Local SEO vs National SEO vs Global SEO

There are several types of SEO to consider when it comes to improving your online presence. Each of these strategies – Local SEO, National SEO, and Global SEO – has unique advantages and should be approached with a specific goal. In this article, we’ll take a deeper look at the differences between these three SEO strategies and how they can be used to improve your online visibility.

Local SEO is geared towards optimizing your website for local search results. This type of SEO is perfect for businesses that operate in a specific geographic location and want to attract customers within that area. For example, a restaurant in Vancouver would like to optimize its website for local search results so that customers searching for “restaurant in Vancouver” will find their website. This type of SEO involves optimizing your website for local keywords, building local citations, and creating local business listings.

National SEO is focused on optimizing your website for national search results. This type of SEO is excellent for businesses that operate in multiple locations across the country and want to attract customers from all over the country. For example, a national chain of clothing stores would like to optimize its website for national search results so that customers searching for “clothing stores” will find their website. This type of SEO involves building backlinks from high-authority websites, creating high-quality content and optimizing for national keywords.

Global SEO is geared towards optimizing your website for international search results. This type of SEO is perfect for businesses that operate in multiple countries and want to attract customers from all over the world. For example, an e-commerce store that ships worldwide would like to optimize its website for global search results so that customers searching for their products will find their website. This type of SEO involves creating a multi-language website, building backlinks from international websites, and optimizing for global keywords.

What Are The Differences Between Local SEO vs National SEO vs Global SEO

The fundamentals are very similar: on-page SEO, authority, content, and link building. However, there is nuance, and the SEO strategies that you should use for each version of SEO vary.

Let’s look at what differentiates each type of SEO.

What Sets Local SEO Apart?

Including the local pack is the most notable difference between the two types of SEO (national and global).

Local Pack

Every local business can appear twice (three times if you include paid ads). In both the local pack and organic search results.

Your Google Business Profile and reviews significantly impact the local pack. It is also heavily influenced by geographical location. If you try to rank for Dallas lawn care but live in Fort Worth, you’ll need help breaking through the local pack.

To rank in multiple cities, you can create city pages using organic search results.

Citations

Citations are another distinctive feature of local SEO. I say somewhat because citations can be used to help rank non-local businesses. Matt Diggity, one of my favourite SEOs, encourages content sites to use citations.

They are, however, primarily used by and for local SEO marketing.

Citations are simple: anywhere your company’s name, website, or address is published on the internet is a citation. For example, listing your business on Yelp would be considered a citation.

Citations are backlinks, even if they aren’t particularly strong. Furthermore, most user-generated links are spammy. Citations are an exception because local directories add value to the internet.

Reviews

Every local business should make an effort to generate reviews. I recommend using QR codes to generate Google reviews.

Of course, reviews aren’t limited to local businesses; for example, e-commerce stores frequently collect product reviews, as do businesses that serve a national audience.

On the other hand, local reviews are more critical in terms of SEO because they drive local pack rankings.

Location-Based Social Media Platforms

In every market and industry, there are trusted review sites.

Yelp is the most well-known location-based platform. You may need to realize that you can rank for your keywords on sites like Yelp to help drive traffic to your website.

Yelp Restaurant Ranking

Upcity and Clutch are both popular platforms for digital marketing. They frequently rank high for highly relevant keywords all over the country. For the highly relevant keyword “Digital Marketing Vancouver,” Clutch ranks first, and Upcity ranks third.

At the time of writing, we are ranked #15 on Upcity for Digital Marketing Vancouver. They are typically a combination of pay-to-play and traditional local SEO efforts. We could only rank #8 for that keyword because the first through seventh positions are taken by agencies that have chosen higher partner levels.

We need to generate reviews on their platform to rank higher.

Is it worthwhile to invest in these platforms?

It all depends on how much traffic their pages receive. Business owners need to be aware of Clutch or Upcity, and they will only find those pages if they rank well in search engines.

If Yelp, Angi’s List, Thumbtack, and other similar platforms dominate your target keywords, consider investing in those platforms.

Building Local Links

Quantifying the value of a specific link is extremely difficult, but SEOs generally agree on several important factors:

What is the domain authority?

If everything else is equal, you will get a link from The New York Times rather than from this website.

How much traffic does the website receive?

A site with millions of visitors per month is more credible than one with only a few dozen.

How important is the domain?

If you were an SEO blog, you might prefer to get a link from this site rather than Vogue. Google values relevance. If a site that writes about similar topics links to you, Google interprets this as a strong signal that your site is credible.

Using this logic, a local website is highly relevant for local link building. If you operate in Denver, you will want links from sites that also cover Denver-related topics. These could be links from local bloggers, the chamber of commerce, local news sites, and so on.

Keyword Research

Local keyword research is different for a local business. When people search for a local good or service, they have local keyword intent.

This unlocks a plethora of keywords previously unavailable to local businesses. It also implies that you must check both implicit and explicit keywords. Implicit keywords include the location without the user using a location modifier.

For example, if I search for “shoe shop” from Vancouver the results will be heavily skewed toward shoe shops in Vancouver.

A detailed keyword search includes the location modifier.

“Shoe shop Vancouver ,” for example.

A local SEO strategy must consider the shoe shop and shoe shop Vancouver searches. The trick is to ensure that when you look at the search volume for “shoe shop,” you are only looking at the relevant geographic area (e.g., Vancouver).

What Sets National SEO Apart?

National Brands’ Top of the Funnel and Content Marketing Strategies

While local SEO campaigns are frequently less competitive than national SEO campaigns, the ability to target much broader keywords is a significant advantage of a national SEO strategy.

Rankings for “IVF” would not have much upside if my client was an IVF clinic in Vancouver. The only user who might become a customer is willing to travel to Vancouver. This will likely limit the pool of potential customers to a smaller geographical area.

In contrast, if my client had IVF clinics all over the country, ranking for the term “IVF” would create significant value for that company. If I have clinics in Canada’s most populous cities, I can service most users looking for IVF across the country.

This gives me access to almost every top-of-funnel keyword in my niche. While ranking for a single keyword may be more difficult, investing in SEO to drive tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of visitors per month, becomes feasible.

Keyword Research for NATIONAL SEO

Building out a keyword research strategy for a national SEO campaign is often easier if I can target a much more extensive range of potential topics. The number of long tails (hyper-specific keywords) we could potentially target grows exponentially.

As our potential keyword pool expands, so does our ability to find high-volume, low-competition keywords. Of course, this is important because it gives us the best chance of ranking for relevant keywords that will drive traffic.

Increasing Topical Relevance for National Businesses Through Content Marketing

It is much easier to justify investing in content marketing, which will significantly increase the website’s topical relevance.

This a simple example to help you understand the concept of topical relevance.

Our company primarily serves SMBs, many of which are local. Our primary services include SEO, PPC, and website development. We want to appear in searches for local SEO.

The more high-quality content I create about local SEO, the more topical relevance I establish and the more likely I will rank for that group of keywords (in this case, anything related to local SEO).

In my experience, only some local businesses try to create high-quality content. We always look at the existing content assets when we conduct a website analysis.

We typically discover the following for local businesses:

• Aside from the informational pages, there needs to be more content (service pages, about pages, FAQs etc.)
• Content that needs more focus. Articles about a company Christmas party from 2012.
• A slew of content that has no chance of ranking for the keywords it is aimed at.

This is usually because they need to see the value in investing in top-of-funnel keywords when most readers are far outside their geographic area.

Because investing in content marketing is often a wise use of marketing dollars for national brands, they are uniquely positioned to build topical relevance and become authorities in their space.

What Sets Global SEO Apart?

Different Countries Have Different Levels of Competition For The Same Keyword As you might expect, Google will show different results for specific keywords if I’m in Canada versus the United States.

It is much easier in Canada to rank an e-commerce store for “Buy Collagen Peptides” than in the United States. More brands and businesses compete for a larger audience in the United States than in Canada.

SEO strategies for multiple languages

Just as it is easier to rank a keyword in Canada than in the United States, it is easier to rank a keyword in Spanish than in English. This also applies to Portuguese, Italian, German, and French.

You can create language-specific pages to rank for those keywords if you sell goods or services in countries where another language is spoken. Although it has yet to be widely known, there are significant volumes of Spanish keyword searches in the United States. This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the United States, as there is a sizable population of Spanish speakers, but we only consider it.

“colágeno,” the Spanish word for collagen, has been searched 27,000 times in the United States alone. It is searched 400k times per month globally.

What Are the Differences Between Local, National, and Global SEO?

Excellent search engine optimization results are always the result of a few key elements:

Do you have the necessary content?

• Do you understand search intent?
• Are your pages of high quality?
•  Are they providing a good user experience?

Do you have a solid on-page SEO strategy?

• Is your site’s architecture clear? Is your site reasonably fast to load, mobile optimized, and has good core web vitals? Is it free of technical flaws such as 404 errors, duplicate content, and thin pages?

Have you established any trust or authority?

• Do you have any online feedback for your company or products? What do those testimonials say about you? Do you have any links from reputable websites?

While local SEO strategies will differ from national SEO strategies, quality will ultimately triumph. Quality delivered consistently over long periods is your competitive advantage.

• Produce high-quality content.
• Make sure your website’s technical SEO is in good working order.
• Obtain links from legitimate websites that generate traffic.

Should Small Businesses Invest in Search Engine Optimization?

Although it may seem counterintuitive coming from an SEO agency, some small businesses should avoid investing in SEO.

In conclusion, Local SEO, National SEO, and Global SEO are different strategies that should be approached with a specific goal. Local SEO is perfect for businesses that operate in an exact geographic location and want to attract customers within that area, National SEO is great for companies that operate in multiple locations across a country and want to attract customers from all over the country, and Global SEO is perfect for businesses that operate in multiple countries and want to attract customers from all over the world. To succeed in SEO, it’s essential to determine which SEO strategy is right for your business and to work with a professional SEO agency like Quiresoft Technologies.

We recommend that clients schedule an exploratory call to discuss their options. We recommend PPC or SEO if it is a good fit. If it isn’t, we’ll have an open discussion and point you in the right direction. Please click here if you’d like to schedule a call with me.