“Getting Found” or the exposure to prospective clients is the most crucial aspect of a business’ online presence. Even if you have a great website that you are proud of, you still need to attract visitors regularly; otherwise, you won’t be able to get the exposure you need. Thus, it is important to employ basic steps and local search tips to optimize your site for local searches.
Comscore studies have shown that in 2008, 36% of people searching were looking for companies within a 15-mile radius of their location. In 2009, that figure rose to 42%. This article will discuss local search tips that will help you optimize your website for local searches.
Create a Google Places Profile
This is an excellent way to get found in local searches for products and services, and it’s free. To use these local search tips, go to the Google Places and fill out your profile. A complete profile helps your ranking, in addition to making you stand out in local search results. Generally, profiles with more complete information tend to rank better.
Aside from your basic company information, be sure to include the following elements in your profile:
- Your website
- Multimedia (photos, videos, etc.)
- Business hours
- Methods of payment accepted
- Number of reviews
- Specialties and certifications
- Coupons
Ask website visitors and customers for reviews
With the exception of Yelp, most local sites will allow you to request a review from your visitors or customers. When you employ these local search tips, you can ask clients to place a review on Google,Yahoo! Local, or Bing when you generate invoices, send out newsletters, direct them to thank you pages, etc.
Customer reviews, whether good or bad, will make you seem much more credible to potential clients. Since no company is perfect, bad reviews are a fact of life. A few bad reviews can actually make the good reviews seem better. However, these local search tips obviously require you to generate more good reviews than bad ones.
Make it easy for Google to determine your business’ location
- Indicate your location in the title tag of your website. This is a brief description of your company, which appears at the top of a visitor’s browser.
- Indicate your location in the meta tag description of your site. A meta tag is a great way for you to provide search engines with information about your site and can be used seamlessly with these local search tips. In addition to your location, describe the nature of your business, since the meta tag description is often used to describe links to your site in search engine results pages.
- Make sure your contact information and address appears at the bottom of your site’s pages.
- Include suburb, area, and neighborhood information in your website.
- Research keywords with tools, such as the Google keyword suggestion tool, and include local high ranking keywords in the content of your website.
Use a different landing page for each location
If you have 2 locations, you can create more than 1 local listing. But for these local search tips, you need to make sure that each separate location has a link back to a page on your site. The linked page will contain the details of that particular location and what it can offer. As much as possible, avoid sending different local listings to the same landing page.
Get listed across multiple sites
Another set of local search tips that you can use to get found locally involves getting your site listed in various local search engines, directories, local business listings, and GPS navigations systems. When your information is validated and referenced across multiple sites, you will tend to rank higher in local searches in Google places and Yahoo local. Take the time to get listed and use the tips on the following sites:
- Google Places
- Bing
- Yahoo! Local
- Superpages
- Yellowpages
- Localeze
- Info USA
- Local.com
You can go through and list your business with these services on your own or you can choose to pay an outside company to do this for you.
Keep the following tips in mind when you add your company’s information to these sites:
- In the title and description of your listing, indicate your product or service keywords.
- Use the correct category. Listing sites are navigated in the same manner as Yellow Pages, so you will need to be listed where users can find you easily.
- List your phone number with its corresponding local area code. Your primary number should not be a cell from outside your area, an 800 or toll free number.
- Consistency. Enter the same business name and phone number on every site you submit to. This will enable search engines to confirm that they all refer to the same business.
About Demandmart:
Launched in 2009, demandmart's sole mission is helping small businesses succeed online. Our automated platform makes internet marketing for small business easy and effective and our team is made up of experienced entrepreneurs that eat, sleep, and breathe small business!
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