Introducing Local SEO Targeting in Clearscope

Most tools treat search engine optimization like it’s one-size-fits-all. But when you’re trying to stand out in regional or city-level queries—or appear in AI-generated results—a tailored local SEO strategy becomes critical.

Clearscope is thrilled to announce a powerful new update to the platform: Local SEO Targeting. With this feature, users can now tailor content to perform in specific cities, regions, or markets—without complicating their workflow.

Whether you're optimizing for “coffee shop in Portland, OR” or building region-specific landing pages, Clearscope now makes local SEO content creation intuitive and efficient—built for the next wave of AI-powered search.

Why Local SEO Has Been So Hard

Let’s be honest: writing for local SEO often feels like guesswork.

It’s difficult to determine which local keywords people in a target area actually use—do they say “coffee shop” or “café”? To make matters worse, your content might end up competing with national brands, even when it’s meant for a local audience.

Take the query “coffee shops” as an example. A Google search for this in Portland, OR shows localized results like these:

Google automatically infers the user's location and serves Portland-specific listings—even without the city being mentioned in the search.

This means you’ll get different search results depending on where you’re searching from, which introduces a major challenge for content teams: how do you optimize for local results without access to accurate, location-based SERP data?

The Limits of Traditional SEO Tools

All of these different nuances create a challenge for optimization. Most tools don’t offer the local-level granularity needed to create content that ranks in city-specific SERPs—or gains visibility in AI summaries.

Take Ahrefs Content Helper, for example:

The issue here is clear: most tools only optimize at the country level. Their recommendations are based on generic, anonymous search sessions from undetermined locations—so you're never guaranteed to see what your audience sees in their city.

And it’s not just about keywords. Local visibility depends on:

• Business directories and citations

• On-page signals like NAP (name, address, phone number)

• Regional language preferences

• Competitor positioning within the same locale

In short: writing content for “everywhere” doesn’t help it rank “somewhere.”

Enter: Clearscope's new local SEO targeting feature. This gives you the tools to write for real people in real places—with data specific to their city, their language, and their search behavior.

A Smarter Way to Optimize for Local SEO

We built Local SEO Targeting to bridge the gap between what traditional SEO tools offer and what real-world content marketers need.

Until now, trying to write city-specific content meant cobbling together insights from generic keyword tools, manually running local searches in incognito windows, and hoping your content would somehow break through in the right region. It was tedious, unreliable, and easy to get wrong.

But with this new feature, we’re bringing true location intelligence into your workflow—right where you need it.

Instead of relying on guesswork or workarounds, you can now generate content reports that reflect how people actually search in your target city or neighborhood. That means more relevance, stronger rankings, and content that’s built to win in AI-generated summaries and local packs.

• Letting you select a target city or region when building your report

• Showing competitor content from that specific area

• Highlighting keywords your local audience actually uses

• Aligning your strategy with how Google serves localized results

Following the earlier example of Portland, OR, here’s how Clearscope makes it easy. Local targeting is as simple as selecting a city from a dropdown.

Once the report runs, you’ll see keywords and competitor data tailored to that location, so you know exactly what terms to use to rank locally.

In Portland, locally relevant terms like “cafe,” “coffee roasters,” and the ever-Portland “vibe” highlight the kind of specificity you’d miss in a broad, national-level search.

Instead of second-guessing your SEO strategy, you get data-backed clarity—on the terms people actually use, the competitors you’re really up against, and the content formats that drive results locally.

It’s a simpler, smarter way to ensure your content shows up in the right place, for the right people.

Ready to Show Up Where It Matters?

If your business—or your clients—depend on local visibility, this feature is a game-changer.

Here’s what Local SEO Targeting helps you do:

• Write content that reflects how people actually search in your area

• Outperform national competitors by meeting local search intent

• Boost visibility in local packs, organic results, and AI-generated answers

• Build city-specific landing pages that rank and convert

With Clearscope’s Local SEO Targeting, each page you create is not only optimized for search engines—it’s also written for the people who live there.