Thomas Olesen Discusses Organic SEO v Local in the First Instalment of His Blog Post Series

MyLocal, based in Norfolk, UK, has announced that owner Thomas Olesen has released the first instalment of his planned blog post series designed to update his book, “Local Search Optimisation.” It is his plan to provide updates to his book, one chapter at a time, through a series of blog posts. This first blog post in the series focuses on the differences between organic SEO and local SEO. More about this can be found by reading the blog post on the MyLocal website.

Thomas Olesen explains, “Search queries that are determined by Google and other search engines as ‘local’ pull their results from structured databases such as Yellow Pages. These databases compete in the organic search results and usually crowd out individual local business websites. ‘If you can’t beat them join them’. A good strategy is to be listed in as many of these databases as possible as that increases your chances of being found online. If you have a website, it can be linked to your listing in these databases and found via local SEO.”

MyLocal collaborates with the client’s website designer to enhance the ability of the site to be found in Google and other search engines. They specialise in local SEO and most of their work is done off-site, meaning that they don't modify the website itself. But the site’s webmaster may still have some things to do on-site and MyLocal works with them to ensure that on-site and off-site work complement each other.

Thomas Olesen had previously published the book titled, “Local Search Optimisation,” which is currently still available on Amazon. This book was published in 2017 and therefore, it is expected to be somewhat outdated in view of the fast developments in SEO. Rather than release a new updated book, Thomas Olesen planned to provide updates through a series of blog posts. This was previously announced in a press release issued by MyLocal.

The primary purpose of MyLocal is to provide advice to businesses who want to establish their online presence, specifically providing local SEO, online visibility and online credibility services. Online visibility has to do with making the business site widely available online. It should be pointed out that if the only online presence of a business is in the form of a website, chances are that the search engines like Google will not consider the business to be important and the site will find it hard to rank high in the search engine results pages. The situation would be different if the site is listed correctly in various places, such as directories, maps, industry niche sites, review sites, social media sites, local sites, video sites. This would get the attention of Google and other search engines, helping the site rank higher in the search results.

Meanwhile, online credibility is connected to online visibility. It is what people think when they find one's business online, wherever that happens to be. It is quite likely to be a third party listing like Yelp and so it is important to claim all such listings so that they can be optimised and made to look impressive. Also, third party endorsements can help boost online credibility. These reviews may work for or against the business, which is why some companies are offering reputation management systems of the type used by MyLocal.

And, of course, MyLocal also offers local SEO services. This is primarily based on Google My Business, which is a free tool provided by Google to help businesses and organisations manage their local online presence. This will literally place the business on the digital map. After a business has created or claimed their Google My Business listing, they can start optimising it for local SEO. They can also make use of third party listings to boost the business’ authority from the point of view of Google and other search engines.

People who are interested in local SEO services may want to check out the MyLocal website, or contact them on the telephone, or through email. They may also want to check out their Google My Business post. They are open from Monday to Friday, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.