If You Don’t Optimise for Local Now, You’ll Hate Yourself Later
29th January 2008 by Kerry Dye
Local searchers
might not be the same volume of website traffic as ranking for big terms, but
the users searching locally are using more specific search terms and tend to
convert better as a result.
As Matt mentioned the other day, there is a
lot of experimentation going on in the search engines for increasing relevance
for local searchers. And local online advertising is predicted to grow at 13% per year which means that increasingly, users are turning to local options.
With the increasing use of mobile search
(which uses GPS or antenna location) being visible is becoming ever more
important, and it is essential that the search engines know where you are and
where your customers are.
Here are some ways that you can attract
this local traffic for an organic SEO campaign:
- Make sure your physical address is on your website. If you have
a local premises that you receive customers/clients at, you should use it
prominently, perhaps in the footer of pages. Note that it is also now a
legal requirement for your website to carry your registered address. - Use a Google Map to indicate your location, using the embedded
iframe technique that Google launched last year.
This is also a great feature for your customers trying to visit you! - Take advantage of the long tail by including an "areas covered"
paragraph or page, where you list out the other local areas that are
implied by where you are. This could be the local London Borough names, or
sub-areas of youRelated Posts
- Factors Affecting Local Search Rankings
- Helping Out Local Search Engines
- Local SEO – Firefox Add GeoLocation Tool
- Local Search Growing Faster than Traditional Search
- SEO Agency & Web Design – Where have the Google local listings gone?
- Local SEO Directories You Should Consider
- Google experimenting with Local Search Ads
- How to Submit your business to Google Local!