Local SEO - Seven Tips For Enhancing Local Search Results For Your Offline Business

To find the services and products they need, more and more people these days are turning to online stores and businesses. Yet this new Internet trend has created confusion for local business owners, who encounter confusion and frustration when trying to access those customer searches that represent strong prospects for their business. Here are a few tips that will help you generate productive business leads from localized SEO efforts.

1. Choose Your Keywords Carefully, Using the Correct Tools

The first factor to consider is the keywords your prospective patrons are using to seek your category of products or services on the Internet. Specifically, is anyone searching for those types of products and how many related online searches are being performed per month?

Google recently began making available their search volume data; their free keyword tool is an excellent resource for learning the number of people who are searching for terms related to your corporate endeavor. You might also find out about misspellings or synonyms that people use to search, in addition to the words you come up with on your own. These can be surprising and profitable means of generating more traffic for your site.

2. Focus on Local Keywords

If you’re running a primarily local business, you’ll only want to focus on localized search terms; although this may seem limiting, it’s actually an asset because local search terms make it easier to garner higher rankings, as compared to broader terms targeting customers across the country. For instance, it’s likely easier to obtain high rankings for the term ‘Maryland carpet cleaner’ than the simplified term ‘carpet cleaner’. And if you’re only serving a particular geographic area, there’s no need to attract visitors from outside that area anyway. The good news is that the keyword tool mentioned above also allows you to see the number of people searching for localized terms such as these. You may be surprised at the number of individuals searching for local terms; this is a trend likely to increase over the coming years.

3. Spy on the Competition (Both Local and National Players)

I’m sure you’ve heard the quote from Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’ which states, ‘Know your enemy and know yourself and you need not fear the result of a hundred battles…’. That same theory applies itself to business, as well, which is why it’s important to find out exactly what your competition is doing online. The keyword tool that Google offers will allow you to do this; simply enter a competitor’s website address into the search engine, as opposed to a list of keywords. Google will scan the competing site and show you a list of keywords that Google feels is relevant to that website. This can provide a multitude of information, since your competitors might be focusing on keywords (and aspects of your target market) that you’ve managed to neglect.

4. Create Solid Content that You Would Also Consider Using in Offline Marketing Efforts

Once you know what keywords you aim to target, it’s time to start creating content. This content can take multiple forms such as text articles, PDF reports, audio and video. In fact, one of the best strategies is to take a single article idea and develop content around that idea in a variety of formats. So you could write an article, record it in an audio format, create a video version and revamp it as a blog post. This is a great way to get the most results from a solid content idea.

5. Syndicate your content

Once you have created your content, you need to syndicate it. That simply means distributing your content throughout online. So you can submit your article to high-quality article directories such as EZineArticles, post your video on YouTube, add your audio version to iTunes in the form of a podcast and place a blog post on your own website. Imagine someone searching for a keyword related to your product or service, and the first results that come back are (1) your YouTube video, (2) your EzineArticles article, (3) the blog post and (4) another website who has posted your video on their high-ranking URL. No matter where that visitor goes, all roads lead back to your site!

6. Don’t submit to endless quantities of search engines

Certain search engine marketing companies will offer to submit your site to a ridiculous quantity of search engines. Quick question - How many search engines do YOU use personally? Probably only one or two, and most likely, they are Google, Yahoo or MSN. So there’s no need to submit to thousands of search engines. In fact, the three just listed account for probably 95 percent of all search traffic; most of the others are Internet junk piles or just useless directories. Targeted directory submissions are okay, but don’t pay for a mass submission pitch that’s doomed to fail from the start.

7. Submit press releases

Submitting press releases is an ideal means of generating buzz on the Internet regarding your business. Not only that, it can be a great way to generate web links from high-quality news sites and other sites related to your business. Keep it professional and don’t use a lot of sales speak for best results.