Organic SEO vs. Local SEO: What’s the Difference?

At Deviant Digital Services we’ve had the pleasure of talking with many business owners over the years about their digital strategies. As you can imagine there are a lot of questions that we hear fairly often. However, the one which is asked the most is: what’s the difference between Organic SEO and Local SEO? It’s a fair question especially when business owners are trying to prioritize their marketing budgets for the year. They often wonder, is one SEO service more important than the other? Of course, we are always happy to answer this question, but you may find the explanation a bit more complicated than you would have expected.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization

The first thing to know is that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It means changes that digital marketing can do to help your brand rank and be discovered online on search engines like Google or Bing. When we’re talking about Organic SEO or Local SEO those are two different types of strategies to improve your SEO. Since they are different strategies for each, in theory you could prioritize one over the other. However, what many do not understand is that Organic SEO needs Local SEO and vice versa. These two can be worked separately, but they technically perform best when you utilize both strategies together. 

In order to understand this process, let’s break down the different ways Local SEO & Organic SEO appear in the search results and the work it takes to get there!

Search Engine Results Page

Imagine you’ve completed a search online, either on your phone or desktop, for pizza shops near you. The screen which first appears after you click “search” tends to show you results based on the data your query triggered. This page is called the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). All SERPs have a fairly similar layout but let’s use Google as an example since they account for over 90% of the world’s search market share. 

Below is the what you first see on the SERP page after searching “pizza near me”:

Ads are always going to be listed first and you can identify them by their Ad label. We discussed in another blog how you can utilize PPC advertising to obtain this number one spot, but for the sake of this blog let’s focus on what comes next. Underneath the ad section you will find a map and short list of local businesses. As you can see in the above photo these results are eye-catching since they feature business details, star reviews, and pictures. These are examples of Local SEO results.

There are several benefits to having your business rank in the Local SEO listings. For starters, they’re located near the top of the SERP so you’re more likely to be spotted by users. In addition, there is a handy ‘View All’ button which directs users to the maps section and provides the full list of businesses. Therefore, if your business isn’t listed on the main SERP you can still be discovered via Maps thanks to Local SEO.

However, the most prominent benefit of ranking with Local SEO is the impact it has on mobile users. Many mobile searchers only go as far as viewing the Local SEO results as they are the most prominent listings on their mobile device. Since mobile users account for over 50% of the world’s internet usage it’s easy to understand why you’d want your business to be found easily via Local SEO.

Now let’s look underneath the Ads and Local SEO results where you’ll see ten more listings of websites and potential answers for your query. Continuing with our “pizza near me” sample, this is what the rest of your screen could look like.

These ten listings are examples of the Organic SEO results. There are ten organic listings to each page of the SERPs, but according to studies up to 92% of users don’t search past the first page of Google. That means these ten spots are highly sought after real estate when it comes to ranking your website organically online.

Some may wonder why bother ranking with Organic SEO if it’s so far down the page and limited to primarily only ten spots? Wouldn’t it make more sense to pay for ads at the top or improve your Local SEO presence? While many do adopt this strategy Deviant Digital Services urges you to not overlook the importance of Organic SEO. Yes, ads can be appealing because they appear first on the SERP, however, there are many users who do not trust clicking on ads and only prioritize Local or Organic results. In theory, you could prioritize Local SEO because it’s higher on the SERP, but remember what we discussed earlier: Organic SEO & Local SEO strategies yield the highest results when they are worked on together.

How To Optimize For Local SEO & Organic SEO 

Now that you know how the Local SEO & Organic SEO listings appear on the SERP and the benefits of each, let’s figure out how you can optimize your brand for each. As mentioned above, it takes two completely different strategies to achieve rankings in Organic SEO or Local SEO.

To rank organically the first step always begins with your website. There are many factors that go into it and there’s no one size which fits all, but here are some of the basics which you’ll need to prioritize. You’ll want a nicely designed, easy to understand website which is mobile friendly and has good site speed. Overall, search engines want to rank sites which provide a good user experience. 

Furthermore, the content on your website should be targeting the “keywords” you’d like to be discovered by. Harking back to our example of “pizza near me”, the business owner of a pizza restaurant could have pages on their website which talk about different pizza options, like “gluten free pizza” or “pepperoni pizza”. 

Of course some websites are small and only have a few pages of content to work with, so it becomes difficult to target keywords. Back in the early days of the internet, business owners could add a page to their site and simply list the keywords they wanted to rank for. Today this is considered keyword stuffing and can get you penalized for being spammy.

This is why Deviant Digital Services always recommends adding a blog to your website and updating it regularly. Blogging on your website allows you the opportunity to target more keywords you’d like to rank for. While many of your customers may not read your blog, search engines like Google certainly will! By updating your blog you’ll provide the search engines’ “spiders” to “crawl” your website and better understand what keywords your site should rank for. Blogs also demonstrate that your site is regularly being updated with fresh content and not remaining stale and obsolete. 

There’s actually a lot more which goes into optimizing your website for Organic SEO including on-page and off-page optimizations, however the above suggestions are good starting points. If you’re interested in learning more about what Organic SEO work your specific brand needs, then you can request a free scan with Deviant Digital Services’ tool  here. Suffice to say Organic SEO growth takes some time to see the impact it can have on your website’s growth. This is why we at Deviant Digital Services call Organic SEO a foundational service which will impact your business’ growth much more over time. Think of it like your savings account building up interest and good faith with the bank of Google over time. 

When it comes to ranking for Local SEO, the optimizations take place primarily off of your website and instead focus on your local directory listings. There are literally thousands of Local SEO listing directories online which you can submit your website to, but some primary ones you may be familiar with are Google My Business or Yelp. While you may not receive many visitors from those listings specifically, the more listings you have on the internet with your proper Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) the better your brand will rank locally for your registered category (i.e. pizza restaurant). 

While it may sound easy, updating local directory listings is an uphill battle as many directories no longer accept manual submissions from users due to misinformation. Instead the primary way to properly update your local listings is by utilizing a tool like Yext Directory Sync. However, that will only solve part of the problem as local sync tools tend to only make local listings look proper. Yet when the tool is turned off it turns out nothing was fixed and all directories revert back to the old misinformation or worse, drop your listing altogether.

That’s why it’s important to work with professionals like Deviant Digital Services who partner local sync tools with local aggregator submissions. Unlike local directory listings which are a dime a dozen online, there are only four main local data aggregators who contribute to businesses being found via Local SEO. They are called Infogroup, Acxiom, Factual, and Neustar/Localeze. It may sound difficult to believe but these four data aggregators are responsible for submitting NAP info all across the internet. It’s quite complicated to understand but here is a handy image from Moz Local which illustrates this dynamic nicely:

In short, if you want to rank in the Local SEO pack you’ll want to ensure the data aggregators along with as many local directory listings as possible all have your business’ correct NAP. The easiest way to achieve this is to reach out to a professional who can dedicate their own hours and tools to clean up your NAP information for you. If you’re interested to know how your specific website is appearing in the local directories and aggregators check out your Local SEO status using Deviant Digital Services’ free scan tool. 

Organic SEO versus Local SEO

So now that we know the impacts of both Local SEO & Organic SEO along with the very different work each takes, the question remains: which of the two should a business owner prioritize? Well as usual the answer is, it depends! 

We’ve already discussed how both of these strategies perform best when they’re worked on together. By optimizing your website for Organic SEO you’re likely to start ranking for keywords which are relevant to your business (i.e. pizza shop). At the same time, if you’re also prioritizing updating your Local SEO you are likely sending all of the positive signals from your local directories and the local aggregators to your website as well. This means search engines overall have become very aware of your brand and you’re likely to also rank for terms with geographical details (i.e. pizza near me, pizza downtown).

That said, many business owners prioritize Local SEO over Organic SEO, largely because it has a cheaper price point and can provide measurable results faster between the two. Once Local SEO tools are activated you’ll immediately receive verification of listings updating and your NAP improving. Whereas we mentioned before, organic SEO can take some time before you’ll start to see it’s impact. 

While it’s understandable to want to focus on a service which returns results faster, Deviant Digital Services urges business owners not to discount their Organic SEO efforts entirely. The longer you put off optimizing your website organically the harder it will be to rank in the long run. Whereas, if you begin putting in the work on your website now, you’ll feel the lasting impacts of your Organic SEO work sooner. Here is a chart which illustrates this bit easier:

If you’re ready to start prioritizing your business’ digital marketing, talk to Deviant Digital Services today. We’ve been optimizing websites for Organic and Local SEO for almost ten years and are ready to help you be found! Give us a call or send us an email today and don’t forget to follow us on social media.