In this week’s video, I share an advanced Local SEO strategy called “Local Content Silos” that will help you gain visibility in nearby cities. If you want to show up somewhere and you don’t have a location there, this strategy will help you out-SEO your competitors and gain additional visibility outside your area. It won’t help you show up in the map pack – you need a physical location for that – but it can definitely help you to show up in the organic results in nearby areas!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to another episode of Local Search Tuesdays. This week, I’m going to share a more advanced strategy that will help you show up in nearby areas where you don’t have a location.

Every local business wants to expand its reach and show up in a wider area, but like I’ve mentioned in past videos, it takes a lot more to show up in searches in those cities than just listing a few city names in a comma separated list.

Also, when multi-location businesses try to show up in all their respective cities, but they’re just using a single website, many times there’s not enough content on the site to support the various locations.

Like everything else in SEO, there’s no one-size fits all answer to showing up in other cities – it depends – on where you are an how much competition there is. See what I did there? All the SEO peeps out there will get that one

In many cases, when there’s less competition, a well constructed city page is enough to help you show up in other areas. But in bigger cities and anywhere that there’s more competition, you’re gonna need a bit more “oomph” to be able to compete.

And that’s where Local Content Silos come into play.

Um, no… That’s not the kind of silo I mean. Let’s try that again…

And that’s where Local Content Silos come into play.

Yeah… Hey, I see what you’re doing here and it’s not funny. They’re watching right now, I need to get to what I’m really trying to talk about…

I wrote about Local Content Silos on Search Engine Land way back in 2015, and while the algorithm has changed over the years, it’s still an effective strategy that gets great results.

Keep in mind – it’s not a simple tactic. It’s involved, and it takes quite a while to gain traction – don’t be surprised if it takes 10-12 months. But once it’s working, you’ll see crazy awesome results.

Google’s local algorithm displays local results based on location in the real world, and proximity of the searcher to those locations. This isn’t new, you’ve heard me talk about that in past videos. With local content silos, you’re basically trying to out-SEO your competitors who have locations in cities where you don’t. It takes more than a few city pages, you’ve got to create entire silos of localized content around the targeted location.

Think of it like… well, you’re almost creating microsites for each location.

But wait a minute Greg, I thought microsites were bad for SEO

Ok, yeah, I’m right – bad metaphor. Think of it like a Venn diagram, but with lots of circles that don’t really overlap.

Each silo needs to include pretty much everything you do as part of your standard SEO strategy. Your main area of the site should be optimized for the city you’re in, but each silo should be optimized around the target city.

You’ll need to create content specifically for the silo – and yes, that means you’ll have additional pages about the products or services you offer. And I’ve got psychic powers that work through the internet, and I can tell you’re already thinking that it’ll be duplicate content.

Except it won’t be duplicate, because you’ll write unique content for each page, and each silo will be optimized for a different city. And the content won’t stop with a few product or service pages – you’ll also need to crank out some localized blog posts for each silo as well.

On a technical level, you’ll need to organize internal links in a bit more complex pattern. Instead of linking blog posts and contextual links in the main silo pages back to pages on the “main” section of the site, you need to inter-link among content within each silo.

Off site tactics are important as well. When you’re doing link building, you need to acquire links from local businesses and entities in each targeted city, and have those links point to content within each respective silo.

If you’re a multi-location business, each location’s Google My Business profile should link to a landing page within that city’s silo on your site. If you’re a single location business just trying to expand your reach, you won’t have multiple GMB profiles to worry about, but you should still try to gather reviews or testimonials from local customers in those areas, and then display those reviews on relevant pages within the silo.

Now, instead of a single location page for each targeted city, you’ll have a robust silo of relevant, unique information about each city that you serve.

One important final note: When you use Local Content Silos, you’re multiplying your Local SEO efforts. You can’t forgo Local SEO on your primary site areas to go after silos, so you’re adding additional work to your plate. Adding a single silo isn’t quite doubling your work, but it’s definitely adding a lot more.

Because of this, I wouldn’t recommend attempting multiple silos at once. If it’s your first time with the strategy, try a single silo and integrate the additional effort into your work pipeline. Once you understand the additional effort involved, you can add another city silo. You shouldn’t attempt more than two or three at once, it’s going to spread you too thin.

That’s all the time I’ve got for today’s video though, so you know what that means.
Put your hand on the screen right here:
We totally just high-fived ‘cause you learned something awesome.
Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you again next week for another episode of Local Search Tuesdays.