National SEO has the opposite objective of local SEO in that it targets broad keywords rather than specific, geographical keywords. Local SEO is not for every business, and the same goes for national SEO. Your business must be large enough and capable of competing with other national companies.
This means your business needs multiple locations all over the United States or offers services and products online. eCommerce websites can certainly focus on national SEO as it has no geographical tether. Of course, a physical store alongside an eCommerce store would benefit from both national and local SEO.
What is national SEO?
National SEO is the process of marketing your company to a national customer base rather than those limited to a geographical location. Businesses offering their services and products online and those with locations all over the country can take the most advantage of this strategy.
Marketing companies are a great example as they can offer digital marketing services to any business in the United States. Since their services are strictly performed online, any business can use them. However, a local hardware store in Albuquerque cannot provide products to customers in New York City.
Keyword Focus for National SEO
While local SEO focuses on geographic keywords, national SEO gears the focus to broad search terms or longtail keywords. These types of keywords vary significantly, which we will detail below. A geographic keyword is anything that includes a hint at the searcher’s location. A few examples include:
- “hardware store near me”
- “New Mexico hardware store”
- “Albuquerque hardware stores”
- “hardware store 87123”
As you can see, the term “near me” gives a hint to the searcher’s location and will prompt a local SEO search by Google. It is up to national SEO to target keywords that have no connection to a location. National SEO will target keywords like the following:
- “best power tool brand”
- “how to build a birdhouse”
- “contractors license”
- “2×4 wood”
These keywords have high search volumes across the entire United States and are more difficult to rank for. However, national SEO also focuses on longtail keywords, which have fewer searches and are easier to rank for. The image below shows a few longtail keywords we could focus on.
The keyword “what is the actual size of a 2×4” has a search volume of 720 every year. Its competition density (far right column) is .10. The closer that number is to 1.00, the more difficult that keyword is to rank for. Using this data, businesses find relevant keywords they can target. There is less competition for the keyword, the greater chance your business has at ranking for the search term.
Implementing Keywords for National SEO
Now that you know the types of keywords you need to focus on for your national SEO strategy, you need to know how to implement them. Developing content for your website with the selected keywords is essential. Your site’s content should be informative, keyword-rich, and user-friendly. When users gain something from your content, Google notices. Content should also be well designed, error-free, and original. All of these factors affect your national SEO, so be sure to produce the best content possible.
There are many types of content on your website. Here are a handful of areas you can focus on:
Website Content: your website should include content on each page. Any products or services you have should be detailed with informative content and have keywords incorporated. For services, we recommend at least 600 words per page. As for products, a minimum of 300 words should be implemented. All your other pages should also have about 600 pages, while your homepage having the most with at least 1,000.
Blogs: blogs, similar to this one, are a great way to focus on keywords that may be more difficult to include in website copy. Blogs also give you the option to expand your site’s content to even greater lengths. Blogs can range from 300 words to 3,000. There is no limit when it comes to blogs. The only thing you should keep in mind is that it should be informative, focus on a keyword, include original content, and catches visitors’ eyes.
Meta Descriptions: the content found beneath each search result is known as the meta description. This description informs Google and the searcher how relevant the page is to the keyword. We can see the highlighted keywords we are looking for in the meta descriptions in the image below.
Alt Tags: when inserting images into a webpage, you have the option to insert an alt tag. The alt or an alternative tag only appears when the image fails to load and tells Google what the image contains. Google’s crawl bot can’t see images. Instead, it reads the code of the entire webpage. The alt tag tells the bot what the image is and when it includes keywords, it’s a bonus.
Start Your National SEO Today
You can focus on your national SEO strategy today by calling ASAP Marketing Solutions. Our team of SEO specialists and content writers can assist you in increasing your ranking for various longtail keywords. All you have to do is give our team a call at (832) 737-2752. Give us a call today for a free estimate and a detailed proposal.