For many businesses, it’s all about local search. They generate their revenue from a local catchment area.
For example, a customer looking for a supermarket heads locally. Who wants to drive across town for their grocery shopping?
It’s not just retailers, though, its also trades and service providers and many more that fall into this category.
So how do these businesses get themselves a strong online profile? By following this super-easy 10 step plan.
STEP1: IDENTIFY LOCAL TRAFFIC.
Go to Google’s External Keyword Tool and enter both your product or service and your location to identify local search. For example, “Doctor, North Melbourne”.
STEP 2: DO A COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS.
Go to Google or Bing. See who is ranking already and who is paying for ads. Take a look behind-the-scenes at their source code to see how net savvy they are and do a backlink analysis to see who is linking into them. Pay attention to what appears in the <head> code.
STEP 3: OPTIMISE YOUR WEB PAGES.
Add your keywords and location to your Titles and Meta Descriptions, and include them in your body copy too. Add keyword-rich Image Alt Text. Don’t include your domain name in these fields, you’ll be found for your domain name regardless of what you enter for the search engines.
STEP 4: GET LISTINGS IN LOCAL DIRECTORIES.
There are very good international directories such as DMOZ (free), BOTW (paid) and Yahoo! (paid).
There are also great local Australian directories such as Hotfrog, TrueLocal and free online listings in Yellow Pages.
Make sure you include your keywords and location. Some directories offer backlink value, while others generate traffic, while others ensure that when someone does a search for your type of business in your location, they are presented with multiple results all about you – not your competitors.
STEP 5: LINK STRATEGIES FOR LOCAL BUSINESS.
Apart from relevant industry links, add local councils, business associations and local media.
Check your local competitor’s backlinks for more ideas about who to approach for a backlink.
Google ranks on three key factors:
First, the relevance of your webpage to the search query (which is why you need to know keywords and build them into your webpage).
Second, the geo-targeting of the result to the searcher. All other things being equal, Google will return a local search first. In other words, if you search in Australia, it will try to deliver an Australian result.
Third, the PageRank score it assigns your website because of the quality of its backlinks. Building your backlinks is something you do over a period of time. Don’t forget to continue plugging away at it.
Avoid link schemes, though, they breach Google’s quality guidelines and you could be penalised. A few good quality links is much better than 100 spammy ones.
STEP 6: SUBMIT YOUR SITE INTO THE SEARCH ENGINES.
Submission via Google Webmaster or Bing Toolkit is much faster, but you can still submit manually.
Google “submit URL” for the addresses for both Bing and Google. (Bing handles Yahoo! search now).
Don’t use automated submission software, it’s in breach of Google guidelines.
STEP 7: DO SOME ONLINE PR.
Look to get yourself in Google News and get coverage in local papers.
Submit your press releases via online media distribution services.
Local papers are interested in local events and what’s not yet discovered in the neighbourhood – and many are online.
Try to secure a link from their website to yours.
Links that enable bots to follow will offer you link advantage.
Regardless, media coverage should result in traffic to your site.
STEP 8: PAY-PER-CLICK.
If you add your location to your PPC keyword, you’ll find the price of the ad drops dramatically. Don’t forget to create a suitable landing page for your ad that includes a reference to your location.
So, if you keyword is “Doctor, North Melbourne”, use the same phrase in your ads title (that improves its relevancy) and create a landing page in your website that includes it as a headline.
For example, “Looking for a doctor in North Melbourne?”
By doing these things, you can help improve your Google quality score. The higher your score, the higher your ad ranks.
STEP 9: USING SOCIAL MEDIA.
Facebook is great for retailers. You can showcase your new range of product.
Twitter is great for businesses that are on the move (such as mobile businesses) or those that often release snap special pricing (such as airlines).
Social media is generally more suited to the B2C market, although B2B businesses take profiles in them, usually more as a protection against trademark infringement than a strategy to build a community.
STEP 10: ADDITIONAL ONLINE STRATEGIES.
There is a broad mix of additional activities a small business can do such as email marketing (make sure you have permission to email to avoid breaching anti-spam laws), blogging (which search engines love but it does require serious resourcing to keep finding unique, interesting content to publish or hire freelance blog writers) or article marketing (which is another well known traffic generation strategy).
FINAL THOUGHTS.
Okay, so this is a snapshot of some of what you can do in regards to small business SEO. Hopefully it helps you to get started. There is more information and help in the SEO for Small Business. There is also a small business seo case study which picks apart an example to show you some dos and don’ts and room for improvement. (You’ll need to be a member to access these tutorials.)
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[...] is called Small Business SEO and Local Search – and it shares a 10 step strategy for taking your local corner store from obscurity to the [...]