,
First time caller from the states
I’ve found, for us, that it’s generational/demographic. Those in the over 40, blue-collar set (don’t know if this translates to English – specifically, printers, sign-makers, etc.) seem to prefer a belly-to-belly sales approach.
That said, the same age range in the highly educated (and compensated – plastic surgeons, real estate and mortgages) set has no preference. I’ve only run across a few who would intentionally work outside the US, but they’ve been attracted by the lower Asian prices.
I’ll have to start asking the locals if location was part of their decision making. Anecdotally most of the out of towners don’t have a clue where we are.
Glad to have been sphunn over here.
Cheers,
Will
hehe since I’m not a surgeon I’m not a mister
I deliberately didn’t ask my US friends simply as I think the scales are slightly different, I mean in the UK we think an hour drive is a long way away
But its interesting to see if the results are different in other countries. It would particularly be interesting to compare it with countries with unique languages so the choice is restricted to just inside that country.
Yeah, totally – I think I’ll try to rank for “Basque SEO”
Nice post Tim and some interesting comments, we’ve had a decent amount of enquiries ourselves through Oxford SEO related searches. It has to be worth targeting as it doesn’t require too much effort and the quality of leads is normally quite high. Plus it should make the drive a bit shorter to get to meetings!
I do target local very strongly. However, I am finding that most of my business comes from networking rather than local searches. The leads that have come from search haven’t been from local searches, but rather niche industry searches.
However, I haven’t put enough into local clientele to know for sure whether it’s worth pursuing. I am very involved in local search – and am working on a startup that provides local SEO work at an affordable budget. I don’t think that many small business owners appreciate the value of SEO (or the cost).
By the way, that was a good idea Dave!
Kevin – One of Venture Skills partners works with start ups in Cambridge I can imagine the benefits of targeting a city far more then my blatant targeting of a county for example. Anyone interested I have had since this post went live 1 search for SEO Nottinghamshire.
David – Which leads neatly onto your point, leads vs searches having personally never targeted a region it never occurred to me to separate leads and searches. This should have been a question for the SEOs who took part I may well recontact them and see if I can get some stats on the number of local clients and how they were snagged if any at all we snagged from a Google search including their locality.
Hi Tim, interesting post there. I bought different domain variations of kentseo some time back aiming to build on one of them later in the year.
Probably say it’s still usefull to position yourself in the local arena even for the price of a cheap domain and 4-5 page site you’d most likely see a return on the money you spent.
Just from my own experience whenever I mention SEO outside of the internet bubble people’s first question is what does an SEO do? So I do think that local searches will certainly grow over time as it becomes a more recognised term.
Education and education that is targeted is a great sales tool, again an interesting idea for targeting your local area as you can use that connection to sell.
Interesting post Tim.
My experience (a data point of one) is that given the state of the SEO market (at least in the US), all things being equal, you are more likely to get more “national” business v. “local” business. But if you actively target “local” businesses you are probably going to get more of those. I am curious if your friends who targeted locally also did a lot of offline local marketing to attract local clients.
Hi LocalSEO
I let you get away with not reading the rules once before but no more so Hi I am a numptie who can’t read!
Its interesting how and I do it to local immediately makes you think small scale, there of course can be national businesses (lots probably) within the local area which have a remit to choose local.
A good example a bit further north from me There is a regeneration project going on where local businesses are subsidised and helped via various grants to take on local people and smaller firms within the local area to help revive the community. Now the local businesses in the area include 3 major conglomerates who are their specifically to get the grants (rightly or wrongly) but in doing so they are giving lots of smaller firms (SEO businesses etc) who are benefiting.
I guess local = small is a perception we all have, if your local area was silicon valley or indeed the UK equivalent in and around Cambridge or the heart of NY or London. On that note its interesting how little competition there really is for SEO Westminster or W1 SEO.
On your second question most who said they were targeting local businesses were using some sort of offline advertising in addition to targeting local searches
Good thing I have no idea what a numptie is
I’ll do better next time I swear.
About 3 years ago my company used to focus on the local areas; I took charge about a year ago, and now focus on national searches rather than regional ones. We now only have 1 company that is local based; however a few are a little further afield like Manchester. Don’t get me wrong I want to be ranked no 1 for SEO Blackpool or Web Design Blackpool but I think the perception of Local marketing = small would count even more for this town.
Also I have found that the people that do target local terms for Blackpool are smaller and cheaper companies. There are some good companies around here but you tend to get what you pay for and more often than not clients will go for companies that are a lot cheaper than us.
I actually can’t see how companies survive when they target local terms in smaller towns. I don’t feel like there is enough work (or quality work) to go around.
I suppose the one thing we do find is it is easier to convert a lead in the local area than it is further afield as regular face to face meetings with the client is a lot more feasible.
This is interesting a lot of people are equating local to small, me included but I guess that is something we all should look at, for example in my local area we have companies like Siemens and Shell not exactly small companies but both recruit and use where possible from local businesses.
Hi Tim,
Just on a total tangent I see you rocketing up the serps for “SEO Ayrshire” – was this your secret reason all along …
Paul
moi of course not, to be fair I’m plummeting down I did have a spell yesterday at #4 and I’m sitting pretty on SEO Nottinghamshire though it was not exactly over competitive. Still not bad for a post with no one linking to it…
You are sitting at number 2 today…
Cool, though the title was meant more as an in house joke then a real attempt at grabbing the #1 spot of course now my ego may have been fired up just enough to push for the #1 spot but I can say it has so far brought a whopping 7 visits to the site!
Tim,
Great to see an article on Local Search.
I am on the other side of the pond, and I also offer web design and hosting services on top of SEO, so my situation may differ from the one you have presented.
With that said, I have somewhat focused my SEO efforts to a local market in the last 3 months (I can’t say there was any direct focus prior to that) and I have garnered a wealth of business as a result.
The people who have been responding to my marketing want to sit down and speak with the designer or SEO. I am finding more and more of this as well as the relative ease of selling my products or services in person as opposed to over the phone or in a chat conversation.
So my entire marketing strategy has changed. I am becoming the local solution to internet needs. I will then build outward. Apparently there is a very healthy local market where I do business.
I also like that I can target “xx(city) web design” or “xx(city) seo” without adding a bunch of garbage text to my pages/titles/img alts, etc.
Its not a brilliant strategy, it can work, but to be honest its not amazing. I prefer spending my time on other strategies. You can’t do everything!
One of my blogs has been number 1 on G UK for the term SEO Ayrshire for a long time now and I can’t say It’s helped to get one client, although it can be used to show potential clients what can be done.
We are located in Tucson, Arizona. Our whole business is based on local and niche SEO. We are very content to serve the local small business community. It’s a numbers game and we play where the numbers are in our favor.
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