You’re the business owner. You’ve paid for help.
You’re the local SEO. You’ve been paid to help. Maybe you did help – just not quite enough.
Both of you were expecting boom.
But all you got was pop…pssffftt.
Effective local SEO takes hard work and time. The benefits are obvious when it all works out. But even when it doesn’t – or doesn’t seem to – there are some less-obvious benefits. More on that in a second.
One point that I hope you took as a given: I’ve messed up my share of local SEO campaigns.
Of course, I wish I did things differently in many of those cases.
But without the hard knocks I don’t think I would have learned some important lessons. Without them I also don’t think I could have had some of the successes. You learn from mistakes.
Especially on those occasions the rankings haven’t come, I’ve asked myself: what good did I do?
Put another way: if you subtract good rankings from an otherwise solid local SEO effort, what’s left?
Plenty, in my opinion:
Benefit 1: Avoid mistakes
An experienced local-search geek will keep you from making real stupid moves (or just wasting time). And if you weren’t going to do anything stupid, well, then you’ve got yourself a trusted wingman.
Benefit 2: Avoid snake oil
Your local SEO-er will steer you away from wasting money on products or services that would be useless or harmful to you. (I won’t name names here; feel free to email me if you’re curious.) He / she will usually favor “sweat equity” and will try to help you build yours.
Benefit 3: Citations: check
You’ll have a solid foundation of correct, complete citations.
Also, many of those listings will have been claimed, and you’ll have the logins to most or all of them. A real local-search pro wants you to have the reins.
Benefit 4: On-page: check
Your site will have just the right amount of on-page optimization: you’re not pretending search engines don’t exist, but you’re not overdoing it.
Benefit 5: More stickiness
At least when I do work for clients, their businesses are always at least a little more “optimized for humans” – on-site and off-site. (See this, this, and this.) What you do with your traffic matters more than how many eyeballs you get.
Benefit 6: Wake-up call
You may discover that you should at least dip a foot into other marketing media (like AdWords) – and that you shouldn’t rely exclusively on your visibility in local search.
Benefit 7: Trial by fire
Challenges are a good test of your SEO’s character. You can ask tough but constructive questions.
Why hasn’t the needle moved enough? What can we do to get it to move? Is there anything extra we should do that we didn’t originally plan on?
Your trusty helper will not only give you the unvarnished truth, but may also be able to help you in other areas (e.g. building an email list) while you’re getting your local SEO efforts figured out.
Benefit 8: Easy come, easy go
Not getting results easily is a sign that good local visibility might be worth something in your market. If it’s too easy to rank, the market may not be competitive – and that may be for a good reason (that there’s no money in it).
Benefit 9: Results may just be slow
Even if your local search efforts don’t seem fruitful at first, there’s a good chance the plan will come together just fine. Slow local SEO is underappreciated.
Benefit 10: You get a consigliere
You’ll be able to lean on your local SEO-er for advice later on. If / when you run into an issue, or have a question, or notice a change in Google, you’ll have someone you can ask.
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Can you think of other benefits of a well-executed “local” campaign – even when the rankings are underwhelming? Any real-life cases you’d like to share? Leave a comment!
