Top 10 tips for Local SEO & online marketing
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This is a guest article by Ashish Sharma. You join the group of guest bloggers by following our guest blogging guidelines.
According to Ashish, the world of SEO is highly competitive and therefore, instead of targeting the world wide web (which is far more difficult to achieve), business should target local search engines which can get you targeted customers for your business.
The most apparent trend in SEO today is “going local”. Since Google and Yahoo initiated local search engine listings such as Google places and Yahoo local and afterward added local search results to universal visitors, this automatically made every business realize that they have to strive to be on local listings.
When I was a beginner, I used to follow the basic SEO techniques for SEO beginners, which did not benefit my website as I intended it to. But later I found that the local search engine optimization is the best way to attain small business profits and reach the target market. These local listings enable the user to search for local businesses in their area, and later the abundance of net-books and smart-phones popularize this development even further.
After benefiting from the local SEO techniques, I am compiling a list of top 10 useful SEO and online marketing tips that may help your business to attract local customers.
- Participate in the niche communities / local community:
The quickest way to popularize your business in a particular area is to join the niche and local community of that area. Suppose your business is focused for the US customers, the best way would be to join the US communities, this way your products and services will directly reach the users of the targeted niche. - Build a local network and share updates:
Building a local network makes your products reach directly to your customers. Suppose you provide products and services for a particular industry, say, Paper Products, you can directly choose the specified category and reach those that belong to the same industry or are interested in buying paper products. - Focus keywords with location specific:
Using location specific keywords is probably the most critical factor for location specified businesses. Suppose you want to sell your paper products to the users from Washington DC, the best way would be to use Washington in your targeted keywords. This not just makes your business reach specifically to the target area but also boosts your search engine performance and sales. You can find more such tips to boost up local traffic to your blog or website in various online reputed social media guides. - Make sure to think like the visitor/customer:
Customers often neglect the technical aspects while searching for a term or business on the net and that is why it is mandatory to use the keywords that your customers are likely to put in the search box to find your business or products. - Numerous locations require several landing pages:
Local search engine sites do not prefer a business to have more than one local listing, although if you want to list your business in two locations, then just make sure to link back both the local listings to the same page or homepage. Often, business owners get trapped in general keywords and overlook to focus on less popular keywords that may have a high possibility of making sales. - Put complete physical address on every page of your site:
Your geographic location can be re-enforced only when you put your complete physical address on every page of your website; this also helps in turning a visitor into a customer. - Add your local phone number:
Aim behind following the SEO guide and listing your business locally is not just to make your business popular but also to get customers that can turn your business into profits. Make sure to add local phone number to every page of your website so that the visitor can avail your services. - Ask for feedback:
Customer feedback is very important for the success of your business. Make a point to ask for a feedback through your contact forms, e-mails or invoices. Ask the customer to rate you or give a feedback on the local listings such as yahoo, Bing or Google. These feedbacks add to the credibility of the business. - Always welcome bad reviews:
Whether you have a small business or large enterprise, bad reviews are a part of any business industry, take bad reviews as a chance to improve your business. You can always tell your customers about the improvement you have made for this review, that ways you convince the customers that their feedback matters. - Manage information across the internet:
Even after viewing the detailed information about your products and services on your website, local listing services explore the internet wide and far to find reviews, pictures or any additional information about your company. Submitting the additional information to the services like infoUSA and Localize may help.
About the author
Fred is the Co-Editor at SEO-SMO.net, as well as an Internet Research Analyst and an aspiring social media marketer. he is having hands on experience in optimizing and promoting the websites on leading search engines and web media. His passion is to keep updated with what Masters on web like Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook etc. are up to innovate & deliver. At hbtech.info, he aims to be a part of most active online community & most widely read Blogs on the web covering the insights of Next generation SEO India and Internet Marketing that will help in preparing the leaders of tomorrow.
| This entry was posted by Fred on July 6, 2010 at 5:05 pm, and is filed under Guest Blogging, seo. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 1 year ago
Great tips on local SEO.
I also heard about brownbook.net as a way to get small businesses listed very fast. I tried it and did some listings for a business, and the results were impressive.
Kindest,
Nabeel
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about 1 year ago
Thanks for sharing your insight Ashish.
Adding your physical address to each page and providing a local phone number can create authenticity to your local SEO efforts. People tend to notice your area code and make a connection.
Ryan
Ryan´s last [type] ..6 Spots Where You Can Grab Kick A Blog Post Ideas
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about 1 year ago
What are your thoughts on being successful when it comes to clients who want to target more than one locale? Many times I’ll have clients who want to target 2-3 even 4 different cities/counties many of which they aren’t even located in.
Mike Wilton´s last [type] ..A Look At Where My SEO And Social Media Knowledge Originates
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about 1 year ago
Really Excellent blog here dude, I just found you on blogengage and looking forward your blogs. Thx.
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about 1 year ago
Yes local listings are getting more popular these days. I feel building a local network is the most important point. Well presented article.
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about 1 year ago
Somebody submitted the exact copy of this post on my blog on 5th July. I was still waiting to approve it
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about 1 year ago
I have the experience with a blog in Spanish (called enlaescuelademabel.com) which administer (my mother is the one who writes articles, I’ll take care of SEO and blog management) in which I work to position only in Venezuela. Fortunately, all my work work.
Basically my work was based on the keywords sectorize both titles and content of each of the posts that were published. The best strategy is to add the title words of the country or sector we want to take as a reference. I hope I have contributed my bit. Greetings!
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July 28, 2010 - 9:33 am
Keyword Research is perfect task for any website, it doesn’t matter if your website is business website or personal one. It is always important to select a keyword according to country, local business trends, what local people search on internet.
SEO News´s last [type] ..Blog Promotion – How to Boost traffic and Increase Your Readership
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about 1 year ago
Think about optimizing the pages on your website for local search like you would optimize them for a visitor coming to your site. How will they search you locally (your city + common keywords)? How can they contact you (your local phone number + address on page)? If you design and do your optimization with how visitors can find you locally, then the search engines will pick up on the social cues as well!
Kikolani´s last [type] ..SEO Infographic – Link Building Data Visualization
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about 1 year ago
your site information s is very useful. thank-you very much.
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about 1 year ago
I really like point number 8, about asking for feedback. Sometimes other people can notice things that you may overlook when its your own work. I feel all feedback/critisism should be taken in a positive manor, even when it can be very negative.
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about 8 months ago
This is excellent stuff! I am finding many interesting new tips here and am about to go on the lookout for more to improve my site. I found the advice on putting the complete physical address on every page of your site particularly interesting.
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