What is the difference between local SEO and general SEO?

This is a question that a lot of small business owners and online marketing consultants get asked on a regular basis. It's also something that demonstrates the need for local SEO.

One of the biggest differences between local and general SEO is keyword targeting. When doing general SEO, some keywords are better to target than others….; especially from an organic traffic perspective.

Some keywords just naturally get more traffic than others, and these are a lot easier to rank for as well. General SEO often involves targeting long tail keywords because they tend to have less competition.

But when you're doing local SEO, long tail keywords won't do you much good at all; especially if you want the best results possible .

That's because people don't search for businesses in general. They tell Google where they are located and what they need right now. And because of that….

Keyword research is done very differently when it comes to local SEO compared to general SEO . But that's not the only difference between the two…..; there are also other significant differences between local and general SEO as well:

1 Local SEO encompasses more than just SEO .

General SEO tends to focus heavily on optimizing your website. In other words, it's all about boosting organic traffic to your website as a whole. But local SEO is a lot different because you can't just optimize a single webpage and expect massive success.

You also have to think about optimizing your business listing listings in the places where people are searching for businesses like yours (i.e. Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook, etc.).

2 General SEO focuses mainly on ranking as many pages as possible for one keyword .

With general SEO, you'll do things like attempt to rank for every possible permutation of a keyword phrase so that you're ranked #1 for every variation of the term someone might use when searching for a business like yours. Local SEO focuses more on ranking your website in Google Maps .

3 General SEO is a lot easier to do when you have negative SEO .

That's because there are a lot of things that are easy for people with bad intentions (i.e. Black Hat SEO) to take advantage of with general SEO. Local SEO is a lot harder to do when you have negative SEO because it's harder help get your listing removed from Google My Business and other business directory services that don't allow this sort of thing (i.e. Yelp).

4 General SEO focuses on ranking as many relevant pages as possible for one keyword .

With general SEO, you might really want to rank for the word "electrician" organically. That's why you might try to rank all of your relevant pages (i.e. Homepage, About Us, Services, etc.) where that keyword is found when possible . Local SEO doesn't focus on doing this at all. Instead, it focuses on ranking your business on the first page of Google Maps for specific locations and searches .

5 General SEO can take advantage of negative SEO.

With general SEO, there are quite a few things that can be done to your competition's website that won't hurt you at all; but will hurt them (i.e. Competitor A's site ranks #1 for "electrician" organically. Competitor B buys links that create a link debt for Competitor A's website. In response, Competitor A uses a piece of software to attack Competitor B's site AND hurt its rankings at the same time). Since local SEO often relies on Google My Business and other such services that don't allow this sort of thing, you're basically stuck with doing things the "white hat" way.

6 General SEO can be outsourced to an SEO agency or someone who really knows what they are doing .

If you don't have time to do general SEO yourself and still want results, it's possible to hire a good SEO consultant who will help get your site ranked. Local SEO is hard to outsource because you can't just tell Google "Hey, rank my business #1 for XYZ in the city of Chicago."

7 There are a lot of things that can be done with general SEO that aren't allowed on local services .

I've seen quite a few instances where someone has bought links in the hopes of hurting a competitor's website. But there are certain services (i.e. Google My Business) where buying links is not allowed and if you are caught doing this, your listing will be removed from these questions asked .

8 There are more tools available for general SEO than local SEO .

It's easy to find a tool to tell you if a site is over optimized for your keyword terms in general SEO. It's not that easy to find such tools when it comes to local SEO, where you need everything from links and citations to reviews.

9 There are ways of getting yourself deindexed from Google My Business and other business directories .

I've seen people use negative SEO on their competition to get them deindexed from Google My Business. Once this was done, they have written a blog post that appears as the top listing for their competitor's business when you search in Google Maps (i.e. Competitor A has an electrician service and Competitor B buys links for "electrician" in Chicago hoping Competitor A's site will get deindexed for terms that cause Google My Business to be used). Even if your site gets deindexed from the major local business directories, you can still rank #1 on Google Maps when people search for things like "electrician near me."

10 Local SEO doesn't have a lot of the terms and phrases you don't want to rank for in your title tags or meta descriptions .

When I was trying to figure out what a good title tag would be for my site, I wanted something like "electrician Chicago" because it's one of those generic keywords that EVERYONE wants to rank for; but doesn't really help when it comes to ranking for local SEO.