Local food delivery SEO strategy

[Anti-Alex]

Hey guys,

I'm working with a new company that doesn't have a brick and mortar storefront, they deliver.

They basically deliver pre packaged smoothies in a VERY localized area (Vancouver, BC). I'm wondering how grandiose their goals should be re ranking for keywords that have non localized authority.

What do I mean?

Lets say their marketing pillars are "health education related to smoothies" "convenient veggies for smoothies" "(insert health benefit here) for smoothies". Should they be trying to compete for these keywords? Or should they really be trying to rank with keywords especially to Vancouver?

Side note: What kind of effect does Country and Locality have on keywords that are generally used by content providers and not service related companies building out an inbound strategy?

Thanks in advance!

[ChrisAshton]

Hi Alex,

There is certainly some merit in ranking for the more generic terms, it just depends on time/budget and the aim of their SEO.

If they're just looking to drive direct sales, the Vancouver terms are obviously going to be the way to go. If they want to grow their brand strength, spread their reach and ultimately become synonymous with the industry then going for the broader terms is a better option.

One is a low effort, low reward campaign while the other is the exact opposite - which one to choose becomes a business decision for them to make, really. That industry is a gold mine for great, educational content so developing a strategy for the broad terms would be a breeze, it will just be very time consuming to do right.

[EGOL]

If there is search volume for these keywords and they can pull traffic from outside the service area of this business, then that traffic can be monetized.  All you have to do is to learn to use Google's Double Click ad server and you can show adsense ads to anyone outside of your targeted area and "we deliver a smoothie" ads to everyone in your service area.

If in the future you decide that you want to franchise across Canada, then you can show franchise opportunities ads to Canadian traffic and adsense ads to everyone else.  You can also offer to sell them smoothie mixes by mail or blenders or recipes or a million other things.

Lots of websites that sell a product or a service make more money from ads or other forms of secondary revenue than they make from the original product that launched their business.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Alex,

Exciting to work with a new company! As they are new, I would suggest:

1. For the first X number of months, you focus solely on Vancouver-related content. This would include basic info about the company and its products/services + an on-site blog where you'd start writing about Vancouver-oriented topics relating to your smoothies, health, convenience, customers, etc.

2. Once you've got this rolling well, then, I would say you could perhaps split this 80/20 Vancouver content/national content. So you'd continue to focus largely on Vancouver, but might also write some posts that would be of national interest whether they particularly apply to your city or not. This might be things like 5 best fruits for better skin, 5 best vegetables for better digestion, 5 best smoothies for a chest cold (by the way, the answer here is pineapple/almond milk) etc. These posts, if good enough, could earn wider interest in your brand, and as EGOL mentions, possibly pave the way for future expansion of the business beyond Vancouver.