Local Search Engine Optimisation Secrets

Local Search Engine Optimisation Secrets

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Local businesses are sitting on valuable assets which they are just not leveraging to anything like their fullest extent. Here's a short guide which will give some top tips and insights for business owners.

It's believed that more than 50% of consumers will now use the Internet to search for suppliers and a very large chunk of them want to find and connect with local businesses.

I'm not entirely sure why but small and local business owners seem unaware of this growing trend and reliance of the Internet for seeking out local products and services.

One thing is certain, the businesses who do understand the importance of having good websites that get and attract visitors and then convert those visitors to customers are making a killing.

Getting and keeping customers is the lifeblood of any business. If you are a local business I hope you will find this guide a help in understanding a little more about what you could do to compete and get your fair share of new customers.

Who are your customers and what are they looking for?

What many business owners don't recognise is that their potential customers won't know the name of their business. So calling your website the same as your business and leaving it at that is not going to cut it.

You really need to understand what your potential customers are looking for, how they search for information and what buying words they may use when they are ready to go ahead and buy something.

My advice is to identify words and phrases that people will likely use if they didn't know you existed but that relate to your service. You can find words and phrases by using Google's Keyword Tool which you can find via your browser.

What do search engines want and why

You can help to get your website seen and found for local searchers by understanding a few principles.

There are a few things you can do with your existing website called On-Site SEO and there are some tactics that can also be applied Off-Site.

If you think about it, the search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing are trying to make sure that people searching get presented with relevant results. If they do a good job then people will keep on using them plus they will attract advertisers and will make some money.

In a way, we want to help the search engines as much as we can and at the same time make sure we deliver something good for human visitors when they find our web pages.

On-site SEO

Make pages relevant for search engines.

* Page Titles
* Tags
* Meta Descriptions
* Internal Links
* Keywords

Search engines will be looking for some helpful clues which will help them decide what your web page is about and where to place that page in the search results. Notice, I said page and not website.

Just imagine that people are searching for:- "Exhaust for Ford Fiesta" and assuming your business provides these particular products then it's worth while in thinking about a page dedicated to Exhausts which include a section for Ford Fiesta. It may even be worth while having a page dedicated to Exhausts-Ford-Fiesta.

Make certain that your on page SEO includes the keyword in all the critical areas.

Page titles, H1 tags, descriptions are all important and make certain to link to this page from other pages by using the right anchor text.

Even adding your address to all pages will help the search engines to understand they should consider you for including you in local search results. This doesn't need to be too obvious. Just put the address into the page footer.

Add a blog or convert your website to a blog format

Search engines like nothing more than fresh relevant content. Having a blog allows you to add new posts, change pages and generally offer good new information for search engines and visitors.

So few businesses are using Blogs it almost makes me cry, especially when I know what they are missing out on. Potential customers are searching for help all the time which could represent a landslide of leads, profits and cash flow.

Off-Site SEO

As we know search engines love content, articles, photos and videos all provide useful content.

It's getting easier and easier for businesses to create and upload video to YouTube. These videos could be educational or deliver some sort of marketing message or both. Just uploading a couple of videos will help attract more visitors and there's a good chance these videos will appear in the search results.

Write a few articles and post them to article directories like this one will help reach more people and give some links back to your main website.

These links, often called back links will help to show the search engines that your page is more important than another page who doesn't have these back links (assumes you have done your on-site SEO correctly).

There are of course hundreds of ways to get more back links and more publicity and another top tactic is to write press releases and have them syndicated. These give some instant back links and may also get you more inquiries.

Claim your business listing in Yahoo Local and Google Places.

You will have probably seen these boxes with maps appear on some searches. They are normally right at the top of the search results and attract a lot of eyeballs. Getting a Google Places listing is fairly straightforward although optimising your listing takes a bit of knowledge time and effort.

Technical challenges and issues

Last but not least, please make certain that your website is performing as it should do. I would recommend using Google's Webmaster Tools which you can via your browser. Your web or SEO expert can and should know how to get the best out of these tools so do speak to them.

Local search optimisation that works is a step by step process. By taking a bit of care you can help the search engines to find you which will attract visitors and help bring you new leads and new customers.

Happy SEO!

About the Author:
Steve is active as an SEO Expert and regularly writes and posts helpful articles. To find out how your website ranks for specific search terms please visit his website.



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


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