For local businesses, some of the most important traffic you can get is local search engine traffic. Let’s take a look at a few local SEO strategies that will get your site ranking better.
A good way to get the most from local searches is to go about listing yourself with the bigwigs in the industry. Of course this means Google Maps and Yahoo! Local. These are the two big wigs that you’ll want to list with first before you go on to anything else. The reason for this is simple: This would allow you to let the search engines and as well as the searchers to know about your location, making everything easy. Getting Google Maps to list you is actually quite simple. All you have to do is fill out a little form and you’ll then be sent a phone message or an email so that you can let them know you are who you claim to be. After that verification process, you’ll usually have to wait about six weeks to see your site in the local search listings. You should expect to find the same with Yahoo!, except you don’t have to verify anything with them. Yahoo! even lets you tailor your business listing how you want it.
Yahoo! seems to approve you much quicker than Google, which is a good thing. If you can do this correctly, you’ll see targeted traffic in no time. Most of the local websites out there have no problem with business owners asking clients and customers to post reviews (Yelp is one of these sites). Because this is allowed and you can benefit from it quite a bit, why not do it? Make sure you mention it in your email signatures, thank you page of your contact form, invoices, etc. It can be as easy as a line that says “please take a moment to give us a review on AnyLocalSiteYouWant.Whatever”. Even though you are not able to control any of the text in the reviews, whether you get good or bad reviews, having them online adds credibility to your business and makes you look more reliable to new customers. Even if you are trying other things as well, make sure to integrate this tip because doing so can help your business exponentially.
One way to get started promoting your site locally is to claim your profile on popular local listing services, including Bing Local, Google Places and Yahoo! Local. Each of these sites has a fairly straightforward verification process to claim your profile, and all you have to do is complete some boxes and verify your address and phone number. This is a relatively fast and easy process that gives you an advantage over the many other businesses who neglected to do it. People who search are impressed with pictures, and it makes them assume someone is more authentic, so it’s a good idea to upload pictures to your profile on these local site listings. Just find some good quality pictures from your site and upload them to give you a more effective listing. You don’t have to use gallery quality photos (unless your business is photography), but they will be reflecting on your business, so they should have some quality.
Don’t worry so much about getting a huge number of links, but look for quality instead.
These are a few effective SEO practices that can help you rank well in the local search engine listings for more traffic and business..
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