Local SEO Side Hustle Opportunity
Many who deal with the topic of online marketing come across the topic of SEO sooner or later. SEO stands for search engine optimization and is a separate discipline in online marketing.
For what do I need SEO?
The goal of SEO is to optimize your website to be found by search engines, for example, Google. Of course, one does not only want to be indexed now, i.e. to get into the index of Google and Co., but one also wants to achieve corresponding rankings. Every website owner would be lying if his wish was not the 1st position. We all strive for this goal with SEO. With some keywords this is also feasible. With others again more difficult.
Those who study SEO a little more closely know that this discipline is divided into several subcategories. Basically, there are the following two:
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
On-Page SEO:
In on-page SEO, one undertakes optimizations on the page itself. There are different factors that have to be considered. I don’t want to go into further details here, as this would go beyond the scope of this article.
Off-Page SEO:
Off-page SEO, as the name suggests, focuses on SEO measures far away from one’s own website. In most cases, off-page SEO deals with the setting of backlinks. That is, links that point to our website. The more topic-relevant the websites that link to each other are, the better.
However, there is another approach. It is, in my view, a separate SEO discipline and uses both on-page and off-page measures. We are talking about Local SEO.
What is Local SEO?
In the end, it is quite normal SEO. With one exception: The focus is no longer on a website, a blog or a webshop. No, with Local SEO the local reference is in the foreground.
What do I mean by that?
We search for a wide variety of things on the web. We use either transactional search, which is a search where there is an interest to buy, or informational search. Information search is a type of search that aims to generate information. If that still sounds a bit too abstract, here’s an example:
Transactional search: buy shoes online
Information search: how many people live in florida?
In transactional search, the searcher already has a certain purchase intention. This means that he wants to buy something. Otherwise, he would not search for “buy shoes online”. With the information search however no purchase interest stands in the foreground. With this type of search, one only wants to get information “how many inhabitants does florida have?”
In Local SEO, one factor plays a special role: we extend the information or transaction search to the extent that a reference to a company in the immediate vicinity is created.
Thus, a Local SEO query might read as follows:
“buy shoes in charlotte county”.
Charlotte County is a county in Florida. So I am not interested in a webshop where I want to buy the shoes. The county, city or village that I use in the search query is what matters.
Why do people search for such keywords?
Very simple. You want to buy the items quickly. Even with today’s delivery times from Amazon and Co. (Same Day Delivery), going to the nearest local store is usually faster. But that’s only one reason. Another could be that people want to look at the item locally first before finally buying it online. Bad for local businesses but many people do just that. Maybe even you ;) Also for e-commerce deniers, people who don’t want to buy anything online but definitely use the internet for their searches, could be looking for keywords with a local connection.
Oh well. The basics regarding SEO and Local SEO should be clarified so far. Now to the actual business case.
Local SEO as a business model:
In contrast to traditional SEO, Local SEO usually involves a lot less competition, hurdles and effort. That’s a good thing.
If you want to run Local SEO as a business model, then you do nothing else than to rank local companies in the search engines. That’s the approach that many businesses take. That alone could be a business case for one or the other. So you offer a business the opportunity to get their site ranked #1 in the Google results pages. This is therefore easier than other SEO activities far from Local SEO, since there is only the one company in the one city. Even if it was present in several cities, it wouldn’t change anything much.
But that is not what this article is about. Rather, it’s about a different approach:
Imagine that you yourself own relevant websites that you set up just because you want them to rank for certain local search queries. That means, for example, that you want to rank for the keyword “buy shoes in charlotte county” with your own website.
What’s the point of that?
Simple. You yourself optimize the site to outrank most businesses in that industry. This will result in you getting more traffic to your site than other companies. There is nothing really wrong with this approach from my point of view, because other companies could do SEO as well. But most of them don’t.
Once you have achieved your rankings on various local kewords, you can resell the traffic accordingly. This is called lead selling. People who search for these keywords have a corresponding interest in the product or service in question. However, they do not get this product or service from you, because you do not sell anything. You only provide a website that ranks for these keywords.
Now you have a simple option:
Sell your traffic in the form of leads, i.e. potential prospects, to businesses in the relevant district, etc. This can be, for example, a fixed amount that you charge. Meaning, with every lead you bring to the business, you get $5. Flat rates are also common in this business environment. You agree on a monthly flat rate, such as 200$, which the company has to pay to you. With this variant, the number of leads are usually no longer capped. Means that you send them all the leads.
How do I send the leads to the company?
With simple CTAs (=Call to Action). This can be a banner of the company, a button or a simple hyperlink. There are several options available to you here.
Summary Business Model Local SEO
Step #1: You create a website and optimize it for local keywords.
Step #2: You try to rank the site as high as possible in the search engine results pages (SERPs) to generate traffic.
Step #3: You then sell the leads to the business
Final words:
This business model is not new by any stretch of the imagination. It has been practiced for years and many SEOs, i.e. people who do SEO full-time or part-time, can create a respectable income with it. It is also a win-win situation from my point of view. Not only the SEO earns money on a deal, but also the company. The only important thing here is to keep a constant eye on lead quality. At the end of the day, after all, we want both sides to be satisfied. This is the only way to ensure a long-term cooperation.
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