National SEO is the optimization of websites or web pages for nationally searched keywords. This involves in-depth content with original research and satisfying the search intent on a national level.
This can be used to promote services across the country and sell products to a broader audience. This approach is also used by Local Businesses to leverage the potential of National SEO.
Nationwide SEO includes all types of technical optimization possible. In simple terms, you have to do everything from the perspective of Search Engine Optimization and Marketing.
Here are all the factors you need to consider when doing SEO Nationally and to rank your website on page 1 of Google for national keywords.
- National Keyword Research
- Nationwide Competitive Analysis
- Brand Leverage
- Long-Form Content
- City Specific Pages
- Country-Specific Hosting
Complete Checklist to rank Nationally with SEO.
National Keyword Research
Keyword Research is by far the most crucial part of National SEO. It’s very important to target keywords that are searched nationally and have decent search volume.
You can use tools such as Semrush, Ahrefs, or Ubersuggest to find such opportunities by considering the Domain Authority of your website. Be careful while opting for keywords, i.e. the keywords to be optimized must be of low/appropriate competition.
Make sure that there are no city keywords on the pages you are optimizing nationally. Such keywords could confuse the algorithm and you would be left in wonder about why your web pages aren’t ranking.
Nationwide Competitive Analysis
Keywords just cannot be finalized without looking into the competition. You have to have a bird’s eye view of your competitors.
To say practically, assess the content length, the H1 heading, the H2 headings, images, and content flow of your competitors. Do not forget to look into the meta description and title tag for On-Page SEO optimization.
As there must be more competitors for the national keyword you are targeting it becomes a hassle to competitively analyse them, I recommend having a Google Sheet for your ease.
Brand Leverage
This is the most underrated factor to rank nationally. Brands can leverage their popularity as an authority in the space to influence an audience and send positive signals to Google for better and fast ranking.
To say practically, you can include YouTube videos on the pages as a sign of authority and in-depth explanation. Also, you can revive suitable existing pages on your website to target the national keywords just by adding content and on-page optimization.
You can also find the already ranking keywords in the search console that may be on 2 or 3 pages and optimize them for quick wins. Thus this is how you can leverage your brand with content marketing.
Long-Form Content
According to Backlinko, the average word count on the top 10 results on google is 1447 words.
There’s not a hard and fast rule about this but it’s evident that long-form content ranks better nationally as it keeps users on the page for a bit longer than your competitors which is again a ranking factor.
Practically, look for the average word count on page 1 by just adding up all the words from the top 5-10 results and dividing it by the same.
City Specific Pages
Whenever you search for something on the web in a particular location you get to see the results about that. For example: if you search for an SEO company while in New York you’ll only see results for SEO Companies based in New York.
It’s just Google’s feature that enables location-based search results. To rank for city-based terms you need to create pages for specific cities.
Such as if you want to rank in numerous cities like Texas, New York, San Diego, Idaho, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, etc. create pages targeting the city name with the keywords you rank for in the Title Tag and H1 Headings.
Country-Specific Hosting
Well, this is not something I would be concerned about too much but if you are serious about Nationally ranking with SEO then it’s always better to host your site in that country itself.
But like many of us, your primary location is in one country, and you don’t want to change the server. You can always opt for Content Delivery Network (CDN) to make your job easier. For CDN you can use Cloudflare’s free CDN or just ask your hosting provider to do the same at a cost perhaps.