‘Local SEO’ is the hottest buzz term in Internt marketing today. Why is it really so important to your business’ success and what’s the secret for winning at local search?
Why Your Business Can’t Survive Without a Winning Local SEO Strategy
It doesn’t matter how great of a location you have, how slick your website looks or if you are the best at what you do, if you don’t have your local SEO game turned on.
Today consumers are turning to the internet whether from their homes, iPads or smartphones in the street to decide where to shop and buy. If you aren’t showing up at the top of local search results on Google or coming up at the command of Apple’s SIRI you soon might as well not exist.
Good local SEO means attracting the most web traffic, highly targeted prospects, higher conversions and the ability to direct foot traffic to your location on short notice for fast results.
If you want to grow your local business you need to learn the best local SEO tactics.
The Secrets of Local SEO
Winning at local SEO isn’t as easy as you might think. Getting to the top for a day is one thing, especially for lousy keywords. Staying on top and closing real business can be quite another.
If you’ve already done a little research on local SEO you already know that keyword selection plays a big part. However, this doesn’t always just mean ‘your industry’ and ‘your state’ (for example ‘SEO Michigan’).
Another major element of great local SEO is making sure your web assets are optimized for the mobile web. This means your website looks good and runs smooth on the most popular mobile devices and is fully optimized, with addresses and phone numbers for location based searches.
One of the most important and most overlooked, core parts of a complete local online marketing strategy is the use of citations.
What’s a Citation and how do they Work in Your Favor?
Local citations help search engines confirm your location and improve your search rankings.
Citations are mentions of your business with your address and local phone number online. However, not all citations are created equal. Citations need to be congruent and be in the right categories. Who makes the citations matters, as it does if there are links to them. Is it on an authority site, a local blog which is highly trusted by Google or from social users who have likely really experienced your business for themselves?
Places you may want to begin building citations include:
- Superpages
- Yelp
- Google & Yahoo Places
- InfoUSA
- Yellow Pages
- Merchant Circle
- City Search
- Foursquare
- Local and industry specific directories
- Local and industry blogs
Make sure that the street address and phone number you list on these sites is also listed on your website. A local address and website is a critical item to have listed on your website. Whatever you do, don’t underestimate the need to develop your local SEO and stay wired into the latest and most effective strategies.
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