Should an international company also be marketing locally?

[DerekM88]

I've just watched the very helpful video on Google Local best practices at http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/all-about-google-places and see MANY areas in which we are not utilizing our local marketing efforts.

Given that we do not have TOO much local demand, I would say that the main reason for doing this work is to gain momentum in our broad-scale Google SEO efforts/results.

But I am worried that Google might see us as a local company and stop showing us in the SERPs for non-local searches. Is this a good strategy to market locally, or to stick to backlinks on a broad international-based scale.

Does it even help my overall SEO rankings (for broad keywords like Point of Sale and POS Software) to have a strong local and hyperlocal presence?

Thanks!

Derek M

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Derek,

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum.

Now, my answer to your question is going to be of the it-depends type. Does your business have:

• A physical street address (not shared, not a virtual office)?

• A local area code phone number?

• Face-to-face interaction with clientele, whether at your office or at their homes/businesses?

I ask these things because they are the requirements for inclusion in Google Places, which is pretty much the big cheese in Local. If you can say yes to all 3, then we're good to move forward. If any of those items is missing, then Google will not consider your business to be local.

Moving along, I want to mention that this is one of the most common questions I see being asked. Business owners want to know if having a local campaign will decrease their national or international presence in the eyes of Google. To date, I have only ever seen and given common sense answers to this question and have never seen:

• An official study on this, with actual stats

• An official pronouncement from Google on the subject

So, the advice I can give you here is going to be the general advice given on this topic, and should not be considered as though it is based on studies or words from the horse's mouth. The general consensus of opinion on this is that it is fine to run a modest Local SEO campaign at the same time as doing your National/International SEO.

What this might look like:

You put your complete local contact info in the footer of your website site-wide and you add it to your contact page. You devote a page or two to talking about your local office, local services, etc.. You get your business profiled in Google Places and other relevant local business directories, being sure to carefully adhere to the guidelines. You seek and manage your reviews. Finally, depending on the competitiveness of your market in your geography, you may do a little linkbuilding to give you a boost over other local competitors.

It is my belief that the percentage to which you engage in local SEO efforts should be commensurate with the percentage of local business you do. So, if 90% of your business is international and to 10% of it is local, then it makes sense for 10% of your efforts, content, linkbuilding etc. to be devoted to local. In such a case, you would NOT want to go and rewrite all of your title tags to include your city name in them or otherwise highly optimize for your local geographic terms, but a modest campaign, at least in the collective wisdom of the Local SEO community, should not harm your other rankings.

I do wish some company with good Local skills and extra time on their hands could do a thorough study of this FAQ so we could have some more visible conclusion to cite, but I hope this general advice will be helpful to you in making up you mind. Good luck!

Miriam

[AWCthreads]

For local and some national products I like to back brand on the title tag:

Best Green Widgets - Widget Company XYZ

[DerekM88]

Thanks! Great reply. I will make these adjustments

[MiriamEllis]

Excellent! Good luck Derek.