Local Search Engine Optimization- help potential customers to find you
Ranking high in the search engines is a necessity for online businesses. Optimizing the site for local search offers you the opportunity to reach potential customers looking for local services and products. Maybe it does not improve a lot the amount of traffic to your site, but surely improve the quality of your visitors. So if you own a business you can’t ignore local search. How do you optimize a site for local search? Usually search engine optimization is done for standard searches (general keywords). But the keywords that have a high daily search volume are very difficult to optimize due to the demand. What can you do then?
1. Optimize the site for local info and for long tail keywords. Users interested in local info may include in their searches a typical keyword followed by a local parameter as ZIP code or locality name. For example someone interested in buying irrigation systems in Rock Hill, is probable to type “irrigation systems Rock Hill SC” or “irrigation systems 29730″. This optimization targets users who know what they are looking for and it has a higher conversion of searches to sales.
2. Check if your business is listed in local search engines: Google Maps, Yahoo! Local, and MSN’s Live Local. Probably you noticed that if you include a city or a zip code in your Google/Yahoo search, a map comes up with relevant results on it. How do you get in there? It’s very simple. The listing is free. Register for an account and fill the online form with the business information. You can download photos too (Google).
3. Check if your business is listed in online Yellow Pages, as YellowPages.com, Yellow Pages, YP.com and Switchboard.com. Some of these directories offer free basic listings.
4. Contact diverse local sites or sites with local components requesting a listing/link. Check to see which sites come up with high search results for your area. Newspapers, local organizations, sites devoted to local events are good options. There are numerous local sites considered authorities for local info. There a lot of users who go directly to their favorite site if they search for local services or information.
These simple tricks will increase your chances of getting high quality traffic to your site.
Very good info… Thanks for your efforts.
A short upgrade to this post: ranking in Google local (maps.google.com) depends on next factors:
- distance from the center point of locality (city,…)
- reviews
- citation sources - local and topical (business listings in important local directories/sites, superpages, yellow pages…)
- broad category name and specialties
- title and description
- website content
very interesting.
i’m adding in RSS Reader
This is a very useful post. Thanks. I am adding it in RSS Reader.
I put it on Seogan in the list of SEO articles.
Local optimization is very important, for us, used computers wholesalers. Out market is geographical limited for most of us, so local targeting is really important.