James Roloff

Ranking for top keywords is essential for any business, but it’s especially important for local businesses. Local search engine optimization is a whole different ballgame—and James Roloff is about to show you how to win big at our next Craft Marketing event on Monday, April 30!

James, Sales Director at Powderkeg Web Design, will present “Local SEO: Proven Tactics to Help You Rank Better.” The event will run from 5:30 PM-7:00 PM at ALT Brew. Register today, as only 35 seats are available!

ALT Brew

While many basics of SEO apply to local rankings, James will discuss the importance of different social platforms, local reviews, and one critical factor that can’t be overlooked. In this interview, James provides more background on his upcoming presentation.

You’re going to be talking about local SEO. Is there a big difference between that and a more generalized approach to SEO?

The main difference between local SEO and generalized SEO is that a local SEO strategy requires much more engagement with localized platforms.

With general SEO, if you focus on content and links, you are likely going to succeed over time. Local SEO requires that you actively participate in multiple geographical-based strategies like local social platforms, directory listings, soliciting reviews, and your literal street address.

What are some of the main elements of local SEO?

What’s hard about local SEO is that there are multiple layers of content, platforms, and activities that all add up to a good local SEO ranking. There is not one single wand you can wave and rank well for a keyword that Google deems a local search.

But what’s the big factor? Your address is by far the most important. If you don’t have a physical address next to the person searching, you are going to be fighting an uphill battle. However, with the right strategy in place, you can at least partially compensate for your physical location.

Is this a topic that affects all marketers, or just smaller businesses?

Unlike general SEO where marketing teams for big businesses almost always have an advantage over small businesses, local SEO evens the playing field. Companies of all sizes are affected by local SEO search algorithms equally.  

A marketing team must execute a local SEO strategy for each physical location they are looking to compete in. In some cases, local small business marketing teams actually have an advantage, as they can better produce a strategy that causes engagement on a local level.

Powderkeg Web Design

How technical will the presentation be?

Not very. While there are plenty of technical aspects of a website that are developed correctly for Google’s crawlers, most of the SEO strategy we will review focuses on content and platforms.

What are the biggest mistakes you see people making with SEO?

Most marketing people don’t focus on their customer’s “search intent.”

What this means is that you need to put yourself in the shoes of your customers, and imagine why they are searching for one of your focus keywords. What words are they searching? What type of content are they trying to find? What do they want to get from their query? What is the next step in their purchasing journey?

If you create a strategy and content around your searcher’s intent, you are far more likely to have a higher engagement rate.

What will be the big takeaway?

The big takeaway will ultimately be, provide the best result.

Google wants to continue to dominate the search engine competition by providing the best results to people searching on it. In order to maintain that position, Google needs to rank results in a way that provides the best result for each query.

As a marketing person, it’s your job to position yourself as the best result.

Be sure to register ASAP for James’s presentation. Space is limited!

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