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Local Search vs. Organic SEO: Choosing the Right Strategy | Hero Marketing Agency

Discover the best strategy for your business: Local Search or Organic SEO? Learn how to boost visibility, reach your target audience, and drive conversions effectively with Hero Marketing Agency’s expert insights. Contact us for a free SEO and Local Search Audit!

Local Search or SEO, which is best for me?

Mobile search is increasingly important! At Hero Marketing Agency, we are seeing that most of our clients receive about 60% of their searches on mobile devices and 40% on Google search. Every business wants to increase visibility across the internet.

It is the most used and efficient way to reach people – from your local community to across the world. Do you ever wonder how digital marketing fits into the equation, and where you should focus your efforts?

The first thing you need to do is ask yourself these questions. Do I need to throw a broad net and reach a large variety of people, or do I really just need to reach a smaller targeting group for my business?

In reality, while all companies need a good organic SEO strategy for search, few companies need a broad net approach. If your goal is best served by reaching a local targeted group, you must know your customers and define your group. You should know your target groups:

  • Age Range
  • Gender
  • Interest
  • Income level
  • Education level
  • Geographic location

Knowing these answers will help define your digital marketing strategy, and the blend between organic SEO and local search. Each has its place, each has common practices, but each has very different goals.

Organic SEO

This is what most people are familiar with and think about when you mention search engine optimization. It focuses on keyword-rich content and on-page optimization so that the big search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo can find you. It is different than Pay-Per-Click in that it is organic and provides lasting results for your business. The goal is the wide net approach, trying to get your results served up to as many users as possible.

Local Search

While local search, or local SEO, also relies on keywords, it links your business to a specific geographic location. This is normally a city or town, but could also be an entire county, metropolitan area, or state.

What makes Local Search important to me?

If you have a retail or service location, you already show up in local search. If someone is searching for a specific product or service, the search engines will take the user’s location into account when serving up results.

Even if the user does not specify their location, search engine algorithms know their location and narrow the search based on that location. That is why knowing how you show up on local search is so important.

Google displays the local 3-Pack of Google Maps before organic results across all devices. The Maps Pack appears on first-page search results, making it the most frequently displayed search result feature available.

The first, second, and third results in the Google 3-Pack receive 24.48%, 13.81%, and 9.5% of clicks respectively, for a combined total of 47.79% of clicks, according to Advanced Web Ranking. Additionally, from July 2018 – July 2019, Google has maintained 92.18% of all search traffic. The 3-Pack is also designed to appear as the first page in search results for someone doing a local search on a smartphone.

If you have a physical location, organic SEO gets customers to your website and familiar with your brand, local search SEO is designed to get them in the door through conversion strategies that include:

  • Calling your business
  • Scheduling an appointment
  • Submitting a contact form
  • Requesting driving directions
  • Signing up for a class

Here are the top influences that affect your local ranking:

  • Content Activity – How often do you provide relevant content via photos and posts?
  • Views – A measurement of your company’s actual reach from photos in impressions and conversions. Is anyone looking at your photos?
  • Profile Completion – It always surprises us as to how much information is not complete on a Google Business Profile
  • Review Engagement – Your popularity with your audience measured by both quality and quantity of reviews.
  • Review Response – What is your responsiveness and engagement back to your customers?

What should I do?

Your goal should be to show up in the 3-Pack for local results for search terms important to the success of your business. Implement a strategy that includes:

  • Optimize your Google Business Profile (GBP) page. Make sure all information is complete and that you are in the correct classifications.
  • Ensure that your local citations match your Google Business Profile page. Having inconsistency in your name, address, and phone number (NAP) can really hurt your chances to make the coveted 3-Pack.
  • Know your customer base and know the keywords they would use to find your products or services.
  • Geo tag every photo you post with latitude and longitude of your physical location.
  • Meta tag your images to include proper title, description, and keywords.
  • Create quality content that your customers will appreciate and share.
  • Find influencers important to your customer base, link to them, engage in their posts which can introduce you to their base.
  • Include a strategy for search SEO that compliments your local search efforts.

Remember, Google Maps only shows the top 3 results with all other results hidden unless you click on the map to see more.

So What Now?

If your business goals align more with an e-commerce business that is not dependent on getting customers through your doors, concentrate on organic SEO to drive traffic to your website. If you have a brick-and-mortar location that depends on getting customers into your location, emphasis should be on local search and Maps.

Every company we work with, while sharing similar goals, requires a very unique strategy dependent on industry, number of locations, customer base, and a variety of other factors. Every business should be using both strategies.

There are multiple benefits to being strong in both SEO search results and local search; however, concentration should be given to the one that puts customers into your pipeline. We have some clients that need to boost traffic through the door, but also have an e-commerce site, so both are equally important.

It is crucial that you know how to measure your results and be nimble and ready to pivot to what works and stop spending time and money on what does not. Implementing these strategies is more important than ever to the success of any business. Just realize your strategies and best practices will fluctuate over time.

If you would like to receive a free SEO and Local Search Audit, contact Hero Marketing Agency. There is no obligation.

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Meet the Author

Josh Cates

Chief Executive Officer & Founding Principal

Throughout my 25-year career as a multifaceted and data-driven entrepreneur and senior marketing executive, I have amassed a wealth of business knowledge by starting up five companies, three of which were successfully acquired. In addition, I have consulted in over 70 industries, giving me a unique and multidimensional perspective on business growth and development.

In my current role as Founder and CEO of Hero Marketing Agency, I understand the importance of strong relationships—our agency exists to help companies achieve transformational long-term success. I have a deep passion for working directly with organizations to realize real marketing returns and provide the best and most strategic services available.

I carry a DoD Top Secret Clearance, effective 17 April 2020, received a nomination for the Colorado Springs Advertising ICON award, recipient of multiple ADDY awards, and was honored to be nominated for Businessman of the Year by the Greater Boerne Chamber of Commerce.

Kurt Cannarella

Director of Paid Media

As veteran of the NYC & Dallas Advertising Agencies, Kurt has managed paid media for many of the top brands within the country including DIRECTV, Charles Schwab, Ralph Lauren, and the NBA.

His focus involves designing a fully integrated paid media strategy tailored to each business’s goals and objectives. After moving on from the larger Ad Agencies, Kurt shifted his focus on aiding small and mid-sized brands craft their integrated paid media strategy. Outside of his paid media interests, Kurt spends his time rooting for his beloved NY Mets as well as traveling with his wife Lauren and two daughters Chloe & Camille.

Our clients at Hero Marketing Agency consistently praise Kurt for his high-touch communication style, thoroughness, integrated media knowledge, and his strategic approach.

Josh Cates

Chief Executive Officer & Founding Principal

Throughout my 25-year career as a multifaceted and data-driven entrepreneur and senior marketing executive, I have amassed a wealth of business knowledge by starting up five companies, three of which were successfully acquired. In addition, I have consulted in over 70 industries, giving me a unique and multidimensional perspective on business growth and development.

In my current role as Founder and CEO of Hero Marketing Agency, I understand the importance of strong relationships—our agency exists to help companies achieve transformational long-term success. I have a deep passion for working directly with organizations to realize real marketing returns and provide the best and most strategic services available.

I carry a DoD Top Secret Clearance, effective 17 April 2020, received a nomination for the Colorado Springs Advertising ICON award, recipient of multiple ADDY awards, and was honored to be nominated for Businessman of the Year by the Greater Boerne Chamber of Commerce.

Joanna Brown

Creative Director

Joanna is a creative director, an art director, and a designer with 20+ years of experience delivering world-class creative content. Her career has taken her from London (UK) to New York City, then down to the heart of Texas with her family.

She is a creative leader with proven strategic thinking, problem-solving, effective communication, and management knowledge who forges meaningful connections with internal and client teams. In her role with Hero Marketing Agency, Joanna collaborates with brands, content makers, and storytellers to formulate and bring to life the creative vision through compelling human-centered, results-driven user experiences.

Joanna has worked with various startups to global giants, including J.P. Morgan Chase, Google, Unilever, and Norwegian Cruise Line.

Heather Short-Davis

Client Strategist

Imagine it’s 2001, and you have a new, yet heavy, phone in your hand with the latest technology— get ready to be in awe — it has a single-color display! Instead of black text on a gray background, you get to look at black text on a blue background.

Yes, it sounds underwhelming, but that’s what level of tech we were excited about. It’s the same year wireless phone providers began to connect networks for text messaging. And it’s the same year Heather entered the marketing workforce.

She has had the benefit of experiencing first-hand the evolution and digitization of marketing tactics. From oil & gas to technology transfer, no industry has been left untouched from the vast increase in data now available at our business fingertips. As a data-driven marketer, Heather has not only an appreciation for, but also a solid understanding of tracking and analyzing data to devise strategies and evaluate performance.

At Hero Marketing Agency Heather collaborates with clients to help them achieve a sound strategy for marketing. First to define and distill their goals. Then to develop strategies for goal achievement, articulating objectives, tactics, and success metrics. Great strategists are dynamic storytellers who have the ability to make the incredibly complex feel simple.

A native Texan, Heather has recently moved back to Texas after 14 years in Northern Indiana. She graduated with a double major in marketing and advertising from Indiana University South Bend with scholarship awards. Her collegiate career began at the University of Texas at Austin, but life and her husband took their adventure north.

She is happy to be back in central Texas where they are close to family and do not need a snow blower in the garage. She enjoys emerging technologies and new consumer electronics. An avid runner, some of her best creative ideas have happened mid-run.

Bob Cates

Chief Financial Officer & Co-Founding Principal

Bob has always been an entrepreneur. He will tell you he has lived the American dream, starting and running his own businesses, which have included oil and natural gas exploration, healthcare, publishing, consumer electronics, e-commerce, franchise operations and marketing agency.

Graduating from the University of North Texas with an accounting degree, Bob received his CPA while an Audit Supervisor for the State of Texas. In 1983 Bob started his first business, an independent oil and gas exploration company, which he operated until 2007.

As the Co-Founder of Hero Marketing Agency, Bob is an invaluable part of the brand, and his talents expand beyond his dynamic abilities with projections and figures. Bob sits on the board and counsels on all matters relating to the brand’s financial well-being, in addition to consulting and handling the business management side for clients of Hero Marketing Agency.

In 2018 Bob added the title Director of Digital Strategy to his name, where his background in auditing and time as a CPA migrate perfectly to crunching data and making clear sense of the ever-changing world of digital strategy for Hero Marketing Agency clients.

Splitting time between Colorado and the Texas Hill Country, Bob is married to his high-school sweetheart of 51 years and loves volunteering in his hometown, where he serves on Boerne’s Planning and Zoning Commission. He also loves exploring the outdoors, bow hunting, cycling, and hiking.

Bob Cates

CFO & Vision Behind Hero Marketing Agency

Bob has always been an entrepreneur. He will tell you he has lived the American dream, starting and running his own businesses, which have included oil and natural gas exploration, healthcare, publishing, consumer electronics, e-commerce, franchise operations and marketing agency.

Graduating from the University of North Texas with an accounting degree, Bob received his CPA while an Audit Supervisor for the State of Texas. In 1983 Bob started his first business, an independent oil and gas exploration company, which he operated until 2007.

As the Co-Founder of Hero Marketing Agency, Bob is an invaluable part of the brand, and his talents expand beyond his dynamic abilities with projections and figures. Bob sits on the board and counsels on all matters relating to the brand’s financial well-being, in addition to consulting and handling the business management side for clients of Hero Marketing Agency.

In 2018 Bob added the title Director of Digital Strategy to his name, where his background in auditing and time as a CPA migrate perfectly to crunching data and making clear sense of the ever-changing world of digital strategy for Hero Marketing Agency clients.

Splitting time between Colorado and the Texas Hill Country, Bob is married to his high-school sweetheart of 51 years and loves volunteering in his hometown, where he serves on Boerne’s Planning and Zoning Commission. He also loves exploring the outdoors, bow hunting, cycling, and hiking.