SEO Your Business for Local Search

Posted on December 21, 2011

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As a small independent business, you know that your customer base is local. But are you using the internet to get their attention, reminding old customers just what your value is and catching the eye of new ones? Don't underestimate the power of SEO and local search listings to reach your customers.

So-called local searching pulls search results from your community. When you put in "sushi" in a search engine like Google, you'll get a map of existing sushi restaurants and location information for local sushi. This is a prime example of why local searching matters: It offers free marketing. If you don't show up near the top of that search, young customers searching for a new place may never find you.

Help Google and other search engines retrieve your services by optimizing your local listing. Put your business on Yelp, Google Places and other geo-location review sites. Don't overlook Superpages or Yellowpages, the Internet's answer to phone books. Getting listed in these venues makes it a lot easier for customers to find you, and for you to show up in local searches. You can even add photos of your business to Google Places to help customers find you. This makes good marketing sense.

Once you're on these places, your customers can review you. Potential customers like seeing favorable business reviews, because it helps then choose between you and the other guy. The more praise you have on sites like Yelp, the more attractive you become compared to your competition.

Ask your customers for reviews. Get on social apps like Foursquare, and offer incentives to your customers. If you're a cafe, give the Foursquare Mayor a free coffee once a week. It costs you little, and it incentivizes customers to compete for that free coffee and drive local traffic your way in the meantime.

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Leverage social bookmarking sites to your advantage. If you're a wedding cake desiing links and promoting your content on these sites. When something takes off, the payoff will be big. Social bookmarking sites, which include Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg, are like a popularity contest for the web. As you get more clicks from these sites, you'll move up in search engine result rankings so more people will see you. This helps gner or a small greengrocer, you're probably thinking these sites can't help you. You're wrong. You will need to put in time addyour audience--the affianced, the food shoppers, and others--find you before they find the other guy.

Don't forget to look inward to help drive local traffic to your business. Does your website offer clear directions to your business via car and public transit? Does it include a map and clear pictures of your storefront so users can recognize you? Here are some tips to employ local SEO to gain traffic.

• Include your address on every page. This way, it's always in the footer or another convenient place and users don't have to hunt around for it. Web users are easily distracted and if they overlook the one place you put your address, they may go with the other guy.

• Use the HTML title tags to incorporate metropolitan keywords like "Washington DC," "DC hotels," or "Seattle free wifi cafe."

• Make sure your contact page has clear directions where every step is spelled out clearly. If you have a parking lot for users, give information on how to access it, for example.

• Trade links with other local sites. Local newspapers may list restaurants and entertainment venues with links. Make sure they've got your number.

About the Author John Zwissler from AddMe AddMe traffic program is structured to deliver controlled bursts of quality visitors and traffic to your website. AddMe traffic will increase sales, signups and overall branding for your site, for more information about this exciting service Click Here!

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