National Search also has its wrinkles.
There are two main points:
1. When competing nationally, you often REALLY have to pick your fights. There are search terms where you’d need a 100,000 page website to show up on page one on a Google search. So you look for “The Sweet Spot” – the search terms on the fringes which don’t have anything like as much traffic, but they are relevant, and it is realistic to show up on page one with a reasonable effort.
THEN you start working on moving those high on Page One and to get the next more competitive terms ranking.
2. There are many subjects where you are competing against local businesses, and that is a tough row to hoe. Google has flat out stated if you aren’t located in the local area, you aren’t going to show up in a local search (where someone includes a location in their search phrase, or Google assumes it because many people searching on the term would be looking for a local business).
Of course there are few absolutes in Search, and this isn’t one of them. But with any truly competitive search phrase, it may be monumentally hard.
Do a search for “water damage Tampa” and not one business located outside Tampa Bay shows up on Page One. And believe me, the Service Magic and Switchboard.com’s of the world would kill to rank for a term like that.
In fact you have to get well onto Page Two before the first such shows up, and that is Yahoo Local. So these national companies are stuck doing advertising to drive traffic, and running expensive click ads.
Since Google made its major changes to Local Search last fall, websites like those have just fallen clean off the organic Search map.
So it goes back to #1 – find less competitive search terms, where you can pick and win a fight against local companies if that is vital to your effort.
Of course “pick your fight” can apply to local companies as well, but it is MUCH rarer.