Going from a national to local marketing strategy
-
I started my graphic design business (imageco.com) after the dot com industry collapsed in 2001 and there were virtually no jobs to be found, I focused mainly on logo design and ultimately figured out a way to drive quite a lot of traffic to my site by the means of creating directories for printers in every major city in the US. It worked exceedingly well for many years but eventually I had a lot of copycats use this technique and ultimately it pissed off quite a few designers around the country and I was reported one to many times to Google and was forced to make some changes. So I dropped the directories and redesigned my site and stuffed as many place names in the site as I could so I wouldn’t lose all my traffic, it worked for a while but ultimately my site has drifted further down in the serps and with the advent of Google Local my traffic pretty much disappeared. Furthermore with the surge in crowdsourcing businesses like 99designs the value people placed on my logo design services dropped to a point where there just wasn’t much reason to go after a national market anyway. I’m not proud of how I built my business but I don’t make any excuses for it, I had a mortgage and a family to feed so I did what I needed to do.
I’m now at the point where I’ve decided my best option is to move away from logo design and redefine my business as more of a visual identity/graphic design company and go after the local market. I live in the Seattle area, Bellevue to be specific and the economy is such that I know there is a ton of local opportunity that I'm missing out on and I want to focus my marketing efforts here.
My question is what is the best way for me to do this? I focused mainly on logo design for nearly 20 years and my keywords are built around logo design for which I still hit fairly well on but I need to expand my offerings and want to redirect my efforts at turning up on local searches for other terms like graphic design, web design, print design, etc. I don’t necessarily want to instantly drop all of the landing pages I created for logo design because that is still where the majority of my business comes from but I’m fairly certain that these landing pages have me Pigeonholed as just a logo designer. Do I need to delete everything and start completely from scratch or is there a less extreme approach to making this kind of transition? And once I do make these changes what might be the time frame for turning up better locally? I’m in the process of redesigning the site, updating my portfolio and writing all new content and could really use the advice of this community. Thank you!
-
Hi Miriam,
I just fixed #1 and #2 is already true to a degree.
My goal isn't to sell more logos to the local market it is to present my business as a visual identity company which is actually a more apt description of what I do for my customers. I have another website that i put together to present myself to local business on a case by case basis when I played with the idea of going to work for someone else. The site is garnergraphics.com and it gives a more well rounded view of the work I do.
I'm in the process of redesigning Imageco.com, rewriting all of the copy and showcasing work that has more of a mass appeal so that I won't present myself as the one-trick-pony logo designer that my current site does. I guess my main concern at this point is whether or not I should kill off all of the geographic landing pages that are focused on logo design in order to start ranking locally for other terms. As I mentioned I still get a bit of work from those pages so I was thinking of moving them to a subdirectory and redirecting the traffic while I make the push locally... or will it hurt my local efforts just by having all of those pages? Do you think I should abandon the national market altogether or should I keep them and refocus all of those landing pages on presenting myself as a visual identity business? Ultimately I think my success is going to be determined by getting in front of local businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs so if the best move to accomplish that requires completely abandoning those pages I am more than willing to do so.
I very much appreciate your willingness to offer me some guidance on this because I really do need all the help I can get.
Thank you!
-
Hi Imageco!
Thanks for the important details about your business model. In order to become truly dominant in the local market, you're going to need to be able to complete in Google's local packs, and in order to do that, you have to have
-
A physical address, even if it's your home address that you keep hidden on your GMB listing
-
Face-to-face contact with at least some of your customers
If you can't meet both requirements, you won't be able to build local business listings, and you'll be in the same scenario of real-world design houses beating your virtual business because they meet the criteria of "local" that your enterprise doesn't. You'll be stuck with either going after local-organic rankings (appearing for local searches but in the organic results instead of the packs) or utilizing PPC to show up for local searches (can be quite expensive).
So, basically my advice here is that if you want to narrow your consumer base to a local market, you've got to find a way to go fully local, meaning having a business model that meets the description of my 2 point list, above. Anything short of this and you'll likely be experiencing that same frustration you did trying to compete as a virtual national business.
However, I will add that the market may remain tough, whether your business model is virtual or local. Automation and cheap solutions have proliferated, as you've documented, and I'm not sure a local business just selling logo design would be financially viable. You mention you might expand into other service areas, and that you're doing research and seeing a ton of opportunity. I'm curious to know, these days, do most people think of ordering logos as a virtual or real-world action? I remember selling them back in the early 2000s on eBay and places like that. Have you seen a shift in the market that makes you feel people in Seattle would specifically be thinking of ordering a logo design from a real-world business that's local to them? Or would that hinge on it being tied into another service like print marketing? Curious.
-
-
Happy to help! And if you end up really digesting all of this information and becoming fluent in it, I'm quite sure others will start asking you where to go and what to do next as well!
Best,
Zack -
Hi Miriam,
I do meet with customers but only on occasion as most of my clientele aren't local and given the nature of my business it's not very cost effective for either my customers or myself to meet in person. I suspect that will change though as I make a push into the local market. I presently don't have any plans to open up a storefront but again that is also apt to change once I grow my business locally and eventually dominate the local market...you know because of all the value and guidance I receive now that i am a member of Moz
Thanks for the welcome!
-
Hey There!
It's great to see you getting such helpful input from our community here, and we're so glad to have you!
I respect the honest way you told your story, and you made it easy to follow the ups-and-downs you've experienced over the years. Donna has linked you to an article of mine with a graphic that can help you identify local business model options, and I have 2 specific question:
Are you planning to open a physical storefront?
Are you planning to meet face-to-face with clients, either at your store, your home or your clients' locations?
-
You are most welcome!
-
Thanks Zack, I just joined last week and am just getting my bearings so I thought I'd try and get some feedback and direction with a question before diving in headfirst so I really appreciate you pointing me in the right direction. I'm eager to get going on this as I've drug my feet for far too long and your input will not go to waste. I'll start with the beginners guide and work my way up to the workshop and I'll also check out your blog post. Thanks again for your help, your response has made me feel quite welcome to Moz.
-
Thanks Donna, I really appreciate your insight and for taking the time to provide such a thoughtful response, I was really hoping to receive such an answer when I posted this question and you exceeded my expectations. I'm new to Moz and have much to learn and you have given me the direction I was looking for, I will not take it for granted and plan on thoroughly reviewing the material you have directed me towards. I do turn up on local searches already just not for the terms I would like to so hopefully it won't require a year to make this change, but it is what it is and I'm in it for the long haul. Again, thank you for your response.
-
Imageco,
No shame in trying to provide for your family! In fact, you led the way for a while there creating all those local directories. Not a good approach nowadays, but it worked for a while.
_What is the best way for me to do this? _
I'm going to point you to two resources created by Miriam Ellis, a local expert at Moz and a person who has tremendous insight and is willing to share her wisdom with anyone who asks.
Moz Local Checklist - This first one looks at the type of business you have and Google Guidelines to arrive at the best strategy for your Google My Business listing and content. It also inventories all the other steps that will need to be taken to achieve local SEO success and provides links to other helpful resources and a checklist.
Local Landing Page - Inspiration, tips, guidelines, and a template for creating truly valuable local content.
Do I need to delete everything and start completely from scratch or is there a less extreme approach to making this kind of transition?
I recommend you inventory your existing content after you've reviewed the resources above and then decide whether to keep, change, or delete them. I would expect they'll be helpful in coming up with "truly valuable local content".
And once I do make these changes what might be the time frame for turning up better locally?
As I'm sure you well know, local SEO takes time too. How long it will take is going to depend on your starting point relative to your competition. If you want to set a ballpark, I'd say a year. It's a ballpark. You should start showing up on maps sooner than that, but you may not make it into the local three-pack for some time after that. Much will depend on the strength of your competition and the health of your existing website. Local and organic are intertwined. The latest local search ranking factors study published by Moz found that the second most influential contribution to local rankings (second only to your Google My Business listing) was link signals - not on-page, not citations, and not reviews.
Good luck Imageco! Work hard. You'll get there.
-
Note: Just got into my car but had another thought. If you're just looking to answer all of your questions in one sitting, I did just write a blog post as a beginner's checklist to SEO that could also be well worth a quick read. Hope this helps:
http://giantjet.net/local-seo-checklist/
Best,
Zack
-
Hi there,
I'm wanting to chime in, as I also have a love for both SEO and logo design. In all honesty, I couldn't recommend more to you starting with (A) the Moz Beginners Guide to SEO section of the Moz site (which is free), and (B) taking the Moz workshops and trianing (not free but well worth it). Doing this, and in this order, with the workshops (interactive webinars) in the order they're listed will very much get you a wealth of knowledge on SEO. By that I mean, telling you which steps need to be taken, the order they should be taken, and the prioritization and weight each carries (and why). Even just beginning with the Moz Beginners Guide to SEO article (it's more an entire section of a site than a little blog post), and then the first Moz webinar or two may answer the majority of the questions you have here, which will be a HECK of a lot cheaper than hiring an SEO specialist to do this for you.
Best of luck to you!
Zack Barton
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to optimize landing pages for local search?
I'm trying to understand how to optimize landing pages to appear in local search. For example, if someone in Chicago searches for "plumber", Yelp has a page "Top 10 Plumbers in Chicago." They are generating these pages for numerous business types and cities. I can't see anything on the page or metadata that indicates a geographic location or business type. What optimizations are they doing to get Google to know that it's a page for a specific city and type of business?
Local SEO | | Tourizee0 -
Local Site stuck on page 2 for years. Can’t penetrate page 1! Help!
Hey there Moz community! This is the first time I've ever asked a question here so please forgive if I slip up on any etiquette. I manage a website for a small Orlando Florida family law and divorce law firm who are targeting search phrases that include those "Orlando divorce attorney" variants. The site is located at https://www.affordablefamilylawyer.com/ If you run a search for "Orlando divorce attorney" along with close variant search terms our law firm website for about the past two years has hovered at the top of the second page of google but has never actually penetrated page 1. When you examine metrics such as page authority, domain authority, trust, and other traditional metrics it tells you that our site should be on page 1 but alas it's not happening. We have, however been featured quite often in the three pack for the local listings for the target search terms. Though valuable, our goal has always been to be featured in the top three of the organic search results. To add to the confusion we have a practice area page located at https://www.affordablefamilylawyer.com/orlando-divorce-lawyer/ dedicated to divorce and expected that page to rank for these divorce attorney search terms but it will not rank for the search terms and instead our homepage ranks for them every single time regardless of how we swap around the optimization on the page. Never had any manual actions. any help you guys can offer is greatly appreciated and I really appreciate your time!
Local SEO | | Seanthewood1230 -
What Causes Large Swings in Local Rankings?
I know local rankings are a complicated matter and I'm not looking for a single answer to this question, but I'm curious if any local SEOs have noticed similar issues to what I'm experiencing with trying to rank a multi-location-based business. Overall, the visibility trends for the business are up, but we keep popping into the top three spots (happened 2-3 times over the past year) for some general, particularly high-volume search terms only to fall back out and settle a week later into placements below the first page. This is particularly frustrating because the terms we're seeing this volatility for are the exact dream keywords we're hoping to rank the site for. Has anyone else experienced the same thing and had specific findings about what was at play? Is Google testing us and finding us unworthy? Any and all insights from pros with similar experiences would be helpful!
Local SEO | | formandfunctionagency0 -
403 to filter markets???
Hello! I was running an exercise to investigate the market around the main keyword "Retail recruitment" just for the US. Looking for key competitors, I've found one of them blocking traffic from any other sources but USA. When you try to access that site from any other country it returns a 403 error code. I think the only reason for doing this is to avoid big companies globally based to actually find them or study them in order to compete. The URL I'm talking about is http://www.c2recruitment.com/... What do you think? Would be another reason to do so? I also wonder if they are doing that just to avoid undesired traffic in general as it's a kind of market with high amount of impressions but low CTR. Third theory is that there's some SEO black-magic-for-local-seo-trick I'm missing. Any thoughts?
Local SEO | | Avature.Marketing0 -
Getting Schooled in Local by 'Lesser' Brands?
Hi Moz! First question I've asked here. I've been working on campaign for my company (regional solar installation company in Northeast USA) for close to 7 years, we've always done well in local search but recently have noticed sites that, for lack of a better word, we 'school' in terms of all the usual metrics - better/more consistent local listings, better domain strength, better backlink profile, bigger company (in the real world), brand recognition, etc... However recently we have started seeing smaller competitors beat us in state-specific rankings, using stuff I would call 'old school' SEO that is no longer really tolerated, in theory - stuffing keywords onto page, keywords in domain, etc... domains of much less strength pulling #1 or #2 terms. Based on data I don't actually think keywords like "solar + state name" are actually that powerfully but frankly it is bit embarrassing to get crushed by 1-2 person companies when you have a 150+ company with a three-person in-house digital marketing team. My strategy so far has consisted of building a better Google review solicitation process, adding schema markup to our project gallery, and some SEO 101 stuff like reworking keywords and title tags. I've noticed a strong uptick on our site of leads from outside our territory (like folks from all across the USA who are NOT in our service territory) - I'm almost thinking I've done 'too good' a job of building a nationally relevant website and not enough state-specific options. Has anyone ever experienced something like this? Any clever strategies beyond the obvious? Can share more specifics if it'll be helpful. Cheers,
Local SEO | | revisionsolar
Fred0 -
Multi location strategy - tracking keywords
I have very recently taken on a local business to manage and quite new to all of this. Your posts on the subject of multi-location SEO have been incredibly useful and the original blogpost on Local landing pages by Miriam Ellis is in my reading list and I am sure will be revisited regularly. I have another question on this obviously complex subject, what to do about tracking your keywords in MOZ Pro? I have subscribed and set up my main keywords and linked each to the 40 different service locations for our business, which is based in a single location but services a wide area, however this now gives me 400 keywords to track, which seems way too much and unmanageable. Can you give me some advice on how to make this much more effective? Many thanks, Sarah
Local SEO | | Mutatio_Digital0 -
Citation Building - Should this still be a part of our link building strategy?
With algo updates like Pigeon, should citation building still remain a core part of our link building strategy?
Local SEO | | AfroSEO0 -
Transfer Local SEO rankings to another domain
The question is specifically about local rankings, not the organic ones. My client recently acquired another Law firm. Acquired firm's website is ranking well in Google local and has a decent SEO authority. Its Google mybusiness page is also established and has a lot of positive reviews. Client's main website is comparatively new and doesn't currently rank well in Google local. The Google mybusiness page is sort of incomplete and doesn't have any review. Both businesses are listed in local directories (client's main business is listed in lot less directories and has fewer citations). The client wants to merge the newly acquired website with his main website, without losing Google local rankings the acquired website has. Or in other words, transfer newly acquired website's local rankings to his main site. Client wants to transfer the website to his main website in all cases while minimizing the damage. I'd transfer acquired website's content to main website, properly map the pages and place 301 redirects. Regarding Google my business pages, what would you suggest? I can either update main business NAP and Website address in Acquired business's mybusiness page, or transfer acquired business's mybusiness ratings to main mybusiness page via this form: https://support.google.com/business/contact/business_move_reviews I've also heard that Google support can merge two business page, however not sure about that. I'd also need to update the business listings and citations. Could you please suggest the best way of doing this? And have you practically tested it?
Local SEO | | Woofire0