Focus on Local Search
June 20th, 2010
I find it interesting that as the eyes of the country turn to small businesses to see how they will react to and handle the (hopefully) rebounding economy, there is an increased focus on local search. This makes perfect sense, since small businesses are really starting to understand what the web can do for them, and web companies are eager to get a piece of that pie.
This can only mean good things for small businesses. Local search is a great tool to promote your business, and there are many, many ways to go about it. One of the first steps would be of course to make sure you have a great presence on the web. Even folks in your area will go to the web to grab a phone number, store hours, or perhaps your exact address. Making that first great impression can really help boost traffic to your brick and mortar, and therefore, sales.
The next thing I’d do is make sure your business is listed in any online listing services, such as:
GetListed.org
YellowPages.com
Google.com/places
Local.yahoo.com
Bing Local Listing
City search
There are many, many more, but you get the idea. Make sure you can be found online, even if you have not yet set up a site. A listing in most of these does not require that you have a site.
Many of these listing sites allow you to set up a profile to get reviews of your products or services. This can be really helpful to people who are new to an area especially if you are a medical professional, home service provider (such as housekeeping or carpet cleaning) or a mechanic – someone who people need a frame of reference in order to establish trust.
Make sure you have your physical address on your site. Our best practice recommendation would have you putting it at the footer of every page (most especially the home page). At a minimum have it on the contact or about page of your site.
When you are doing your on page optimization, be sure to include geographical phrases in both the copy, headers and tags. This will help your rankings when users search for business in your area.
Local Search seems to be taking on a life of it’s own. I’m excited to be a speaker at NE Ohio’s GetListed.org’s Local University on the 30th. Should be interesting to hear from others in field. I’m thrilled that some local business owners will have the opportunity to learn and implement strategies that will help boost our local economy. Hope to see you there!
