Local SEO is how business owners can get more search engine traffic from people searching in their area. The following ideas on local SEO will show you how to get a higher ranking for your site.
The key to local SEO is to put yourself in the place of your prospective customers when they do searches. You have to understand how they think to be able to optimize your site for the search engines. 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. Search engine users who type in "golf" are doing an extremely broad search and are mostly not going to be looking for what you have. If someone does a search for "golf courses," they are not looking for what you are selling either. However, if they put in "golf accessories," that's where you want to target such keywords. There are many good keyword that can create sales but are not quite as well known, and these are usually ignored by business owners looking for local traffic. They focus instead on the keywords with the most searches and traffic but are very hard to rank for. The more you can think like a prospect, the better you can plan your SEO campaigns. 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.
You need to have multiple landing pages for different locations. When you're going for local sites, remember that they don't like a business to have more than one targeted listing, but it's completely fine if the business has two different locations. What you have to do, though, is make sure that you create a different landing page for every location, and each one should clearly refer to that one in particular. You don't want to have multiple local listings pointing at the same landing page or the site's main page, as this would make things unclear. You don't want to do anything that will confuse search engine users, so your landing pages should match up perfectly with each location. This is one of those seemingly small points that can make a real difference.
You should also look for quality backlinks from high status websites in your area that will help you with the search engines. Seek out well known sites such as the chamber of commerce or Better Business Bureau, that carry a lot of weight in your area. If you do a local search for terms such as "business directories" you will find more suggestions you can use. This process will supply you with a number of websites that it would be very useful to get a listing from. This is another simple task that you can get a lot of benefit from. In conclusion: local search engine optimization requires more work from you but it pays off later on when you are better able to reach your target market.
The key to local SEO is to put yourself in the place of your prospective customers when they do searches. You have to understand how they think to be able to optimize your site for the search engines. 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. Search engine users who type in "golf" are doing an extremely broad search and are mostly not going to be looking for what you have. If someone does a search for "golf courses," they are not looking for what you are selling either. However, if they put in "golf accessories," that's where you want to target such keywords. There are many good keyword that can create sales but are not quite as well known, and these are usually ignored by business owners looking for local traffic. They focus instead on the keywords with the most searches and traffic but are very hard to rank for. The more you can think like a prospect, the better you can plan your SEO campaigns. 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.
You need to have multiple landing pages for different locations. When you're going for local sites, remember that they don't like a business to have more than one targeted listing, but it's completely fine if the business has two different locations. What you have to do, though, is make sure that you create a different landing page for every location, and each one should clearly refer to that one in particular. You don't want to have multiple local listings pointing at the same landing page or the site's main page, as this would make things unclear. You don't want to do anything that will confuse search engine users, so your landing pages should match up perfectly with each location. This is one of those seemingly small points that can make a real difference.
You should also look for quality backlinks from high status websites in your area that will help you with the search engines. Seek out well known sites such as the chamber of commerce or Better Business Bureau, that carry a lot of weight in your area. If you do a local search for terms such as "business directories" you will find more suggestions you can use. This process will supply you with a number of websites that it would be very useful to get a listing from. This is another simple task that you can get a lot of benefit from. In conclusion: local search engine optimization requires more work from you but it pays off later on when you are better able to reach your target market.