When most people talk about local SEO, they are talking about how to rank well in Local Packs. The problem is that Local Packs are off the table for online-only businesses. This doesn't mean that local search isn't an option though. If you extend local search to mean all search with a location-specific intent, it can be expanded to include PPC and organic search. This presentation gives you five tactics to succeed in local search, even if your business doesn't have a physical premises.

1. Local Search Without
Physical Premises
Sam Nemzer

6. Local search
=
Local packs

8. No physical premises
=
No local packs

9. According to Google My
Business guidelines

10. Therefore…
No physical premises
=
No local search

12. Local search
!=
Local packs

13. This is Local Search

14. This is Local Search

15. This is Local Search

16. There is so much more to local search
than local packs

17. No physical locations, so local packs are
impossible

18. Competing in SERPs that often have local
packs

19. Often have location-based category
pages

20. PPC is Local
Search

21. PPC is Local
Search
(Especially on
mobile)

22. Organic is
Local Search

23. 5 Tactics
1. Put user-focussed content on category pages
2. Get the level of granularity right
3. Sidestep local packs by targeting high in the
funnel
4. Use structured data to stand out
5. Make the most of Intelligent Personal Assistants

24. 5 Tactics
1. Put user-focussed content on category pages
2. Get the level of granularity right
3. Sidestep local packs by targeting high in the
funnel
4. Use structured data to stand out
5. Make the most of Intelligent Personal Assistants

25. Add content
● Add more unique content by writing it
○ Hard to scale
○ Limited effectiveness - Google has been discouraging the use of ‘supplementary content’ in
its latest search rater guidelines

26. Pull in Third Party data
programmableweb.com

27. Pull in 3rd Party Data

28. Use Proprietary Data

29. Use Proprietary Data

32. How can you do this on your site?

33. How can you do this on your site?

34. Automatically generated data in content
is great, but don’t abuse it

35. 5 Tactics
1. Put user-focussed content on category pages
2. Get the level of granularity right
3. Sidestep local packs by targeting high in the
funnel
4. Use structured data to stand out
5. Make the most of Intelligent Personal Assistants

36. How granular should your location pages be?
Property listings site:
1. Country
2. County
3. City
4. Borough
5. Postcode Area
6. Area
7. Street
8. Postcode
Job Site:
1. Region
2. County
3. City

37. Do your research

38. How much traffic is each location level
getting?

39. How are people searching in your
industry?

40. Do you need location pages at all?

41. explicit aspect of query
iPhone user, at home, in Birmingham
implicit aspect of query
“sell my car”

42. TIME
TOTALSIGNALINFORMATION
implicit signal
explicit signal

43. 5 Tactics
1. Put user-focussed content on category pages
2. Get the level of granularity right
3. Sidestep local packs by targeting high in the
funnel
4. Use structured data to stand out
5. Make the most of Intelligent Personal Assistants

44. If You Can’t Rank For “roses delivery London”...

45. Target “rose colour meanings”

46. This might not get you a conversion
straight away

47. But you can build brand recognition

48. And you can use retargeting to reduce
CPCs

49. 5 Tactics
1. Put user-focussed content on category pages
2. Get the level of granularity right
3. Sidestep local packs by targeting high in the
funnel
4. Use structured data to stand out
5. Make the most of Intelligent Personal Assistants

50. Stand out in the SERP

51. It’s simpler than you might think
Microdata JSON-LD

52. 5 Tactics
1. Put user-focussed content on category pages
2. Get the level of granularity right
3. Sidestep local packs by targeting high in the
funnel
4. Use structured data to stand out
5. Make the most of Intelligent Personal Assistants

53. Intelligent personal assistants take local
packs out of the equation completely

56. You can do this!

57. You can do this!

58. Things you can start tomorrow
1. Find API data to pull into category pages
2. Find out how people are searching by location
3. Find content gaps to exploit
4. Add structured data
5. Integrate your app (or start the process of
building one)