Important Local Search Components
Important Local Search Components
Local businesses have many local search components to juggle to compete in their local niche. Do you know what your local business needs for local search?
Local Search Components
Local search uses many of the same resources and tools used when competing on a global scale but there are some that have been designed for local offline businesses that are building an online presence. Here’s is a list for you to ponder:
- Content quality
- Content length
- Relevancy
- Related images
- Related video
- Proper anchor text for hyperlinks
- On page optimization
- Professional looking site
- A mobile friendly website
- Page title
- Keyword placement
- Keyword anchor text for hyperlinks
- Keyword named images
- Image ALT tags
- Meta Tags (Title, Description, Keywords)
- Open Graph Tags
- Visitor sitemap
- XML sitemap
- Clear navigation
- Visible tags
- Appropriate policies
- Appropriate email addresses search engines deem professional
- Google Map showing location
- Contact page (contact form or email, telephone)
- Address on every page
- Hours of operation clearly posted
- Visitor interaction with site (social bookmarks, comments, time on site, number of pages visited by each visitor, etc.)
- Off page optimization (Think backlinks)
- Total number of backlinks
- Quality of backlinks
- Text used for links
- Videos on video sharing sites
- Press Releases
- Article directory links
- Contextual links
- Directory links
- Business directory links
- Citations
- Google Places
- Bing Places
- Yahoo Places
- Image sharing sites
- Answer sites
- Forums
- Social bookmarking
- RSS Feed directories
- Facebook Page
- Google + Page
The amount of competition you face in your community will help determine how much time and energy you should invest in each of the above. Some of the above should never be ignored and others are less important unless the competition is stiff locally.
You should never underestimate the importance of consistency in the success of your search engine marketing efforts using search engine optimization and the success of your local search optimization efforts depends on consistency plus incorporation of some of the elements that don’t apply to globally competing. Do things the right way and you can dominate the results for your industry in your community.
Feel free to open a support ticket at our Help Desk if you are ready for some professional assistance in doing your local search correctly.
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How Important Is Local Search For Small Business?
How Important Is Local Search For Small Business?
Local search for small business is so vital I’m willing to bet that local businesses not paying attention to local search won’t exist in 5 years. See why below.
Local Search For Small Business Benefits
Local search has many benefits when done correctly but here are a few:
- You are competing with businesses in your area instead of in the global arena.
- You are more likely to be positioned higher in the search engines results than your global competitors when someone does a local search.
- It’s usually easier to beat your local competitor at search engine marketing because your marketing budgets are often about the same. (The difference is usually decided between a do-it-yourselfer versus a business owner understanding that hiring a professional usually equals higher profits.)
- With local search, you can add a map with directions to your business.
- If you have a mobile friendly website and you should, your website will be viewable on the devices your customers usually keep within 10 feet of them 24/7.
In many local markets, your true competition can range from a few to a few hundred depending on your industry.
If you try to compete globally with your business, you might be going up against hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands competitors.
The Local Search For Small Business Challenge
Many small business owners know very little, if anything, about online marketing. Even worse, most of them don’t understand that their online presence can be one of their most powerful business assets.
If you use any kind of print advertising, I’m sure you are seeing the return on your investment steadily decline.
I’m sure you are also seeing your ROI decline from TV and radio advertisements.
There is a very good explanation for these declines.
The Internet.
Most businesses have a large customer base that’s under the age of 50 and a large percentage of these consumers are frequently getting their news, entertainment and price comparisons online.
Many use their smart phones to get product or service recommendations from friends on the social media networks they use most often.
Twitter and Facebook are often visited before review sites or company websites when recommendations are sought. Once a decision has been made, or at least narrowed down, the company’s website or mobile website is visited for directions, contact details or additional product or service recommendations.
If your website isn’t optimized for local search, how do you expect to be found when they do a local search for small business establishments in your area?
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Back links | Part Of The Equation
Attracting highly targeted traffic from the search engines requires back links, quality content based on the right keywords and participation from your visitors.
Each of the 3 components is important to the search engines. As the algorithms are altered by the search engines, one element is given more weight than the others.
Too many marketers fall for the fads and alter their whole marketing plan just so they can concentrate on
trying to exploit the fact that their favorite search engine is currently
placing more weight on the number of back links their site has pointing to it.
These marketers may achieve page
1 listings and enjoy the traffic and sales that can come from that.
Unfortunately, many of these marketers don’t fully understand search engine marketing or the changes that take place as algorithms get adjusted. This lack of knowledge will leave them shocked when they suddenly fall from page 1 into oblivion.
The adjustment will be viewed as a slap. They will either have to learn the basics of search engine marketing
and put them into practice or they’ll latch onto the next traffic generation fad.
Let’s examine each of the three vital components that will help you avoid big surprises when the search engines adjust their algorithms.
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Search Engine Marketing
Many different methods and techniques are used to market your site to the search engines and some of them are:
- Paid inclusion
- Pay-per-click
- Contextual advertising
Search engine optimization may or may not be included in the list. The answer on its inclusion depends on which professional you talk to since SEO is its own discipline. I include SEO in the mix because basic skills in search engine optimization help you do better with the other methods I mentioned.
Your bookmarks, comments and feedback are always welcome. Disclosure of Material Connection
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