Complete local SEO guide for video professionals and businesses |
Did you realize that your video production business might be overlooking a valuable way to acquire new customers? While we often imagine growing a business in terms of word-of-mouth, there's actually a much more sophisticated channel worth pursuing organic traffic.
If you're a professional in video or a small-business owner who manages your own site (or maybe one of your clients), it behooves you to stand out within the vast ocean of Google results.
However, what exactly do you mean by local SEO? What's more important, how can you learn to master it , both for your needs and your clients?Let's answer all those questions with our comprehensive guide to local SEO for video pros.
What you'll learn
What is local SEO?
One of the best ways to think of and understand SEO is to think about SEO from a local point of view.
Local SEO is the process that aims to improve search engine visibility for local businesses or companies (whether it's a customer's or one you run yourself). The aim of local SEO is to outdo local competitors and boost the organic traffic that you receive through searches that search for your company's service in your area.
For example, "videographer in NYC" is a possible search keyword that local SEO would go after. For instance "wedding planning in Atlanta," could be a great term for a prospective client to market to.
No matter what your name or field the local SEO method is generally employed by brick and mortar stores or businesses that operate in a specific area and wish to have their information on the radar users who search within the same region.
Did you not know? A keyword like "video production businesses near me" is a popular search term that receives 2.3k daily organic searches. There are thousands of possible customers.
SEO tool, Ahrefs.com
What is the difference between normal SEO and localSEO?
The difference between local SEO and routine SEO can be quite vast.
While local SEO focuses on searches in your area, regular SEO opens the net to everyone... all over the world. It means that people all over all over the world, even with languages that you may not speak, are finding your websites video content, content or videos to engage with.
It is also possible to think of the world in terms of organic traffic (which refers to anything that can be displayed on a search engine page) as opposed to. quality traffic which is focused on finding the right audience of people who have used the search terms that will lead them to your site.
If you look at it from this macro lens, SEO is really just its definition of optimizing search engine results to get the maximum amount of visitors to your site. The distinction between them is merely due to the different ranking factors and the way local SEO has its own particular set of specifications (including local keywords or other niche industry terms).
Need a refresher? Check out 's A-Z glossary of SEO terms:
Who is in need of local SEO?
What do you think, and why do you need local SEO? This is a great problem that confronts all kinds of businesses, from small production companies to big businesses offering a range of different solutions and services. It's will depend on the specific goals you have for traffic to yourself or your clients.
- Are you hoping that people find your website out of out of the blue, and then give you a call to film their corporate video?
- Or do you want to build a brand so that customers can read your blog, watching your videos and making purchases 24/7 from all across the globe?
In the film and video industry at the very least, local SEO is a good strategy for gaining immediate clients and increasing your customer base, which means your SEO efforts should be localized and focused on making search engines aware of which services you provide and where you are.
If you belong to the second class and want for audiences across the globe to interact with your website and its content it is recommended that your efforts be more on specific keywords aligned with your products as well as services, and providing solutions to the problems the products solve.
How to do local SEO yourself
If you work in film or video (or maybe even managing your own production company for video) local SEO could be one of the last thoughts on your agenda.
While you may be focussed on keeping your camera updated with the most recent firmware or finishing your last project edits doesn't mean you should ignore your digital marketing footprint. Local SEO should work for you to get your business visible to more customers.
The goal of every website that you have for your film production business (or for those who assist with video marketing endeavors for clients) is to create websites as user-friendly as you can.
Now, what does that means? There are a number of different things. But in particular, plenty of the things you could accomplish without having an understanding of the concepts behind local SEO. To help you out with this, we've put together a comprehensive checklist to go through in the following section.
You don't have to go on your own.
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Local SEO checklist for small businesses
1. Optimize for mobile.
With almost 50% of U.S. organic search traffic on Yahoo reported to be coming via mobile devices and tablets, it's safe to claim that mobile devices are definitely the future of SEO. From an SEO perspective local and from a video business perspective that this is the place your efforts now and in the future ought to be directed.
2. Make use of local keywords and keywords, such as the name of your state or city.
The second thing you should do for local SEO focused websites or content must be to ensure that you ensure that you're making use of (and making use of) the right keywords to include the local keywords you're targeting such as your state, city, and offering.
If, for instance, you own a post-production facility in Seattle it is essential to be leveraging location keywords like "Seattle," "Washington," and phrases like "video editing" and "post-production."
3. Create your own Google My Business page (and be verified).
If you're not already doing so done so, go ahead and create a Google My Business Page for your company to inform Google know who you are and which location you're located. This is a simple and cost-free process that's easy to set up if you comply with the guidelines below.
Once you've set up your Business Page, be sure to follow the additional steps necessary to have the Business Page verified with Google in order to ensure it is one of most powerful search engines around the globe acknowledges your business and will send local search results your way.
4. Develop a solid web-based content plan (include name, address, and number of phone, which is also known as NAP).
Additionally, it's never a bad idea to take a moment to go back and review your organization's strategy to create content for your website to begin with. Does your business's name appear prominently displayed on your site's landing (or home) page? Is your address correct and do you have a phone number?
It is not necessary to rebuild your site from scratch to begin with, but if your can keep your website clean well-organized and clear search engines will have a better search for your website's information for local search results.
5. Regularly audit and remove duplicate entries.
This actually can be a fun task, although it can be quite difficult if you come across duplicate material. However, it's not a bad idea to Google (or Yahoo or Bing) for yourself! Look up your own business (but maybe set your browser in private mode before you start) to see what comes up.
If you're seeing that sites or sites that aren't that you (or that you may not need any more) are popping up, you might be required to take care to make sure your top and most current website will be the top choice.
6. Reviews can be your best friend. They boost trust in your business or brand.
If you're not already, it's the perfect time to dial in some favors from your favorite clients and/or friends to help get reviews for your organization's online presence. It doesn't matter if you're doing it via Google directly, or from an online service such as Yelp, ask some trustworthy friends and acquaintances to submit reviews of your business.
The ideal reviews are positive and five-star However, your clients should be honest as well. Reviews can also convince the search engines that you're a legitimate company and doing great work -- which means you'll get more favorable results with all types of searches.
7. Get testimonials from customers for your products.
Going one step further, if you do have large clients with whom you've put in lots of work with and have built a solid relationships, then solicit a detailed review of their experience. This will not only help both your local and organic traffic, it also helps any potential customers understand more about how great you are.
8. Post on social media regularly
Activity signals relevancy, authority as well as demonstrates it indicates that you're legitimate and well-liked business in the community you're in. While it's certainly not everyone's favourite task for better or worse, search engines do favor websites that are active on social media platforms.
You don't have to go crazy posting every minute of the day or even at all, but it is best to maintain active and engaged pages that are active on the main social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and more.
You shouldn't cut and paste the same stuff over and over again. For best results, try to actually spend time engaging with your audiences across all channels.
9. Check that your hours of operation as well as address and other information are correct across directories.
Once you have completed the work for your social media channels Make sure all your business hours details, addresses and contact information are up-to-date and consistent across all your online directory platforms like Google, Yelp, Foursquare, etc...
Although you aren't required to write as often on these as you would with social media channels obviously, the real key is to make sure the information you provide for your contacts is consistent and correct. What you don't want to happen is for potential clients (or search engines) seeing two different addresses and get confused.
10. Be aware that local SEO isn't just a one-time activity, but can be an ongoing process for businesses.
Just because you've done the steps above (and will soon complete those steps below) doesn't mean that the job you've done is done. When it comes to SEO The name to be playing is consistency. Which means if you really wish to make an impact with the search engines, then you have to make sure you are taking the necessary steps to ensure the search results you rank on remain current.
Here are some tools and free SEO apps that video pros can lean upon to gain insights into keeping your SEO juice flowing.
- Moz Free Domain SEO Metrics
- Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator
- WordPress SEO Plugin
- The Mobile-Friendly test of Google
- Google Search Console
11. Create interactive content that is based on your location that's helpful to the kinds of customers you want to attract.
Another great tip is to try to make your content as interactive and location-based as is possible. Local guides, surveys, meetings or scheduled events are great options to explore to help further link your website and brand within your niche and communities.
12. Contact listicles and directories to request that they include your company in their listings.
To further shore up your website's position on compiler or directories do not hesitate to reach out to any of these listicles for information on how to get your website included whether for future articles or existing ones.
As an example, this Peerspace article listing 8 awesome video production companies that are located in New York City currently shows up as one of the results that first appear for the phrase "video production NYC," and would be a good place to have your site included in when you're within the same industry.
13. Test your website page load speed
In simple terms? people will leave your site if the site load speed is too fast.
Another easy way to measure (but may require development work in order to make) is to check the speed at which your site's pages load. Google will always favor quicker websites to slow ones. If your site is slow, it may cause the page to get ignored completely. Check the speed of your site's website using the speed test available at GTmetrix.
14. Be sure to remember the finer points including meta-titles and meta-descriptions and Content headers.
While you're making the final touches to your site, ensure to complete all the metadata and details for each and every page on your site. It may be quite laborious, but if you get used to making sure all of your meta-titles and details remain in place in your website, you'll truly ensure that your site is in the best possible position to be ranked.
15. Stay well-read and proactive about Google's guidelines for business particularly when it comes to knowing what is your "business model" as per Google.
Finally, as we mentioned in the beginning, the task of optimizing your website for search engines is never truly finished. This means that to ensure that your site is always up-to-date, it will always be helpful to be aware of the latest trends, reports, and tips for keeping your site in compliance to comply with Google's guidelines for companies.
Find some other SEO websites or other resources you find interesting as well and try to keep up with knowing your relevant "business model" to the eye of Google as well as the other search engines that you would like your business to show up, for example:
- Local keyword research guide | Ahrefs
- the HubSpot 2021's manual on local SEO
- Local SEO tutorial video Ahrefs
Wrapping up
Hopefully these tips, tricks and guidelines will have helped you gain the knowledge of the ways SEO (and specifically local SEO) can be utilized by professional video producers to make an overall impact on business.