While it is always good to get customers from around the globe, your goal should be to have a dominant presence in your hometown. While local search marketing can certainly be beneficial to eCommerce businesses, it is especially important to Brick and Mortar businesses that need customers coming in off the streets.
Following are a few pointers to keep in mind.
Local Keywords
While this one may seem fairly obvious, you need to think about terms a local searcher would use to find your business. They’ll most likely use the city and state in their search, so you’ll want your site to be optimized for those as well as business-specific keywords.
For example, if you run a record store in Nicholasville, Kentucky, you’ll want to optimize for phrases like “Record Store, Nicholasville, Kentucky”, “CD Store, Nicholasville, KY”, “Music, Nicholasville KY”, and so forth. If your business is located in a small town, you may also want to optimize for the nearest larger city.
Pay Attention to Local OneBox AND Google Maps
There is more than one method of capturing local searches on Google and it is important not to only utilize one of them. Bill Slawski of SEO by the Sea has a great SEMMY-nominated article on this matter I would suggest reading.
By the way, Slawski also has a wonderful glossary for local search on Google that could prove extremely helpful.
Trust and Authority
Of course links are important in any SEO campaign, but if you want to rank up there with the big boys, you need quality ones. You may have submitted your site to a slew of business directories that can get you links, but are the ones you’re submitting to authoritative?
In an interview with Michael Gray, SEOBook author Aaron Wall says, “Before a local business spends money submitting to any of these business directories they should make sure they submit to the Yahoo! Directory, DMOZ, and get at least a few other links so they have enough link equity to outrank the general directories for their own brand specific searches, and hopefully some more general local ones as well.”
Of course these points are just the tip of the iceberg. There is a ton of information out there that can help you on your way to getting your local business found by people in your area. What other tips come to your mind?
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Comments
Spot on, Chris!
Local search
Good information. Also see this article on using SEO for geo-specific searches
Remember the locals!
Absolutely correct Chris, we have a number of 'bricks and mortar' clients who rely heavily on people coming in off the street, they rank well for their general keyphrases but we also incorporate the same keyphrases with local areas added on, the competition is less, therefore easier to achieve good ranking and our clients definately feel the benefit from local people searching for a local dealer.
Local Search
We have a hard time with local searches since our city has an abbreviation in the name. Saint/St. This mixes things up a bit. They also have a popular nick name for the town not to mention 5 sub-cities that are actually connected to the main city. That makes for crucial seo and key word importance. Thanks for the article!
Obtaining Local Business
Thanks Chris!
I find that the best way to obtain local business to use shank's mare and get out on the road on foot to visit local businesses. Sure backup your keywords with geographically relevent keywords but you can't beat face to face sometimes!
They are unlikely to buy off you on the day or even the same month but when they do get online and seach your name your company will have an emotional reasonance with the potential buyer.
My business Logical IT Pty Ltd supplies computer equipment and supplies with a focus on small business solutions to the Australian market although we also deal with the general public. In Australia many people prefer to buy off someone locally and we get many a call that starts with "I found you guys on the web and noticed that you are just down the road..."
The URL for our site is http://www.logicalit.com.au
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