Write for Your Neighbours, Not the Universe

Generic content on a website, often used by local businesses, is content aimed at everyone, everywhere, without a specific audience or location in mind. It may detail a service or product offering, without providing any context to the user as to where they can find it.

Local content on a website is content created for a specific geographic area and for people searching about that area. It is designed to attract customers interested in a particular location, whether they are there now or planning to visit, by clearly showing where a service or product is available and aligning the content with local search intent.

Imagine passing a road sign with no place name on it. It’s still a sign, but it doesn’t tell you anything useful, no sense of where you are or where you’re going.

Your website works the same way. If you don’t clearly show where your business operates, alongside what services or products you offer, people are left guessing. Local content gives that clarity, helping users quickly understand whether what you offer is relevant to them.

Generic content is shouting into the void, whereas local content is knocking on the right door. That is basically the long and short of it. 

The problem with writing for everyone is that you aren’t providing any context to your reader. 

Targeting terms with generic content, like ‘storage hire’, ‘chartered surveyor’, ‘ divorce lawyer’, ‘Italian restaurant’ are overcrowded motorways. The traffic is enormous, the competition is brutal, and somewhere near the front of the queue is a national brand with a content team of 30, a colossal budget, and the kind of domain authority that takes years to build. You are not winning that Formula 1 race, so why as a local business are you entering it?

The real opportunity, and the one most local businesses still overlook, isn’t in chasing broad, generic search terms. It’s in the quieter back roads of local, high-intent searches like “wedding suit hire Newcastle”, “Italian restaurant Chelmsford”, “plumber Malton”, or “storage container hire Glasgow”. These are the searches where the intent is crystal clear, the competition is less intense, and the person searching is almost always exactly who you’re trying to reach.

This isn’t just about putting a place name onto one page of your site, thinking job done and hoping for the best. The content itself needs to show you genuinely belong there, it should read like it understands the area.

For instance, a storage container hire business in Sunderland that references local residential areas, students moving around term time at the University of Sunderland and how to find us information, immediately feels more rooted in the place and is providing useful information relevant to their local audience. 

Compare that to a page of generic copy about storage with no local references as to where the storage location is and where you can rent their facilities, it could just as easily be describing a storage container company in Aberdeen or Southampton and not Sunderland. One feels local, the other could be talking to anyone and be located just about anywhere.

Tailoring your website content to your audience matters more now than ever for local businesses as AI Overviews and SERP snippets are increasingly absorbing generic queries before users ever reach a website, turning broad, generic searches into instant answers and effectively removing the need for users to click through to a site from search results. 

If you are writing generic content with broad, general search terms, you are essentially joining an overcrowded queue of traffic on a motorway, competing with national brands and the most authoritative sites already dominating the fast lane.

Local intent is different. Location-specific, audience-focused searches are more like taking the exit from that overcrowded motorway with a queue of traffic and moving onto smaller roads, where relevance, proximity, and clarity matter far more than scale. This is where real decisions are still made, by people looking for services and products near them, from businesses they can actually access and trust. 

This is where strong local content has the power to put you in front of them.

It’s also worth remembering that your website isn’t the only place this visibility battle is happening. Your Google Business Profile is often the first thing a potential customer sees when they search for a local service or product. For many businesses, it appears prominently within the results section at the top of Google search, showing your business details, customer reviews, opening hours, and your location before anyone even potentially clicks through to your website. If it isn’t properly optimised, you can lose visibility at the very first hurdle.

The local businesses that stand out in search results are the ones that clearly communicate who they are, what they offer, and where they operate, both on their website and through their Google Business Profile.

• Stop writing for everyone. The most relevant and valuable customers are nearby and searching with clear, local intent.
• Generic content puts you on the busiest motorway in search. Local content puts you on quieter roads where you can actually stand out.
• Always say where you are and who you serve, location is what makes your content relevant to a user.
• Good local content feels rooted in the area with useful information users will resonate with.
• If your content could be relevant to any geographic location, it won’t rank strongly for local search terms.
• Make sure your Google Business Profile is up to date with accurate business details, services, products, opening hours, photos, and regularly updated information, and that customer reviews are coming in consistently and being actively responded to with unique, considered replies, so you’re visible in local search results as well as on your website.

Looking to update your website so that it actually brings in valuable traffic? The SQUIDGY team can help.

We’ll get your website in front of the right local audience, not just more traffic for the sake of it, but traffic that actually turns into enquiries, bookings, and revenue. Anyone can send people to your website. We focus on bringing you the kind of traffic that translates into pounds and pence, not just page views. Revolutionary, we know.

Get in touch about our local SEO Newcastle services.