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Super confused about this. Our office is located in Los Angeles, but it is not a storefront, and our clients are from all over the country... and our business involves travel to other countries. So there is nothing "local" about us. But everything I read seems to say we should be doing local SEO. How to approach this?

The Google Service-area businesses looks like it could be helpful. I'll look at that more closely.

As far as your questions go... These are reasonable questions, but I am not certain how this would apply as far as Local SEO goes.

We are a tour operator. So, of course, our site is all about mentioning the locations/countries we provide travel to, and the specific packages, etc.. So we have that covered.

We do partner with hotels, and we have local representative offices in the countries we provide services to. However... if our clients are 100% U.S. based, and they are contacting us because we are a U.S. based business, is it really helpful (SEO wise - or otherwise) for us to get us listed in directories and such as a local business in Aukland, New Zealand (for example)? We're not a local business in Aukland. But we provide services there. And have local reps.

We hired an SEO firm 4 years ago who listed us all over the place (on non-travel related sites and directories, like YellowPages and such) as a local Los Angeles business. They said it would help us, but didn't seem to help us in any way, and in fact ends looks to me like it is confusing to say that we are a Los Angeles tour operator. We're not. We don't do tours in Los Angeles. And people clicking on those links are going to realize that when they get to our site and contribute to a high bounce rate.

So, ultimately, the question of Local SEO that I keep reading as being important to have, just doesn't feel like it applies to us, yet, we don't want to close a door that could be helpful in search results -- which is really the only thing we are concerned about in this regard. We are a 40 year old business and have had a web presence for a long time, and we just want to stay relevant in search results.

Thank you.

Thank you.

"here in Chicago, you're never going to pop up for a search I conduct like "horse back riding beach tours in Cancun"

Ok, so if this is true, then this is serious, serious problem for us. And this seems like an awful side effect of the current algorithm. Why wouldn't a successful, well established, 40 year old national business, whose physical headquarters is in Los Angeles, which operates horse back riding beach tours in Cancun show up in search results for horse back riding beach tours in Cancun by a person who lives in Chicago? That makes no sense. Our clients live in New York City or Ft Collins, Colorado or Emeryville, CA or Anytown, USA. It seems like what you're saying is that we need to establish locality in every large and small city in the U.S. and order to be found by people who live anywhere in the U.S. -- I can't imagine that is what the SEOverlords expect businesses like mine to do.

"I am trying to associate your brand to local businesses and tourist packages in different locales/regions you do business in."

As mentioned, we are in international tour operator. We do not operate tours in the United States, therefore, we have no U.S. based local businesses with whom we can be associated with.

"there are still opportunities based on brand mentions and link building via the questions above, meaning you could appear for searches based around locations + the services you are associated with in those areas."

So then, is the solution to try and make it appear to the search engines that we are local to the places we offer tours (such as your example of Cancun), even if we are not? If we did that, and you are in Chicago and you do your search for horse back in Cancun, will we pop up then?

And as far as the brand mentions... I understood that. And the new importance of brand is directly related to the other question I posted in the forum, which has not been answered yet, and is a completely different and unique problem. Maybe you could look at that and see if you have any insight there.