A few tips on Local SEO for Your Business
Local SEO | 17 May 2011
In today’s world, studies have shown that most people turn to the Internet to search for local businesses for products and services. The days of flipping through the Yellow Pages is quickly diminishing. The more common method to find a local business is to do a quick online search.
While a directory in a phone book lists companies in alphabetical order, a search engine pulls up results based on the website’s search engine optimization (SEO) strategy or natural popularity. Unfortunately, many businesses will never see first page, and miss out on calls every day because they have no idea on how to implement SEO. The following tips will provide you with a jumpstart on applying local SEO to bring in more traffic to your business’s website.So here are few Local Seo tips that might come in handy.
Local SEO Tips
1. Geotargeting – When you search in Google for example, Google is very much aware of your geographic location, and will purposely yield results catered to your search and your location. When Google goes looking for relevant results to answer your search, it will be looking (among other things) for geographic information in websites that relate to your search. By placing an address, city, and state/province in the keywords of your pages, posts, footer, etc you can geographically optimize your businesses website.
2. Local Directories – Submitting your business to local directories is an important local SEO tactic for driving local website traffic. To help ensure higher rankings in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages), list your business in multiple local directories. Examples of these include Google Places, Yahoo! Local, Bing Local, Yelp, CitySearch, and Local.com. TIP: check out where your competitors have submitted their info to…this can be done by visiting the bottom of their Google Places Page. These are proven sources that Google recognizes, and can be a goldmine.
3. Low Competition Keywords – Local SEO keywords (search phrases) are less competitive than broad keywords. This means you can often achieve a higher ranking in the search engines. For example, the keyword “Colorado dog trainers” is much less competitive than “dog trainers,” leading to a much better chance to be found in a search. Using these geo-targeted keywords is an effective technique to use in your on-site/page optimization.
4. Using the “Discussion” search on Google – Find out what others in your niche are discussing. This provides not only a competitive analysis, but a great way to get involved in the discussion, providing link backs to your website and an opportunity to drop you Name, Address, Phone Number (NAP).
These are just a few suggestions geared specifically towards capitalizing on local SEO. There are many more tips and ideas, but the most important bit is that you understand how important local SEO is for your business. Not only will you get calls, but if your business is featured on Google’s 7 pak (top 7 results) you will benefit from branding. Now imagine if your website was the first or second result!
Local SEO provides a powerful impact on your businesses visibility in your local area. The bottom line is traffic means exposure and exposure means more potential income….so don’t miss out.
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