Local SEO vs General SEO | Which One Is Right For Your Business?

Which One Is Right For Your Business

Local SEO

If your business is heavily dependent on locations and relies on physical visits of customers. Then Local SEO is the better choice because you can only provide products or services in restricted areas. 

By applying general SEO techniques, you may get the attention of customers outside your region but they are less likely to visit or get your services. If you’re a business owner in London This Guide about keywords research and targeting in London might be a helpful read for you. Take the businesses below as an example that benefit from local SEO.

Restaurants:

Everyone eats food every day, which means everyone living near restaurants is the target audience. People are always on the lookout for restaurants to have a great weekend and they do so by searching for it using the internet. As the restaurant business requires visits from customers to sustain, there’s no better strategy than local SEO to attract more diners, especially if the food served is delicious.

Gyms:

Fitness is another concern for many. Nearby residents are looking for gyms to get in shape. These gyms usually give monthly subscription plans, which makes people hesitate to buy it if they don’t have enough information. The local reviews feature of Local SEO is the best way to get the target audience into confidence.

These are just two examples of business that can benefit from local SEO, others include cafe owners, service providers like plumbers, electricians, cleaners, stonemasons, etc. If you also own a small business like this, read to learn why local SEO is important for small businesses in 2026

General SEO

If your business is not geographically bound, your services and products can go anywhere anytime, without requiring the customers to come to you for it. Then General SEO is a better option. Even if you don’t directly want to make sales on the internet, you can still build brand awareness and recognition around the world, or country. 

Applying Local SEO for such a business is not ideal because it covers only a few audiences in a small area, and your business has the potential to provide for a wider audience. Some of the examples of businesses that benefit from General SEO are mentioned below:

E-Commerce:

E-commerce does provide physical products and does require an address, but this is not the address of the business, it is the address of the customers for shipping purposes. They are open 24/7 online and anyone can order any product anywhere in the world, or country, based on the business type of course. 

SaaS Providers:

Software as service businesses provide services online and can be accessed through any part of the world, that’s why global SEO is the most suitable option here, unlike e-commerce which could be restricted to the area where the shipment is provided.

Similarities Between Local and General SEO

• Starts with auditing and keyword research to create the whole SEO plan. 
• Aims to rank higher in the SERPS.
• Creating High-quality content that resonates with the target audience.
• On-page SEO techniques like optimising meta titles, descriptions, headers, and alt text.
• Off-page SEO techniques like creating high-quality backlinks from relevant websites to increase authority.
• Technical SEO that includes improving page speed, crawlability, and proper schema.
• Analysis and tracking by using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to see the progress, or find out the inefficient practices to adjust accordingly.

Difference Between Local and General SEO

General SEO

• Focused on a national or global audience. 
• Aims to cover a wider audience.
• Uses broad meaning keywords giving priority to keyword volume.
• General SEO is used to rank a website so it appears at the top of basic search results.
• News, blogs, educational, and other informational websites benefit from it.

Local SEO

• Focused on improving visibility in local search ranking. 
• Aims to cover location-specific audience.
• Uses local (area specific) keywords that are mostly used by local customers.
• Local SEO aims to rank both in the basic search results and in the local pack or map pack. 
• Local SEO mostly focuses on Google My Business profile, local citations, reviews, and content.

Benefits of Both SEO Types

Helps In Targeting The Right Audience

As I mentioned earlier, the main aim of SEO is to get top position in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). However, SEO is no stand-alone strategy, some aspects of it can be utilized for other types of marketing campaigns as well. 

For example, we know that marketing starts with knowing the audience’s insights and data. Let’s say you need to run Ads for your products/services, you must have the right keywords in order to effectively utilise your ad campaigns budget.

If you are using words in your Google ads campaigns, that are not used by ideal customers, all your efforts could go in vain because of mismatch terms. Meanwhile, if you do keyword research, you know the exact terms they use to find products or services your business provides.

Helps In Clearing Audience’s Doubts

You can also get to know about the questions or doubts they have regarding your products/services, which you can address to create trust and reliability. All of these insights can be utilized for social media marketing, email marketing, and for running ads. 

Plus, you don’t have to spend dollars for keyword research, there are free tools providing limited features that could be beneficial for you.

Helps In Maximizing Keywords Efficiency

There could be many similar keywords related to your business, but different search volumes. Some of them have huge volumes, some small. Some of them are long tail some are short. But all may have the same intent. 

It requires some SEO expertise to know how you should benefit from each of them. Should you cover only the high-volume ones or should you add all the keywords in a single content piece with equal density, without caring about volume? Covering all of them in separate articles can cause content duplication.

Conclusion

Local SEO is the right choice for you if you are running a business that provides products/services in a specific locality. If you’re an e-commerce website owner and serve country wide or globally general SEO is the right choice. Goal remains the same, ranking in top positions on SERPs.

The basics of SEO including keywords research, on-page SEO, technical SEO and off-Page also vary slightly when we approach local SEO in comparison to general SEO.