Search Engine Optimization Company
The Internet might be global in nature, but if your business is local, it makes no sense to concentrate on global reach, when your customers live in your city, or even in your neighborhood. For local businesses getting a global reach is a waste of resources. Instead, you should concentrate on the local community. You might be asking how you can do it, when the Web is global and Google doesn’t classify sites according to their location. Here is how you can go local with SEO:
1 Use your location in your keywords.
The first trick is to use your location in your keywords. For example, if you are in London and you sell car insurance, your most important keyphrase should be “car insurance London” because this keyphrase contains your business and your location and will drive people who are looking for car insurance in London in particular.
2 Use your location in metatags
Metatags matter for search engines and you shouldn’t miss to include your location, together with your other keywords in the metatags of the pages of your site. Of course, you must have your location in the keywords you use in the body text because otherwise it is a bit suspicious when your body text doesn’t have your location as a keyword but your tags are stuffed with it.
3 Use your location in your body text
Keywords in the body text count a lot and you can’t afford to skip them. If your web copy is optimized for “car insurance” only, this won’t help you rank well with “car insurance London”, so make sure that your location is part of your keywords.
4 Take advantage of Google Places and Yahoo Local
Google Places and Yahoo Local are great places to submit to because they will include you in their listings for a particular location.
5 Create backlinks with your location as anchor text
It could be a bit tricky to get organic backlinks with your location as anchor text because some keywords with location don’t sound very natural – for instance, “car insurance London” isn’t grammatically correct and you will hardly get an organic inline link with it but you can use it in the Name field to comment on blogs. If the blog is dofollow, you will still get a backlink with anchor text that helps for SEO.
6 Get included in local search engine optimization company
Global search engines, such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo can bring you lots of traffic but depending on your location, local search engines might be the real golden mine. A local search engine could mean a search engine for the area (though it is not very likely to have regional search engines) or more likely for your country. For instance, Baidu is a great option, if you are selling on the Chinese market.
7 Get listed in local directories
In addition to local search engine optimization company, you need to try your luck with local directories, too. You might think that nobody reads directory listings but this isn’t exactly so. For instance, Yellow Pages are one of the first places where people look when searching for a local vendor for a particular product.
8 Run locally-targeted ad campaigns
One of the most efficient ways to drive targeted, local traffic to your site is with the help of locally-targeted ad campaigns. PPC ads and classifieds are the two options that work best – at least for most webmasters.
9 Do occasional checks of your keywords
Occasionally checking the current search volume of your keywords is a good idea because shifts in search volumes are quite typical. Needless to say, if people don’t search for “car insurance London” anymore because they have started using other search phrases and you continue to optimize for “car insurance London”, this is a waste of time and money. Also, keep an eye on the keywords your competitors use – this will give you clue which keywords work and which don’t.
10 Use social media
Social media can drive more traffic to a site than search engine optimization company and for local search this is also true. Facebook, Twitter, and the other social networking sites have a great sales potential because you can promote your business for free and reach exactly the people you need. Local groups on social sites are especially valuable because the participants there are mainly from the region you are interested in.
11 Ask for reviews and testimonials
Client reviews and testimonials are a classical business instrument and these are like letters of recommendation for your business. However, as far as SEO is concerned, they could have another role. There are review sites, where you can publish such reviews and testimonials (or ask your clients to do it) and this will drive business to you. Some of these sites are Yelp and Merchant Circle but it is quite probable that there are regional or national review sites you can also post at.
12 Create separate pages for your different locations
When you have business in several locations, this makes the task a bit more difficult because you can’t possibly optimize for all of them – you can’t have a keyphrase such as “car insurance London, Berlin, Paris, New York”. In this case the solution is to create separate pages for your different locations. If your locations span the globe, you can also create different sites on different, country-specific domains (i.e. uk.co for GB, .de for Germany, etc.) but this is only reasonable to do, if your business is truly multinational. Otherwise, just a separate page for each of your locations will do.
These simple tips how to optimize your site for local searches are a must, if you rely on the local market. Maybe you are already doing some of them and you know what works for you and what doesn’t. Anyway, if you haven’t tried them all, try them now and see if this will have a positive impact on your rankings (and your business) or not.
Search Engine Optimization Company
Read MoreFlex Camp Miami
As you will know if you have been following my blog, I attended and prhref=”http://ww.flexcampmiami.com/”>Flex Camp Miami yesterday. We ended up with 86 attendees from all over the country, which was a great turnout considering the state of the economy and Miami’s tech community.
I have to say that when I was originally invited to the event, I was expecting it to be fairly basic in terms of the content being presented. When we looked in to hosting a Flex Camp in Orlando,Adobe had asked us to keep it along the lines of an “intro to Flex” event (which was actually one of the reasons that we didn’t pursue the issue, since we have built up an intermediate Flex crowd with the sessions at Adogo). However, the final lineup for the event was full of great topics, and I can honestly say that this is the first conference I have been to in a while where I was interested in and able to learn something from every offering.
I’d also like to mention that the organizers and sponsors did an awesome job. Universal Mindand Adobe showed up in full force; I think at least 30% – 40% of the attendees left with either a book, a training DVD, or a Flex Builder Pro license. One lucky bastard even left with a $2,500.00 copy of the CS4 Master Collection - not a bad ROI for a $20 registration fee! I personally won a copy of Creating Visual Experiences with Flex 3.0, which I am really excited about since custom skinning is my weakest area in Flex development right now.
Not to be forgotten is the fact that the event would neither have been as successful nor possible at all without Brian Rinaldi having organizing it. Brian put together the whole event and organized sponsorship from Adobe and his employer at the time (Universal Mind). Unfortunately, nobody has been immune from the state of the economy and Brian was released from his employment shortly before the event, making his attendance difficult on several levels. While the sponsors did Brian proud in terms of delivering a solid event, if you were an attendee, I encourage you to let Brian know your appreciation for all his hard work. If you are an employer considering Brian for a position, you can rest assured that his attention to detail and work ethic leave nothing to be desired if the quality of the Flex Camps he has organized are any measure.
For those of you who missed the event, fear not – Universal Mind is planning to do another Flex Camp in the Florida area later this year. There was talk of doing it in either Tampa or Orlando – either way, Adogo will be lending as much assistance as we can to ensure it’s a good one.
I’m going to do an individual blog post on each of the topics presented, which I’ll be linking to once they are finished. I also have some pictures, but since I left my SD card adapter in my other laptop I’ll have to wait until I get back to Orlando to publish them.
All Flex Camp Miami Roundup Posts
Welcome and Keynote (Greg Wilson, Adobe)
Working with Data in AIR (David Tucker, Universal Mind)
In Search of AOP for AS3 (Maxim Porges, Highwinds)
Merapi or How To Blow Your Mind with AIR (Andrew Powell, Universal Mind)
The Art of Storytelling (Christian Saylor, Universal Mind)
Continuous Integration and Flex (Brian LeGros, Highwinds)
Spring & BlazeDS Integration (Jeremy Grelle, SpringSource)
Mate Flex Framework (Laura Arguello, ASFusion)
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