More people are starting to rely on the internet searches to find local businesses. So they expect that these businesses big or small already have a website for local searches to make sure business stays competitive in the digital age. Having a website and optimizing it for the particular service or product you provide is a lot more work than you realize.

However, there are some basic tactics you can do to make sure your website reaches people looking for your services locally. Local search is not nearly as competitive as the global search market. Here are some simple ways you can optimize your local business website to outrank competitors in your market with very little effort.

Submit to Google Local. Most popular searches done in America happen through Google. Google Local is a business directory for local, small businesses. Every time someone searches for a product or service on Google maps or Google your business will appear at the top of the search results along with other businesses in the area who have submitted themselves to Google Local.

Provide complete business information to every web page. The search engines recognize the addresses from websites and add them to their index. Using a standard format like this one will help you get picked up easier by the search engines:

Your Business Name
123 Main Street
City, State, ZIP
(123) 456-7890

Add Google Analytics to your site. Google Analytics is a free script you place on your site that allows you to track important visitors’ data and activity on your website. Knowing how your website gains visitors is critical in optimizing your online advertising strategy. You’ll quickly be able to figure out what campaigns are working and how well they are working.

Ensure page titles. Page titles are one of the most important on-page search engine optimization factors for search engines. Search engines use this information to determine what your website is about and whether or not it is relevant to a particular user search. Titles such as “Homepage” and “Welcome” do not tell the search engines anything useful. However, a title like “Atlanta Dentist” or “Chicago plumber” tells the search engine exactly what your website is all about. Make sure to use your most important keywords first, and keep the titles under 65 characters.

Submit to other free search directories. Other free search directories are Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, Yellow Pages, SuperPages, City Search, TrueLocal, etc. Also search the internet for directories related to your particular niche.

Optimize Keywords. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Think of what would you search for if you were looking for a business that does what you need in your area? These phrases and words should become target keywords for your website. That means you’ll want to optimize your site to feature these keywords as much as possible in the title and H1 tags, Meta description, and page content. You don’t want to overdo it and stuff your site with keywords, as most search engines will penalize you for trying to cheat the system. Just try and find a nice balance. Another tactic is to link within your website using these keywords.

Make use of your Google webmaster tools account. Google provides webmaster tools to help get your site optimized and properly indexed. Create an account and you can see how search engine sees your website, errors they spot, and you are able to submit your website’s information to them.

Create a sitemap. A sitemap is quite simply a map of your website. When first indexing your website, a search engine will use the sitemap to find out where everything is on your site. Sitemaps utilize a standard XML format and you can build one for free at XML-Sitemaps.com. After you have built your sitemap you can then submit it to Google, Yahoo, and MSN through their respective webmaster tools.

Validate your HTML. Having the syntax of the code of you website validated lets the search engines know your site is structurally correct. The W3C Markup Validation Service is free and will point out any errors in your HTML code.

Add a Video. Internet video is rapidly becoming the future of how products and services are being marketed on the internet. Any business who has successfully used video will testify to the huge increase in web traffic they’ve received as a result. Video is not expensive or particularly complicated to do and implement on your website. More importantly, you will need to submit your video to over 40 video sharing websites like YouTube to really gain the true benefit of online video. There are services out there that will produce and promote your online video for a fee, so if you’re not up to doing it yourself it is recommend you seek one of these video service providers out.

These tips are designed to be a starting off point for getting your business the most exposure online organically. Granted they are ways you can pay to advertise your business, but many small businesses should first try to boost website visitation through organic, free traffic first.

Google Local Searches wants more small businesses to claim their listing profiles on Google Local. This is basically the listings that pop up in Google Maps and local search results. To attract small businesses, Google Local Searches provides local businesses in the real world with physical addresses a free dashboard similar to what Websites get for free with Google Analytics. Except that the dashboard will show stats such as how many times their business comes up as a search result, how often people click through, as well as how many times people generate driving directions to their businesses on Google Maps and where those people come from.

In return, all they need to do is claim and verify their listings at the Google Local Businesss Center . It takes about as much time as setting up a new email account, maybe a little more. Google gets clean data, businesses get free analytics and an opportunity to train Google’s search engine. Right now only a few hundred thousand businesses in the U.S. have been claimed out of approximately 20 million.

The other benefit to Google is that the more that small businesses can measure the impact of search, the more likely they will be to buy search ads. The dashboard shows the top search queries that result in a business’ listing showing up. The next obvious step is to start buying those keywords or optimize a business’ site to make sure they are on the page.