Local, National, and International SEO

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

It’s important to be able to distinguish between local, national, and international search results.

Local SEO results

Let’s start with local SEO. Local SEO can help your business be more visible in local search results on Google. Any business that has a physical location or serves a geographic area can benefit from local SEO. 

Local SEO results come in two forms:

• Maps – for example, Google Maps. Google Business Profile (GBP) maps display on the SERP as the Local Pack or Map Pack; some people call it a Snack Pack. And…
• Traditional SEO results (for local keywords)

When reviewing these screenshots, you can see three Google Maps listings are above the traditional SEO results. 

You can control your Google Maps listings through Google Business Profile, which we’ll cover in more detail shortly. 

As well as triggering the Local Pack, local keywords can also influence traditional SEO results. That’s because what Google considers to be a local keyword changes frequently.

Finally, in local SEO, websites and Google Business Profiles are closely connected. GBP can boost traditional results, based on location and reviews, and the website can enhance the GBP profile. This can trigger the profile to show up for more local queries and can even display messages on the profile based on website content. Google will sometimes boost the traditional results and not show a local map pack.

National SEO results

National SEO focuses on optimizing your site to rank for keyword terms at a nationwide or national level. National SEO results are considered traditional SEO, but not for local keywords. They’re shown to people using Google who are in the same country or region that the business or website operates from. 

When we talk about SEO, by default we tend to think of it at a national level first.

You can see in this screenshot; Apple is ranking first for the phrase “iPhone” from a US location. 

Notice the URL does not contain a country code. 

International SEO results

International SEO focuses on geotargeting and language targeting. International SEO results are the traditional SEO results shown to people using search engines all across the globe, for example google.co.uk, which is Google’s UK specific search engine, or google.com.hk which is Google’s Hong Kong specific search engine.

Notice that for this iPhone listing, Apple has the UK country code in the URL. Additionally, Apple is using a meta tag in the source code of the webpage to instruct search engines to show it when people search from the UK. We’ll cover the Hreflang tag that is used to achieve this in an upcoming lesson.

Ranking locally, nationally, and internationally

Local, national, and international SEO strategies face a few different challenges. In almost all cases, it’s easier to rank in local SEO results than national SEO results, whereas it’s easier to rank for national SEO results when compared to international SEO results. Local SEO results are applicable to large enterprises and small businesses alike. For large companies, think global restaurant chains such as McDonalds, nationwide banks like Bank of America, or globally known clothing and apparel brands like Nike who have multiple locations and serve at the local level. With that said, local SEO is especially relevant to smaller local businesses like plumbers, restaurants, dentists, and so on. So, if you run a local business, it makes sense to start your efforts on local SEO first. International SEO is considered a more advanced SEO tactic, which requires more effort.