In Part 1 of this series we explored how local search works. Part 2 discussed the recent growth in the popularity of local search with consumers. Part 3 took a deeper dive into some of the pros and cons of local search visibility. Now we’re going to look at some of the practicalities of implementing local search.
It is tempting to think of local search as a subset of your general marketing campaigns, but the best results come with tactics specifically tailored to prospects looking for local information and services. How you approach this will depend on whether you have an existing Web site or not.
If you don’t have a Web site: Local search provides you with the opportunity to create a Web presence! By setting up local search listings you can ensure that your business is found online. If you don’t have a Web site, it is important to encourage potential customers to call or visit your retail location. You can track the effectiveness of this approach by offering special discounts or coupons, such as Google Coupons that you only make available through local search.
If you do have a Web site: Local search can be an easy way to get your Web site listed in local search engine results, in addition to the general results. If you don’t sell online from your Web site, you may want to consider making your phone number or location more visible on your home page to convert as many prospects as possible.
Regardless of whether you have a Web site or not, the search engines will often rank your business higher in local search results if you have a lot of listings in local directories because this is considered a good measure of your credibility. So it’s important to obtain as many listings as possible on sites that the search engines consider valuable local resources. Often these are local organizations, so part of your strategy should be to seek out credible local organizations, such as your Chamber of Commerce or other local trade associations that might be willing to include you in their business directory.
You should also think carefully about the keywords someone searching for your services might use. While it might work to use “florist in Denver” as keywords for general search (someone in New York wanting to send flowers to Denver might very well search on this), for local search you should select tightly targeted geographic keywords. Someone living in Denver might well search for a florist in a specific part of the Denver metro area, such as “florist in Englewood”.
One final tip to consider – your online identity for local search does not have to be exactly the same as your business name. If you can include some information about what your business does in your name, you may find your results improve. For example “XYZ Inc” could use an online identity of “XYZ Tire Repair Service” for local search. Some directories also return results alphabetically, so another option for this business would be to list itself as “A+ XYZ Tire Repair Service”.
There are many tips and tricks to maximizing the effectiveness of local search, and it can take time to figure them out. You may want to consider using an external service to help you, which will be the subject of the next post in this series.
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