Organic SEO vs Local SEO: What's the Difference?

When it comes down to expanding your business by making people aware of it, SEO is the concept that can put you forward in the competition. SEO is expanded as Search Engine Optimization and is crucial for ranking in the top Google results.

SEO is a wide concept. There are many things in SEO that need to be discovered. For instance, while surfing on Google, you must have witnessed the difference in the results based on the queries. The type of results Google shows you depend on a number of factors like the words that you use in your search query, intent, and even location.

The results that are displayed based on the location come under local SEO. And the results that are displayed with regards to regular search queries come under organic SEO. There are many other interesting things about local and organic SEO. Let’s take a look at them!

Organic SEO

Organic SEO is the marketing practice employed by websites to make it more search engine-friendly and secure a rank in the top Google results. In this, the website is not linked to any offline store for their services but may have a possible location.

Usually, it only revolves around using relevant keywords for ranking the website and its pages on the web. Here is an example, if you search for “Rado” on Google, it will show you the results in the image,

In this picture, you can see that the results are based on a single keyword that does not have any location preference. This is what Organic SEO looks like. The search results are based on trusted and relevant content.

Local SEO

Unlike organic SEO, local SEO focuses on providing you with results-based on the location specified in the search engine query. This type of SEO is linked to specific offline stores, and businesses focus on developing reliability by citing their business in forums and directories.

Local SEO also revolves around the keywords with the major difference of the location parameter. Here is an example of it, if you search for Rado Canada in Google, it will take you the following results.

The image shows your results based on the location of the trusted locations. You can see that the search results are only related to Canadian Rado Stores and websites.

Local vs. Organic SEO

As you are well aware of both types of SEO, let’s jump into the differences between the two.

Location
Not really hard to figure out, local SEO focuses on improving your visibility in the local area or territory. On the other hand, traditional or organic SEO focuses on providing you with a good rank based on the quality of your website content on a global scale.

Aim
Local SEO and Organic SEO also vary based on their aim. For example, the primary aim of local SEO is to be in the local listing displayed by Google. Google listing is a business list generated by Google with respect to the query entered by the user. For example, searching for “car mechanic Ohio” will give you the following results:

The “One Call Auto Mechanic” and “Willoughby Hills Auto Repair” are the results in the Google listings.

On the other hand, Organic SEO deals with ranking as high as possible in Google SERPs.

Links Vs. Citations
This is the most crucial difference between Local and Organic SEO. In Organic SEO, the authenticity of the website is measured by the number of quality and authority links to it. For instance, if you have a website that has links to high authority websites like Medium, Forbes, Techcrunch, etc. Your website will be genuine in the eyes of Google and will have a higher rank in Google results.

On the other hand, Local SEO deals with the citations instead of links. In local SEO, if you have citations on the authority websites on the web, you will be easy to find by the users. Just like the Organic SEO, the more citations on the relevant and crucial places like forums and directories, the more will be the authority of your business. The citation information includes:

• Business name
• Business address
• Contact number

Approaches
Local SEO and Organic SEO also vary based on the approaches required to apply them. For instance, Organic SEO deals with on-page and off-page optimization, including meta tags, meta descriptions, link building, and more.

Local SEO, on the contrary, deals with registration on Google listing along with various directories on the web. Also, make sure that your details like name, address, phone are the same on all websites on the web.

Final Words

In a nutshell, we can say that Local and Organic SEO are two different concepts with different requirements. If you want to start small and grow your business locally, go for local SEO and if you want to capture the quality audience on a global scale, choose Organic or traditional SEO and local SEO as it will also help your general SEO, this is the part where you prove you are a real company.