Tuesday 15 March 2011

10 ways to get more with Local Search Engine Optimization


Local Presence is must for Online Business or Offline Business maters a lot now days. Local search marketing for a business can help in many ways like increasing the online visibility where your geographic target market and search engine gives priority to local business in ranking.
Follow some quick tips for enhancing your business with the help of local search engine optimization:-
  1. Use Country Specific CccTLDs Domains -
  2. Its worth to have a ccTLD domain name like co.uk is for if your business’s targeted location is uk, co.in for India targeted Business, com.au for Australia targeted business etc.  if your business is focuses on local audience. By having a local domain extension you can let Search Engines know your exact targeted business location.
  3. List your business in major search engine –
  4. Claim your local business listing in major search engines with Google Local, Yahoo! Local and Bing Local
  5. Get listed in local directories & data providers
  6. Submit your business in local directories & data services like InfoUSA, CitySearch.com, Yelp.com, Acxiom and Localeze because these local directories has their own database / technology from the foundation of the search engines For local indexing at different level.
  7. Choose right category for your business listing –
  8. The reason behind this step is that if your business listed in right category which helps for enhancing your business ability to show up for your targeted audience. Some time happens that if your business is listed in either wrong category or entered wrong keyword or incorrect mapping details will harm your business’s listing and reputation.
  9. Formulate your business information is unswerving –
  10. Keeping business information which matches across web that results into increase confidence of Google algorithm for providing accurate search result. Make sure that you put correct phone number and address information everywhere when your business is listed.
  11. Obtain your contact information in Microformat or add a QR code on your website –
  12. Microformat: - A Microformat is a web-based approach to semantic markup that seeks to re-use existing XHTML and HTML tags to convey metadata and other attributes. This will help to improve local search marketing and optimization. QR Code - QR Codes are now used in a much broader context, including both commercial tracking applications and convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users (known as mobile tagging)
  13. Build KML file and upload it to Google Webmaster Central.
  14. We all know about XML Site Maps. But I’m going to elaborate on creating KML Files. KML stats for Keyhole Markup Language. It’s basically location map or geo sitemap having specialized file format with latitude and longitude of physical business locations listed on website and gives them one more confidence boost in the location of a particular business. It will help you to boost business listing in the particular location.
  15. Use geographic keywords & Brand Name in your title tags.
  16. This is more of a general suggestion: make sure that you include your city and state in the title tag of your contact or location page, and if you’re in product or services oriented sales, use words like “City Name Product” or “Products in City Name” on assorted other title tags on your website.
  17. Make sure you have Analytics installed on your website.
  18. Web Analytics tool can give you great insight into which keywords are bringing traffic to your website, and what pages are engaging your users and leading to new business.
  19. Play with Competitive Analysis -
  20. Take a look at both the Organic and the Local search results for some of your target phrases. Check on which phrases competitors are showing? For more advance competitive research use tools like Linkscape or Yahoo Site Explorer to see if there are particular websites linking to competitor and not you.