Within any community, including various ones in the natural world, there is an invisible web of energy, with all kinds of intricate and sometimes surprising connections between even seemingly disparate parts.
For instance, science is discovering numerous amazing interactions between plants in local communities. If one is attacked, it might emit various chemical messengers through the soil and air to help the other plants to take action. Energetic webs in general can help members of a community to thrive, as power and information is fed in from multiple directions.
But some members that are not as interconnected may languish off to the side, not involved in enough local synergistic energy exchange. The same can occur on the web with your Bend, Oregon SEO, which has an increasingly large impact on the ability of your business to energetically thrive. How well are you leveraging your interconnections and special strengths within your local web presence?
Local businesses sometimes get intimidated, as they overemphasize competition with national businesses with numerous links to franchises competing for search traffic. But who better understands the deeper needs of the local people than you do, as an integral member of the community? Some of you have deep regional roots going back and interconnecting for generations! Local businesses must learn to leverage their unique community insights and networks in order to generate valuable search traffic, and build brand cachet among their community members. One of the very best ways to do this is through high-quality blog content that is tailored to powerfully impact local search engine results through your SEO here in Bend, Oregon.
Before optimizing your blog content, you’ll need a keyword strategy targeted to your SEO. It is necessary to see which local Bend, Oregon (or whichever city you are targeting) keyword searches are driving traffic to your site, how these deliver cash flow to your business, and the impact of local traffic on your overall results.
For example you may examine the keywords in Google Analytics and find that the major part of your site traffic comes from branded keywords, which include your bike shop’s name. However, you might find quite a few visits for terms like “Downtown Bend OR Bikes,” “Bicycles Redmond,” and possibly even some longer phrases such as “Central OR Bicycle Repair.” Analyze whether such terms would help to describe your business. Is your array of services being associated with the overall locations you serve? Are the locales you serve associated closely enough to the keywords you use to drive traffic to your site?
Many businesses miss out on easy opportunities to develop valuable content based on their participation in or sponsorship of events within the local community. A local bike shop could blog their sponsorship of a triathlon with SEO keywords included, and note its Bend, Oregon location. The post could discuss how the bike shop can help with training for a triathlon, due to their various championships in bicycle racing, training expertise and cutting-edge equipment.
After the event, the blog could display pictures of participants, perhaps mentioning that some of them have gotten coaching by the shop in cutting-edge interval training. Another benefit related to sponsoring local events such as this triathlon is the opportunity to gain quality inbound links. These can come from athletic events, conferences or business associations that have high domain authority to a local area or region. Therefore, if you sponsor a significant local event, work hard at getting links!
Local business owners tend to get involved in local causes and organizations, and blogs are great ways to promote this involvement via your SEO. For instance, the bicycle shop may be advocating for a bike path that would make it easier for clients to avoid traffic and get to the store more safely when riding their bikes.
A blog post focusing on an upcoming meeting in a Bend neighborhood can not only help raise awareness for the cause, but it can also raise the profile for the bicycle shop by capturing searches related to the local bike path. And promoting events can extend audience awareness of a local business by leveraging locally trending topics on various social media. This gives your local content the opportunity to be exposed to the extended network of your clients and customers, reinforcing your brand’s relevance in the interconnected community web of the greater Bend, Oregon area!
Kelly Walker is Creative Director for Intrepid Marketing, a leading Bend, Oregon marketing agency. For information, contact Kelly at 541-419-9976 or Kelly@intrepidforward.com.
