Local blogging is one of the most valuable marketing strategies to add to your marketing toolkit. Why? People buy from people that they like and trust. If you provide helpful, high-quality content, prospective customers will gain trust and confidence in your company.
Local blogging is a great way to expose a potential customer to your brand. They may have stumbled on your page because they searched for a question that you answered in a blog post. Therefore, it is essential to make sure they can find information about your company. Each article that you post should be another piece of educational content that establishes you as a thought-leader. Also, Google is now serving more proximity based search results. Therefore, if these questions are asked in your service area, and you have an optimized, high-quality response, there is a better chance your blog post will rank higher. Educating local pet owners will help you build credibility, establish your reputation, and grow your brand.
Keyword Research
Before you begin blogging, research which keywords people are searching for related to your business. Using a tool like Ubersuggest can help you find high potential keywords (and variations) to focus on for your website, and can also be used to find blog topics. The smaller the competition number, the better chance you have of ranking for it locally. Search for keyword ideas based on a URL or search topics to view search volume, cost per click, and SEO difficulty. Data from Ubersuggest can help estimate the potential of a specific keyword potential and offer related keyword suggestions. It is beneficial to focus on less competitive keywords, so you aren’t competing directly with large tech companies like Rover and Wag.
Analyze your competition
What are your competitors blogging about? Are they blogging at all? If your competitors are blogging, start by analyzing their blogging strategy. Which topics are they covering? If you want to outrank your competitors, write better content for topics that they are ranking high for. If your competitors are not blogging but seem to be ahead of you in most search engine results pages, start blogging!
Enter your competitor’s website into Ubersuggest to view their top keywords and high traffic pages. You will see the volume of searches for each term, the position, and the estimated number of visits. You can then use that data to decide which keyword you should focus on. If they have a high traffic blog post URL, you will be able to see which URL and which keyword. Launching a local blogging strategy is a great way to improve your search ranking by targeting your target audience.
Format your blog for easy reading
It is essential to write and format your blog in a way that provides a good user experience. You want to keep sentences and paragraphs short, and passive voice to a minimum. Blogs should have a minimum of 600 words and organized into paragraphs separated by headers. Include a performance and SEO optimized image. When optimizing your blog post, it is best practice to add the topic to the beginning of the title and in the first sentence.
Don’t forget to optimize your title and meta descriptions with your SEO plugin. Meta descriptions are what searchers see in the search engine result pages. These don’t affect your ranking, but when optimized, can increase click-through. Using a plugin like Yoast or RankMath to help ensure that your blog is optimized and readable. They will analyze your post and suggest edits to help improve quality. Keep in mind; it is crucial that you write the blog post for your readers and not Google.
“Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first.” – Wendy Piersall
Don’t just publish and ignore
The biggest mistake I see is clients publishing a blog then ignore it. Remember, Google only loves you when your visitors love you first. Therefore, you better be prepared to share and promote each blog post if you want to see the results in the search engines. Don’t publish and forget about waiting for some magic to happen. There is a reason it is called a blogging strategy and not just blogging. Passive blogging won’t produce great results. If you write a great blog and ignore it, don’t expect results.
When you publish the blog post, you need to prove to Google that “you are worthy.” You do this by sharing and promoting your blog across many different channels, repeatedly! Share and boost on Facebook. Even a $5 local boost helps increase your exposure. Post on Instagram and share a story. Even better, use video or go live on both Facebook and Instagram to tease your new blog! Share in your newsletter or with your mailing list. Share to appropriate groups, especially if you are the admin. By sharing and promoting your post, you are driving traffic to your page.
When Google sees this traffic, it increases the credibility of your post effectively increasing the chance of a higher search ranking when that topic is being searched in your local area. Increasing credibility using a local blogging will boost the overall reputation of your website in your service area. If your blog is evergreen content, you should continue to re-share and repurpose the content into the future.
If you are NOT a writer…delegate!
Quality of your website content is essential and plays a massive role in your reputation with Google. Google wants to provide users with the best piece of content that answers their query. Focusing on local topics and answering frequently asked questions as a blog article are great places to start. Therefore, Google is only interested in ranking pages with high-quality content, not mediocre content. If you write a crappy blog or focus on a topic that nobody searches Google for, don’t expect results. For these reasons, if you aren’t an experienced writer, it is best to stick to pet services and hire a content writer. Your time is better spent working on growing your business and driving traffic to your website to increase visibility.
We hope you implement these strategies to help generate better results from your blogging. High-quality content with an active blogging strategy can improve overall website ranking results. Be sure to use Google Analytics to review your blog campaigns. Google Analytics and Google Search Console will help you learn more about your audience, and which types of blogs produce the best results.
It works! Check out Animal Magnetism’s Results!
An active blog strategy can provide amazing results! Check out the results below from Animal Magnetism. Earlier this year, they invested in a local blogging strategy, and their organic traffic and keywords have grown tremendously over the last few months. Now, who doesn’t want these kinds of results? Animal Magnetism outranks many veterinarians in Los Angeles for related keywords. Amazing!
Erika Godwin is the President of Barketing Solutions and the Co-Founder and CMO of ProPet Software, an industry-leading kennel management software. Erika has over 8 years of experience with WordPress and graduated from Elmira College in 2009 with a BS, Business Administration- Marketing and Management. View Erika’s Full Bio.
