Across the board, SEO strategies share common goals and common best practices. Businesses and individuals who want to influence how and where they show up in search results all utilize SEO strategies to improve their rankings, drive traffic to their websites, and influence sentiment drivers in AI-generated responses. But these goals and strategies can differ greatly based on the size and scope of your campaign. A local company that is simply competing with the other companies in their area is going to tackle SEO much differently than a national e-commerce store or a large regional brand that has dozens or hundreds of locations.
Understanding Location-Based Search Intent & Local SEO Strategies
Whether you are a single operator in one city or you are a regional brand with hundreds of offices across a coastline, it is vital to understand how both users and search engines understand local search. One of the most common search phrases is “near me”. Even if users do not write “near me,” your search results are almost always influenced by your location. For well over a decade, Google’s algorithm has prioritized user location when providing search results. So there is a bit of an overlap in SEO strategy between a single brick-and-mortar business and the large regional brand with hundreds of storefronts. The key difference is simply scale. While the local business can go all in on ensuring that all of their metadata, content, online listings, and backlinks mention their one location, the regional brand needs to build local SEO signals at scale. This relies on understanding where there are opportunities and what will move the needle for each individual location. For example, a storefront in a smaller town with lower competition may require less content to get that first page, first result ranking. Meanwhile, the location in a major city is going up against local operators and other brands that have a foothold in that area.
How Do Enterprises & E-Commerce Brands Address SEO Goals?
Of course, SEO differs greatly for brands that are not relying on physical storefronts. Local SEO is both less important and less viable for pure e-commerce or software as a service (SaaS) companies that do business online. There is no value in targeting those “near me” style searches (whether explicit or implicitly added by Google). Now there is still some locality to keep in mind, but it is usually at a regional/national level. For example, if your E-Commerce company only sells in certain countries, it is important to provide that data clearly to search engines and AI agents, so that you rank appropriately. These types of companies are often targeting broad high-intent keywords and are going up against not only their own industry competitors but a large group of organic competitors that target keywords with high search volume. For example, it takes considerable effort to rank in the top three results for a search like “market research company” on a national scale. The term not only has significant search volume, but a large number of both companies that can fight for that keyword and third-party operators like listing websites, journalists, etc. The key is content depth and keyword mapping. Creating content that comprehensively positions your brand as the answer to that type of query and targets a large variety of potential keyword variations and long-tail keywords is essential to growth and sustainability.
Build E-Commerce, Enterprise, or Regional SEO Campaigns with Boston Web Marketing
Our agency has worked with a large number of regional brands that are comprised of hundreds of locations, major E-commerce websites that sell internationally, and international SaaS brands that need to rank for extremely competitive search terms. Across the board, our agency has developed strong, long-term SEO plans that are tailored to these business goals. For more information, please contact our team.