This area of Texas seems to be inundated by various phone
directories. At last count, I think we had 3 directories
in addition to the one published by our local phone
provider. I decided that I was tired of them taking up
valuable shelf space, so I threw out all but one. Why?
Because when I need a local product or service, I'm more
inclined to find the local business online rather than
referring to the local telephone directory.
Apparently I'm not alone. In fact, an August 2006
Nielsen//NetRatings/WebVisible survey reported that 70% of
a group of Internet searchers used the Internet to search
for local businesses; 46% of them searched for local
businesses in the last 90 days.
So, what is local search, anyway? Local search refers to
using geographic location terms to find a local business
online, i.e. using Google and searching for "dog groomer"
+ "Houston." If you're not yet taking advantage of local
search options to help you get local traffic to your
website, you are missing out on a substantial amount of
business.
Here are some ways you can drive local traffic to your
website:
1. Local search engines. Most of the major search engines
permit you to list your website and attach it to a specific
geographic area. These locally-focused websites include:
Google Local http://local.google.com/, Yahoo Local
http://listings.local.yahoo.com/,
MSN Local
http://local.live.com/,
InfoUSA
http://dbupdate.infousa.com/dbupdate/startupdate?bas_request
=A, Merchant Circle
http://www.merchantcircle.com/corporate/, TrueLocal.com
http://www.truelocal.com/BusinessSuggest.aspx, Local.com
http://advertise.local.com/search_buslisting.aspx, and
CraigsList.com.
2. Other local directories. Many times local media,
organizations, or businesses offer locally-based
directories where you can list your business for free or
for a fee. Places you might check in your local area
include regional or local newspapers, televisions stations,
regional or city magazines, independently owned local
directories, city guides of major search engines (like
Yahoo City Guide), profession or industry directory,
regional/state sites, and chamber of commerce or visitor
bureau sites. Ask your local clients where they look
online for local goods and services to give you an idea of
the sites your target market actually uses.
3. Recommendation/review sites. Many of the locally
focused websites noted above offer visitors the opportunity
to post testimonials or reviews about the products or
services of a business. Take a few minutes to ask your
local customers to go in and review your business. These
recommendation sites include: AOL City Guide,
JudysBook.com, InsiderPages.com, AngiesList.com, and
Yelp.com.
4. Optimize your website for local search. There are a
number of tweaks you can add to your website to optimize it
for local searches. These include:
--Local terms in your page titles (i.e. don't use home page
as your home page title but Seattle Professional Organizer
as the title of your home page).
--Local terms in your anchor text, which is the visible,
hyperlinked text on a web page that's often underlined
and/or a different color than the rest of the copy (i.e.
don't use your business name, Aamco Financial Services, but
use New York City Financial Planning Services instead).
--Local terms in your H1 and H2 tags (headlines) (i.e.
those headlines that are flanked by H1 and H2 header code
in the HTML code of your page) --Local terms in the body of
your pages (i.e. mention "Houston professional dog groomer"
rather than simply dog groomer or your business name in the
content of your pages).
5. Location map on your site. Make it easy for locals to
find you. Google Maps makes it very easy to embed a map of
your location on a page of your website.
6. Physical address. Including your physical address on
all pages of your site gives the search engines yet another
reason to index you to be found locally.
7. Inbound Links. Request inbound links to your website
from other local businesses. Search engines especially
favor one-way inbound links from highly trafficked sites,
so if you don't have to list a reciprocal link back to the
linking site on your site, the linking strategy becomes
even stronger. Instead of using your business name as the
anchor text, use a geographic description of your business
as described in strategy #4 above.
If you have business with local clientele, it's not too
late to make sure that your business can be found through
local search. After all, you don't want to send your
target market to the competition, do you?
----------------------------------------------------
Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business
Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals
learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their
expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To
claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing
Toolkit, visit her site at http://www.OnlineBizU.com . Ask
Donna an Internet Marketing question at
http://www.AskDonnaGunter.com .
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