Local SEO: Limiting the Competition

Pitting a worldwide brand against a local fashion store in the heart of Melbourne may as well be the biggest mismatch in business history. You’re free to raise David and Goliath as an example on how underdogs can outwit the big guys. However, when the big guys are just as witty as the underdog (or even wittier), it’s impossible to call such a situation a “fair fight”.

This is one of the rationales behind the idea of limiting online marketing competition to a local scale. For instance, search engines like Google have taken steps to give local businesses the competitive edge and the chance to enjoy the fruits of their success. Local SEO gives them this opportunity by ranking local businesses, provided geotags (geographic location) are present in the search query.

Try searching for “restaurants in Melbourne” on Google. It should show you a map overview of restaurants in the city and their name and reviews. While McDonald’s is considered a restaurant by many, you’ll less likely need a search engine to look for one in the city. Most search queries want restaurants that have yet to ride the mainstream wagon.

This is just one of several benefits of local SEO. Local businesses won’t have to slug it out with brands the size of Earth in terms of reputation (unless they plan to enter the international market). 

SEO—Why It is an Effective Online Marketing Tool

A well-designed website will not contribute to a business if it’s not properly optimised. Similar to traditional marketing, which involves leaving tracks to lead customers to your establishment or setting up posters around the city, online marketing involves the use of various methods aimed at hooking internet users to a business website. One of today’s most effective online marketing methods is search engine optimisation (SEO).

Things to Ask About Online Reputation Management

“Reputation takes a lifetime to build and seconds to destroy” says the old adage, but those lengths of time can become much shorter thanks to online reputation management. As the name implies, online reputation management relies on the Internet to be effective, which means that websites, social media, and the like are used to manage a person or company’s reputation for everyone.

When working with reputation management firms, it’s important for people to first ask how exactly the world sees them. This is crucial when a person’s reputation is a mixed bag of positives and negatives with no clear idea as to which is the most dominant. Next, that person should ask if their reputation could still be influenced to go to either way. Sometimes, controversial events make it so that the only way for a person to escape the backlash, is to lay low and wait for them to die down.

While much of the legwork is done by the reputation management firm, people should also ask about what they can do to help improve their standing. This is very important because some individuals make the mistake of replying to negative reviews and defending themselves, not knowing that doing so encourages internet traffic to go to those same reviews.