Local search engine optimization is not really all that new. Below are some tips to help you use local searches to build your business.
One of the simplest SEO tips that you can take home is creating optimized local classified listings. This is an easy way to take advantage of the local searches because the search engines tend to favor such sites and when you use them, you increase the chances of driving direct local traffic to your website. Craigslist should be your starting point because it is the most popular of all of the classified websites. Posting SEO'd ads on Craigslist regularly is something that you need to do. Your ads need to be targeted specifically for your market. Make sure that the ad is not loud and that it is as simple as possible. When you create an ad put a lot of effort into the title of the ad because that is what will catch the attention of people looking for your business. The keyword phrase and your city and state should be included in the title. You can treat the craigslist ad as your landing page, because many times you will notice that it will even outrank your main site. A good strategy for Craigslist is to use it as a channel for funneling traffic to your website, which is your main goal. Apart from that, you can use USFreeAds, which doesn't work as well as Craigslist, but nevertheless it can give you a good response since it is a well ranked classified oriented site. What you should be trying to do with your ads is to send as much traffic as you can to your major site either directly or by piggy backing off of the traffic to the site. Most local websites that are targeted by local businesses are fine with the idea of a business owner asking customers to log on to the site and leave reviews (Yelp is a good example of this). Because the sites allow this and because it helps you with your local SEO efforts why aren't you doing it already? It is important that you remind your customers to do this however you can: e-mail signature, invoice, contact forms, etc. You need to say something like "It would be nice if you would take a moment to review my bu siness on this local website." Even though you are not able to control any of the text in the reviews, whether you get good or bad reviews, having them online adds credibility to your business and makes you look more reliable to new customers. No matter what else you try to do, make sure you use this one tip because it has the potential to help you grow your business by leaps and bounds.
An important factor when it comes to local SEO is how well connected you are to the local community. A large part of local marketing is becoming known and networking with others in your area. If you want your online marketing venture to be highly effective and successful, it's necessary that you have high quality inbound links coming to your website from targeted organizations and businesses that are respected within your community. This is fairly straightforward, as sites with good backlinks are always better ranked by the search engines, and the best way to rank for keywords that are specific to a certain location is to get backlinks from highly regarded websites from that location. It gives a green signal to the search engines and makes your journey even easier. When it comes to getting backlinks, it's always more helpful to get a few quality ones than many lesser ones. One link from the Chamber of Commerce is better than a 100 links from local blogs.
Don't worry so much about getting a huge number of links, but look for quality instead.
So if you want to improve your search engine rank and get more traffic, remember to apply these local SEO techniques.
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