Find Your Niche, Keywords, and Location for Better SEO

by Kevin Smith Author

Search engine optimization requires that you find the right niche and keywords. As a local company, you may be looking to take advantage of SEO in San Francisco. This is a great strategy as geotags and locations become more important in search results. While you're looking at ways to dominate the search engine rankings for your keywords and local results, make sure you're not missing out on these opportunities to improve your search engine rankings.

Go Small

There are a lot of huge businesses out there that are able to make money because they can invest in several different categories of services and products. Think of the superstores that combine groceries, electronics, clothing, and toys. They can't provide the best of everything in one category, but they can offer enough of anything to make up for slows sales in one department. They also sell a lot because they can offer cheaper prices. Chances are that you don't have the financial backing to jump into the large industry fray. That's okay. Focus on one thing that you can be the best at and do that. Back when cable was just starting out, a man made his money by offering a 24-hour sailing channel. It was large enough to provide an audience, but niche enough that no one else was offering the coverage he could. ESPN was the superstore of sports, which may have had some stories about sailing, but the sailing channel was the niche store that offered expertise in one sport.

Go Long

Instead of focusing on keywords that are one or two words long, choose keywords that are four words long. These long tail keywords should be researched, so you know what people are looking for. Most often they are not serviced as well as the shorter keywords, which means you'll face less competition for people looking for that information.

Go Local

Using local terms to tag your location is more important than ever. People are using voice searches to find nearby businesses, and those usually result in one answer that is local. If your business isn't tagged as in the area, you could be missing out on valuable contacts. Your SEO in San Francisco should include registering with Google My Business, and having all of your contact information in the footer of your website. Additionally, you might put a map on your about page with your exact location pinpointed.