Best Techniques to Generate Local Traffic from the Search Engines
Local SEO is a way to get your website well ranked in the search engines for local listings. Given below are a few simple local SEO tips that you can use to get ranked better.
As a local SEO marketer you should try to think like your targeted prospects/customers/searchers. It's helpful to put yourself in their place if you want to apply SEO to your site. Pretend you were using a search engine to find something you were selling, and consider what terms you would most likely search under. Pretend for a moment that your store carries golf accessories and nothing else. People who search for the word "golf" are probably not going to be your customers, as this is a very general term. If someone does a search for "golf courses," they are not looking for what you are selling either. Someone who enters "golf accessories," though, is a likely customer for your store, so this is the kind of keyword to be focusing on. Many small businesses with websites bypass keyword phrases that are not the most popular but that could still generate customers. They tend to target the same keywords everyone else is trying to rank for, the very top ones with the most traffic. It helps you to target the most effective keywords if you can put yourself in the customer's place. As you test various keywords and come up with more appropriate ones, you will get more traffic and you'll be able to rank well for many different keywords in your niche. Most of the local websites that you target are completely okay with you asking your customers to leave a review for you, except for the site Yelp. Because this is allowed and you can benefit from it quite a bit, why not do it? Be sure to mention it every place you can (e-mail signature lines, contact forms, invoices and more). It doesn't have to be hard, just a quick "we'd really appreciate it if you could take a moment to review our company on LocalWebsiteOfYourChoice.Dot." Even though you have no control over these reviews and it's not up to you to make them good or bad, they make your business look more credible and reliable to your upcoming customers. Even if you are trying other things as well, make sure to integrate this tip because doing so can help your business exponentially.
It is also very smart to work on getting your company listed in the Yellow Pages directory (and other directories like it). Other good directories to begin with are SuperPages.com, YellowBook.com and YelloPages.com. YellowPages.com, for example, offers businesses free listings online and they get more than one hundred million searches every month. At the same time, SuperPages.com is well known for sending their listed businesses to the major sites like About.com and MSN. A simple listing with them is free as well. In summary, local search engine optimization requires you to put in a bit of extra effort, but in the end, it also gives you the opportunity to reach out to your target audience easily.
As a local SEO marketer you should try to think like your targeted prospects/customers/searchers. It's helpful to put yourself in their place if you want to apply SEO to your site. Pretend you were using a search engine to find something you were selling, and consider what terms you would most likely search under. Pretend for a moment that your store carries golf accessories and nothing else. People who search for the word "golf" are probably not going to be your customers, as this is a very general term. If someone does a search for "golf courses," they are not looking for what you are selling either. Someone who enters "golf accessories," though, is a likely customer for your store, so this is the kind of keyword to be focusing on. Many small businesses with websites bypass keyword phrases that are not the most popular but that could still generate customers. They tend to target the same keywords everyone else is trying to rank for, the very top ones with the most traffic. It helps you to target the most effective keywords if you can put yourself in the customer's place. As you test various keywords and come up with more appropriate ones, you will get more traffic and you'll be able to rank well for many different keywords in your niche. Most of the local websites that you target are completely okay with you asking your customers to leave a review for you, except for the site Yelp. Because this is allowed and you can benefit from it quite a bit, why not do it? Be sure to mention it every place you can (e-mail signature lines, contact forms, invoices and more). It doesn't have to be hard, just a quick "we'd really appreciate it if you could take a moment to review our company on LocalWebsiteOfYourChoice.Dot." Even though you have no control over these reviews and it's not up to you to make them good or bad, they make your business look more credible and reliable to your upcoming customers. Even if you are trying other things as well, make sure to integrate this tip because doing so can help your business exponentially.
It is also very smart to work on getting your company listed in the Yellow Pages directory (and other directories like it). Other good directories to begin with are SuperPages.com, YellowBook.com and YelloPages.com. YellowPages.com, for example, offers businesses free listings online and they get more than one hundred million searches every month. At the same time, SuperPages.com is well known for sending their listed businesses to the major sites like About.com and MSN. A simple listing with them is free as well. In summary, local search engine optimization requires you to put in a bit of extra effort, but in the end, it also gives you the opportunity to reach out to your target audience easily.
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