Why Local Search is Important for Your Business

As much talk as there is about Internet Marketing breaking down boundaries and flattening the world, most commerce is still defined by physical space. For instance, consumers are still going to search for businesses in their area. Because of this, the importance of Local search cannot be overstated.

Local search sites are supported by advertising from businesses that wish to be featured when users search for specific products and services in specific locations. For example, if you live in New York City and you search for “lower west side Manhattan bakery” you are going to get the top Local searches. Local search advertising can be highly effective because it allows ads to be targeted very precisely to the search terms and location provided by the user.

Optimizing your Local Internet Marketing has existed for a long time. 20 or 30 years ago, it was done by businesses putting out adverts in the Local publications. Now consumers search online. And the power of Local searching is only getting bigger, as more and more people search for products or businesses on their smartphones. (Someone looking for a nearby restaurant on his/her iPhone, for instance.) So the idea of the Local search hasn’t changed, just the medium has. Social media marketing demands your business change its approach, too.
One out of five searches on Google is related to location. So make sure your business has optimized content on its site in order to have a high ranking for Local search results.

Here are some benefits of high ranking in Local search.

• Less competition for your keyword.
• You’re narrowing your search to your specific location, so you are no longer competing with others around the world. This gives you a chance to shine and better chance to rank.
• Popularity of Local search is increasing.

We mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. Much of the future of consumer browsing will be done on smartphones. In the age of smartphone apps, you want to make sure that your site is optimized for Local search. If someone is on his/her car and is looking for your services, you need to make sure they don’t drive an extra 10 miles to go to your competitor when he/she could have found you.

Targeted traffic means increased conversion rates.

By consumers narrowing down their search and finding your site, the conversion rates naturally become higher. Now, here are the key things to remember about Local search.

Keywords and Location

One of the biggest mistakes people tend to make it not choosing the right keywords. Use the Google Keywords Tool to look up what keywords people are using for your service.

Title Tags

Be sure your most important keywords are at the beginning of your title tag, and that it includes your targeted location keywords.

Header Tags

They have a lot of impact on SEO.

Internal Linking/Inbound Linking

Internal linking allows both consumers and search engine robots to navigate through your site’s pages smoothly and logically. Inner linking allows the robots to find your most important pages faster besides only relying on the sitemap. Inbound links are basically other sites pointing to your site as a reference. Inbound linking allows the search engines to evaluate how popular and how important your website is.

Sitemap/Robots.txt

Always be sure that you have a proper Sitemaps and Robots.txt set up on your site. This is strictly for the search engine robots to completely understand the structures of your site and any restrictions or directions you have for it.

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