Content writing can have a big impact on your local SEO no matter what updates are going on at Google and other search engines. According to this Search Engine Land report, The Google Pigeon Update was intended towards improving local SEO giving more relevant and accurate local search results that are “tired more closely to traditional web search ranking signals” (frankly, I was unable to understand this, can anyone help?) The updates were mostly for US English searches targeting US local SEO and SEM sectors. Later on it was also expanded to the other regions of the world. My focus would be the content writing aspect of local SEO vis-a-vis this ongoing debate on the Google update.
Since the Google Pigeon Update is more focused towards improving local search algorithms, it was difficult to ignore the business directories that mostly cater to local businesses, for example in India we have IndiaMart and many more. Last year, the local review site Yelp had complained that the Google search results were ignoring its results and SEO advantages it had enjoyed so far, and were pushing Google’s search results ahead of local business and review directories. This seems to have been corrected in the Pigeon Update and Yelp again has attained its SEO advantage. In a blog post last month, Shelly Kramer posted a review of the impact that Google’s Pigeon Update has had so far on different businesses and their SEO positions.
Content writing for Google Pigeon Update in particular and local search results in general
Give and take everything revolving around search, eventually it is content writing that impacts your rankings. It’s mostly your content that decides (of course there are scores of other factors but mostly it is your content) what sort of search rankings your website or blog is going to enjoy. Anyway, how do you write your content for the Google Pigeon Update in particular and local search results in general? Here are a few things you can do:
- Talk about your locality as much as possible. If you provide computer repair services in and around, say Pigeonburg (no such locality as far as I know, so don’t try to look in Google maps), create lots of content talking about your computer repair services in and around Pigeonburg. Write about the various events taking place in Pigeonburg and connect these events to your computer repair services. Routinely write about Pigeonburg and computer repair services.
- On your social media profiles try to create a community of Pigeonburg residents who would be interested in your computer repair services by posting highly relevant content that would interest people in Pigeonburg.
- This is not related to content writing, but you should also get your business website listed in as many Pigeonburg online business directories as possible because as mentioned above, the business directories are given more preference over natural results.
Content writing for local SEO is not much different from writing content for any other topic in order to optimize it. You just need to talk a lot about your locality – in the right context – and then also incorporate the keywords relevant to your business.