Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Marketing Your Website to Appear in Google Local Searches

Google Local Searches – Be Visible

Any store owner or service provider doing business on a local level will want to advertise his business in the Google Local Business Directory, also known as the Google Maps. This amazing directory automatically appears, whenever a web surfer initiates a search that includes a product name and a locale. Google then automatically displays a map of the area at the top of page 1 with store location signified by the presence of bright red tear-drop shaped arrows projecting out of the map. The local businesses, that provide the service, are listed to the right of the map, with their phone number and address handily displayed.

Here are some of the things which determine your visibility in Google Local Search:

  1. Your blue link next to the map. When you type in a local search term, you see a little map, with 10 blue links to the right. That link serves as the title and billboard of your business, and you get to choose what it says. It matters.
  2. Having a website. I could go into all kinds of detail, but the only thing to know is if you don’t have a website, chances are very good you’ll get outranked by any competitors who do have one.
  3. A good website name. It matters what you call your website. I don’t have room to show you here how to get an effective name, but a great place to get ideas is Google Keyword Tool.
  4. Customer reviews. It’s pretty obvious how positive reviews can help you (though there’s a specific way to go about getting them).
  5. Additional content. You can have customers see your business hours, directions, and photos (of your business, products, etc.) that you upload. To the extent you add that kind of information, that’s a good thing.
  6. Paid local ads. This is the only moving part you can’t do for free. Depending on your market, it’s sometimes a good idea to get “Local Business Ads” in addition to the no-cost local search listing you already have. This is something you generally worry about later on, once you’ve got the other 5 moving parts working for you.

Search engine optimization and Keywords work for your website. Up to a few years ago all you needed to do to rank well with the search engines was to put a ‘META’ keywords list in your HTML code. As the search engines search algorithms become more and more sophisticated, this unfortunately doesn’t work anymore. These days you have to work hard and smart to get the search engines to rank your website high.

For most website owners today, using long tail keywords has become successful simply because they have an excellent conversion rate. It cannot be denied that descriptive keywords such as these are deafening important when it comes to an effective local SEO design. This is simply owing to the fact that local SEO focuses on a distinctive geographical locale.

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