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Is_Your_Website_Ready_For_Local_Search_Engine_Traffic
| Is Your Website Ready For Local Search Engine Traffic
I suppose the real reason for a local small business to have a
website at all is to provide information for the local market,
generate leads from local shoppers. Up until now too many small
businesses have created websites more like monuments to their
company name. If someone knew the name of the company, they
could probably find the website. That was good to a point but
what about those people who just know they need what you sell
but they don't know anybody who sells it?
What if, instead, local businesses began to think about their
websites more like a listing in a phone directory. What if they
began to build and optimize their websites with the primary
intent of being found in their hometown as the leader in a
category. Someone looking for "Farm Fresh Tuna in Upper Cutbank,
Montana" is going to enter just such a search, right?
Google and Yahoo both announced this month their model for
tapping into the local search traffic. In other words they are
now going to make it easier for web surfers that want to find an
accountant in their home town to do so.
Everyone knew they would eventually get around to this very
lucrative market so now more than ever you need to prepare your
website to be found in your town. More about local search at
these sites. http://www.google.com/lochp - Beta site
http://www.google.com/help/faq_local.html#what FAQ
http://local.yahoo.com/u_s__states - yahoo local
What I'm talking about today is "local" search engine
optimization. In one sense the principles are the same as
everyday regular search engine optimization but the way of
thinking about them is a bit different. ~~~~~~ gEEk Term
definition: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the science of
making sure web pages are "designed" in such a way that search
engines can find, index, and rank them according to the value of
their content. For those of you who don't know, there is an
entire industry built around this science. ~~~~~~
In the old day the mindset was to create a website and optimize
it for anyone looking for a certain topic.
Local SEO focuses first on being found in your town....for a
certain topic. Geo targeting is the key. When someone is looking
for a veterinarian, they don't search locally (at the moment)
for the name of your firm. Think in terms of a Yellow Pages
directory. They go to city they are looking for and then the
category and then the name of the firm to call.
Local search is structured much the same. People who are looking
for an auto mechanic online will search "Kansas City Auto
mechanic" In order to win the local search game you must be able
to win that type of search.
There are no hard and fast rules and even if there were they
would change but here are some things you need to begin to think
about to bury your competition in the local search game.
Title tags - Probably one of the most important info on your
page anyway so make sure your title reads something like
"YOURFIRMNAME Kansas City's oldest bakery
H1 tags - Make sure that your keywords for your site and your
geography have H1 tags - The Best Baked Brioche in Peoria, Il
Content - Add your address and phone number early and
prominently (not a bad thing for every page really)
Meta tags - Opinions vary on the usefulness of these but there
are some tags that may gain usefulness depending on how the
search engines refine their methods. meta name="zipcode"
content="64105,64113,64112,64110,64106,66207,66208,66210 meta
name="city" content="Kansas City" meta name="state"
content="Missouri, Kansas" meta name="ICBM" content="39.10246,
-94.59009 City, State, and Zip code tags are pretty self
explanatory but the ICBM one is a bit out there but kind of cool
too.
If you go to the GEOUrl Address Server you can locate the exact
latitude and longitude of your business. That's what those two
numbers after the ICBM tag are. (Of course I think that is the
same system they use to target bombs.)
Linking - Make your internal links local friendly - Instead of
"Remodeling Projects" use "Omaha Kitchen Projects"
DMOZ - The Open Directory Project is a directory of sites that
are listed by human volunteers. It seems that getting listed
here gives you high marks with search engines so you need to do
it but make sure that you go for the Regional listings all the
way down to your town. It is unlikely (and not very useful) that
you will get listed for a broad category, particularly if you
don't provide world-wide service. Go for the poodle clipping
section of your town and you will have better luck.
Other Directories - Another good reason to get listed in DMOZ
for your town is that other local directories like Verizon's
Smart Pages and SBC's Yellow Pages rely on these listing as
well. By the way, get listed in as many of these phone book type
of directories like Smart Pages as you can. Some are free and
there is speculation that initially the big search engines will
rely on these already built local directories.
There...that should keep you busy
About the author:
John Jantsch is a marketing consultant based in Kansas City, Mo.
He writes frequently on real world small business marketing
tactics and is the creator of “Duct Tape Marketing” a turn-key
small business marketing system. Check out his blog at
http://www.DuctTapeMarketing.com/weblog.php - get these kinds of
killer tips weekly by sending an email to
mailto:subscribe@ducttapemarketing.com
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