In an earlier post we talked about making sure you have a Google and Yahoo Business Profile setup. But what if you are trying to get your website noticed by search engines in your local area. There are a few things that will help with your organic search results and being associated with keywords that relate to your local area such as your city or town.

1. Add a location name to your Page Titles

   Example “Seattle Taverns” could be your page title if that is what you are writing about on that page of your website. When the search results are displayed on a search engine readers are more likely to click on pages that have relevant local keywords in their titles.

2. Add your business listing to local business directories

   We have all heard of advertising in the Yellow Pages for example. But there are also city based business directories that are very comprehensive as well. Continuing with our theme, I did a quick search and came across a website called Seattle at a Glance. And from looking at their website you can immediately tell that it is an established business directory. There are also other websites that try to aggregate helpful local city guides such as CitySquares for finding local businesses in your area.

3. Provide a lot of information about your business

   The less questions a reader has to ask the better. Such as where are you located, what are you hours of operation and where do I find your phone number. But remember if you are listing along side other businesses say for Accounting. Just like in the Yellow Pages, you need to have something that helps you stand out. Do you offer free deliveries in certain areas, maybe a guarantee, or even an offer for mentioning that you saw them in such and such business directory. This way you know where your customers are finding you.

4. Link reputation is also key

   Remember to use hyperlinks that match your page. So using the same example from #1 above. The page title would be “Seattle Taverns” and the link might be “seattle-taverns.html”. Using this technique will actually help to improve your relevancy as seen by the search engines spiders when they go to your website to index your content.

Also worth noting is monitoring your business reviews on other websites. We have probably all seen the new iPhone TV ads showing how easy it is to post online reviews of restaurants on Yelp for example. Yelp is a perfect example of the power of the internet is used to collect reviews on local restaurants for everyone to see. However you as a business owner want to make sure that any negative reviews are followed up on or disputed where appropriate. Doing so will show other readers that you are serious about your business and about customer service.

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When was the last time you searched for a local business in your area on a search engine?

You as a business owner probably haven’t searched for your own profession though, because you have never been in need of that kind of help. If you really think about it, your customers go online to find local merchants, retailers, and trades people all the time. Probably even without thinking about it.

What we are talking about is local search engine marketing and what it can do for your business exposure and lead generation.

How about an example to help illustrate what we are talking about here. Go to Google Local Search or Yahoo Local, which are probably the two highest used search engines for searching locally. Now try to find your business listing. Do you have a sponsored link for your area for example? Do you see your competition across the street even.

By searching for “Boston Dental” in Google Local Search and I got the following listings (click on the images to enlarge):

Next time I repeated the same search using Yahoo Local  for “Dental in Boston” and I got the following listings (click on the images to enlarge):

In both examples New England Dental was displayed in the top spot. Now if I was living in Boston and looking for a new dentist this dental practice would definitely be top of my mind.

The lesson in this example is actually two-fold:

1) Make sure you commit to doing online advertising using local keywords such as town, city or county for your area.
Before your competitors pick up on this strategy to corner the local market.

2) Make sure you have a consistent business listings in both Google and Yahoo which was the case in the example above.
These business listings are free to setup but will help to promote your business locally and maybe even outside of your current advertising budget could reach.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Using Online Video for Marketing
• Customer Acquisition – Hunting or Harvesting Leads
• Content Marketing is key for Small Business in 2010
• Small Businesses Raise Search Spend in 2009
• How to collect email addresses on your Facebook Page