One of the best ways for local businesses to promote themselves is by getting local search engine traffic. If you are looking for some good ideas for local SEO, the following techniques will help you.
First of all, make sure the content on your website is good quality. Why do you want to optimize your site with the search engines? So that you could get targeted traffic coming to your site. If you expect people to surf your site and purchase your products, you have to give them helpful material that matches their interests. When people visit your site, most of them will skip around it quickly rather than studying every single word. Make any especially important content stand out to your readers by using devices such as highlighting or a bulleted list. A picture can also be used as a way to make a certain section stand out. One practice to avoid is using your main keywords too often on your site, something the search engines frown upon. A vastly overlooked local SEO method is that of listing all of the locations your business works within in your ads. In other words, write out every city, town, county and state that your business operates so that the search engines will take notice. How will you do this well? By simply listing out all the cities in your area in bullet points won't give you great results, but when you mention them in line with your sites content, it will make a difference. The main reason for this is that you give the search engines more data so that they have an easier time of pinpointing your business activities and locations. Your local SEO efforts can really be helped by this. It is important that you understand that while these tips might seem inconsequential, when used together they actually do quite a lot for the end results of your local SEO campaigns.
Aim at diversifying your anchor text. Long tail keywords can do quite a bit to help you with your Local SEO efforts--every SEO marketer understands just how valuable long tail keywords can be with search engine marketing. Not only does this allow you to expand your opportunities to tweak your keyword anchor texts, it also gives you the opportunity for better diversification of your anchor texts. For instance, let's suppose you have a local chocolate store, don't just optimize for "New York Chocolate Store". Go ahead and create incoming links for other variations of the same keyword phrase, such as "Chocolate Store in New York", or "Chocolate Stores in Manhattan, New York." Whatever you do, don't forget that search engines place a lot of value on anchor texts which means that you need to use as many variations as you can if you want to raise your rankings.
All in all, you can go far if you use these SEO techniques, but you must do them correctly if you hope for them to work.
First of all, make sure the content on your website is good quality. Why do you want to optimize your site with the search engines? So that you could get targeted traffic coming to your site. If you expect people to surf your site and purchase your products, you have to give them helpful material that matches their interests. When people visit your site, most of them will skip around it quickly rather than studying every single word. Make any especially important content stand out to your readers by using devices such as highlighting or a bulleted list. A picture can also be used as a way to make a certain section stand out. One practice to avoid is using your main keywords too often on your site, something the search engines frown upon. A vastly overlooked local SEO method is that of listing all of the locations your business works within in your ads. In other words, write out every city, town, county and state that your business operates so that the search engines will take notice. How will you do this well? By simply listing out all the cities in your area in bullet points won't give you great results, but when you mention them in line with your sites content, it will make a difference. The main reason for this is that you give the search engines more data so that they have an easier time of pinpointing your business activities and locations. Your local SEO efforts can really be helped by this. It is important that you understand that while these tips might seem inconsequential, when used together they actually do quite a lot for the end results of your local SEO campaigns.
Aim at diversifying your anchor text. Long tail keywords can do quite a bit to help you with your Local SEO efforts--every SEO marketer understands just how valuable long tail keywords can be with search engine marketing. Not only does this allow you to expand your opportunities to tweak your keyword anchor texts, it also gives you the opportunity for better diversification of your anchor texts. For instance, let's suppose you have a local chocolate store, don't just optimize for "New York Chocolate Store". Go ahead and create incoming links for other variations of the same keyword phrase, such as "Chocolate Store in New York", or "Chocolate Stores in Manhattan, New York." Whatever you do, don't forget that search engines place a lot of value on anchor texts which means that you need to use as many variations as you can if you want to raise your rankings.
All in all, you can go far if you use these SEO techniques, but you must do them correctly if you hope for them to work.