A common question our consultants hear is about the value of localization in SEO. For the most part, if you’re a SaaS company or a tech company that serves customers on a global scale, you don’t need to worry too much about localization. Let’s break down why.
Localizing your SEO strategy is the process of optimizing your web pages to boost their visibility to Google search users in your immediate area. When a user enters a search, Google considers their location as one factor in determining which results to display and how to rank them. The types of keywords used in the search tell Google whether local results or global results are more likely to be relevant to that user.
Local SEO techniques are not particularly important for B2B SaaS companies (companies that sell software subscriptions to other companies) because they’re not geographically restricted in the services they provide.
Since customers of B2B SaaS companies access the software online, the location of the SaaS provider generally has no bearing on the quality of the service. Thus, Google does not consider location when returning results for software-related keywords.
In order to create the best experience for users, Google only returns local results when a user enters keywords related to geographically limited services. This means small local businesses stand the most to gain from localizing their SEO strategies. If you’re mowing lawns or fixing air conditioners, you’re somewhat limited in the number of locations you can serve. Localized SEO content is imperative for businesses like these.
Local SEO should not be confused with regional SEO. While regionalization is similar to localization, regional SEO concerns factors that would be relevant to broader regions like countries or continents. If someone enters a Google search in Europe, Google will return results that are relevant to that region’s language and typical user needs. Entering the same search terms in the United States will likely yield a different set of results.
It is not important for B2B SaaS companies to focus on local SEO because localization is not part of the search experience for the B2B SaaS industry. In some cases, it can be worthwhile to invest in translating your website into different languages if you have large customer bases in different regions globally. For more on that, you can learn what Demandwell does for international SEO. At Demandwell, our consultants can work closely with your organization to figure out how much geo-location should play into your SEO strategy.
