Monday, 26 March 2012

Get Results Through Local Search Marketing

By Gnifrus Urquart


Small businesses are realizing the value of appealing to local consumers, which is why they are integrating local search marketing in their websites. Telephone books and print advertising are quickly becoming marketing methods of the past because they are not fast enough. Even word of mouth referrals are not yielding results as quickly.

This is unfortunate for traditional marketing because their effectiveness has been reduced, but has resulted in a higher demand for web design. But one major issue is that small businesses tend to not optimize their websites to work on a local level or even a nationwide one.

What is meant by searching local is when someone is looking for a specific business in a specific area. They will type in the business type and the name of the city where they are seeking the service from. From there, a list of results comes up. Of course, most searchers are not going to look beyond the first two to three pages of results. That is where businesses strive to be.

Without striving to be amongst the top results, many potential customers may not be aware that the website exists and this could result in a lot of lost revenue. The Internet has become the top source for prospects. As it stands, almost 50 percent of Internet users look for merchants in a specific area. This means that use of the telephone book or print advertising is down significantly. As a matter of fact, over half of users prefer search engines over their telephone books.

As for how to rank well in search engine results, business owners have to cover every service that they offer and use them as keywords. However, the keywords do not mean anything in local searches without a geographical identifier. For example, a lawyer in New York may use the keywords New York lawyer. Nevertheless, this may not be specific enough, so they may use New York bankruptcy lawyer.

It is good to use keywords that can loosely define the business, but also heavily use those that define it well. There may be a lot of competitors in a particular niche, so using geographical locations such as the city, state, and the zip code can help a great deal. These keywords can then be used in different strategies.

Pay per click advertising is one way to use the keywords in ads, as well as blogging and social media. But none of this will work without valuable information being presented on the website. If the website offers nothing, the consumer is going to go back and click on another website. A site that offers great information will be a successful one.

In the end, the website that focuses on local search marketing is the website that is going to succeed. This, in turn, creates a better return for the business than the traditional forms of advertising. There is a lot of money to be made and this is a way to do that.




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