6 places you can publish content to improve your online business’s local SEO

Many factors go into determining the level of trust and authority a site has, hence its placement in search engine rankings. This notwithstanding, all sites need to have a robust content addition strategy as it makes a big part of SEO checker strategies. It’s not just enough to have high-quality content, but rather this content should have information that’s relevant to enable a site to rank for local queries – the next step of content marketing.

The first step is to create content that is relevant to your local audience. For example, you can cover local events in fields related to your area of business as well as launch a discussion on the state of the industry in which your business operates and within your region. Choose relevant and value-adding ways topics to write on, and include your geographically-specific keywords naturally into the body and title of every content piece.

For better SEO results, you should pay just as much attention into where and how your content is published and distributed. Select from the following locally available sources within your reach to improve your reach.

Social media networks

Your social media profiles are a good place to begin your content syndication effort. They are especially useful for local content distribution. Place a post on your timeline each time you have posted new content and actively work to spread the news about content shared by other businesses to people in your network. This opens up the chance for them to do the same, increasing the reach of your article.

It also helps you to cultivate partnerships with local business, which increases the level of local relevance and chances of your content and promotions, reaching out to a greater audience in future.

Look up neighbourhood-based groups in social networks like Facebook and post your content there as well. On Facebook, you can only post into a group as an individual; hence you will have to use your personal profile for that. Don’t lose any opportunity to engage with your audience about your content.

Local news channels

Local news channels are advantageous for content marketing for several reasons. First, they are always looking for the next big thing to report on, and you have a better chance of getting published there than in a regional or national news outlet. Also, they have a higher local domain authority in your locality than say blogs and other places you might publish your content in, which means you gain better value by posting there.

Choose your choice news outlet according to its suitability for your business and the kind of content you want to publish. Ensure you carefully format the content according to the guidelines, and offer high-quality newsworthy content to maximize chances of getting published.

Local forums and community pages

You should be able to find these easily. For instance, maybe there is a city-wide forum started to discuss public developmental projects, or websites that showcase new restaurants within the metropolis. Now, be careful when choosing where you post, because not every page has the same level of authority.

Also, given the limitations of focus for such community-based pages, ensure that the content you post fits exactly into the discussion subject of the specific forum. This means that not every item of content is suitable for every forum. It’s critical to ensure relevance, or otherwise, you might tick off Google and end up with a penalty.

Neighborhood bulletins and websites

Closely related to the above, you should try to find any local-specific bulletin-styled websites or individual websites that cover news about your locality. Track down the administrator of these sites and ask them to post your content – this isn’t usually hard provided you offer high-quality content in a relevant subject that interests their readers/target demographic.

You can use these forums to announce any changes your business is going through or to advertise events and promotions involving the community.

Third-party applications and locals directories

You probably already know that your business needs accurate listing on third-party directories and websites such as TripAdvisor and Yelp, which contributes to local SEO. Without them, you cannot improve local SEO by much, especially after Google’s Pigeon update, and you always need to check through SEO checker tools from time to time.

Take it a notch higher by actively posting in these third-party apps and mention any recent publications provided they fit into a review offered of your establishment or a related company update.

Resident guest blogging

Finally, allow business owners, residents, community leaders and other relevant parties to guest post onto your blog. This way, you gain a chance to guest-blog in their sites, which can improve the number of incoming and outgoing links you have, improving your overall local authority.

Conclusion

The same rules apply regardless of where you post, ensure the reputation and authority of sites you publish on and who publish in your site are of high authority. Also, diversify your strategy to all the above, instead of just one or two.

Update

While this article was written a few years ago the content strategy remains valid and successful for all businesses. Curating content for your website and blog and social media platforms are ever more important for SEO, sales and your reputation.