Improve Your Local Search Results
September 21, 2007 by Pablo Palatnik
It’s funny how over the years the world on search marketing not only expanded worldwide but also had a lot of narrowed local marketing growth. Geo-targeting in the engines changed the scope of local businesses to promote their website online.
Jim Parent from Search Engine Watch wrote a post (I got it in an email) of 8 different ways to improve your local search. There were some very interesting ones that you can really do to improve your results.
>>Include your business address twice on the page
In addition to placing your business address prominently on the page, also include it in the footer. Abbreviate the business state in one of the addresses, and spell it out in the second. Abbreviated states are sometimes misinterpreted by the crawlers. For example, MD represents both a state and a doctor. “
>>Get your business rated
Ask your satisfied customers to write reviews and rate your business at Google, Yahoo, and MSN. If possible, ask them to use the same keywords that you use in the business description and on your web site as part of their review. Don’t add too many reviews over a short period of time, and make sure that the reviews are unique.
>>Solicit local links
Find the web directories that are local to your area, and ask them to link to your web site. Contact your local chambers of commerce and ask them to link to your business from their web site.
>>Check out your competition
Do a local search for your business keywords (i.e. Porsche, San Francisco, CA) and see who your competition is. Find out who is linking to your competitors and investigate whether you can get the same sites to link to your business. The links can be determined by going to Yahoo and typing “linkdomain:” and then your competitor’s web site (i.e. linkdomain:www.yourcompetitorssite.com). Click on “inlinks” in the results page.
Check inlinks for your site as well, and see who is linking to you. Make sure that the information on those sites is correct, and contact them if it isn’t.
>>Create separate web pages for different cities/regions
If your business serves multiple cities or regions, consider creating separate web pages for the different locals. To avoid duplicate content issues, be sure to have unique, relevant content on each of the local specific pages. Be sure to include the county in addition to the city in describing your business. Also adding directional descriptors such as central, western, southern, etc. is helpful.â€
Here is a tip and a big one of that for organic local search results…ready…REGISTER A DOMAIN WITH YOUR CITY OR STATE AND KEYWORD. The more niche, even though you may not get volume in traffic, you will rank well.
