Local SEO for Your Marketing Online Campaign
If you have established a local business, you don’t build your shop or your store in the middle of the ocean where nobody could go in and buy whatever you’re selling or service you provide. It’s a big NO, NO when you make your feasibility studies. On the other hand, you plan your business to be at the center of everything and easily accessible to your customers. The same thing is true when it comes to your website. You don’t build a beautiful website and leave it as it is thinking that people would be flocking to your site. Instead, you advertise your website and let everybody knew about it.
I have mentioned previously about general SEO practices such as using keywords in your page titles and content, but there is another aspect to getting local businesses traffic from the search engines. Google displays local results before standard listings, and you have to submit your business to their local business search specifically or your company won’t appear there. If you want your business to appear in these results, you have to submit your business using this form: http://www.google.com/local/add
Directories
Another thing you will notice when you search for local businesses is that a lot of directories usually show up. For example, for my search “Olympus Voice Recorder Australia”, I see www.voicerecognition.com.au, olympusrecorder.com.au, and www.olympus.com.au. Since these sites all appear on the first page of Google Australia, you would definitely want to make sure your business was listed in local Google. Always do a search for the top keywords for your business and make sure you get your company listed in every directory that shows up in the first two or three pages of results. Submit your site to DMOZ for free and/or to Yahoo Directory for $300 bucks a year. DMOZ is free but you need patience waiting for your link to go live but just submit and forget about it, you’ll never know. Yahoo Directory is worth the investment. Pay for one year and don’t renew. Your link will still be live for a good more couple of years. I hear that they don’t remove the links so it’s worth the investment.
Social Marketing
Many companies think social marketing wouldn’t benefit them, and sometimes that’s true. But if your major demographic happens to be under 40, social marketing is potentially a fantastic tool. Facebook and Twitter are both great for keeping in touch with your customers. Set up a fan page on Facebook and get your company a Twitter account. Then start adding friends by searching for people in your local area. Most social networking sites, however, don’t give you that much link juice (or nothing at all) since they are mostly tagged with “no follow”. Facebook and Twitter, though, could make your site and/or products go viral.
Offline Marketing
Aside from marketing online, you can also promote your website offline. Your local newspaper, radio ads, magazines, bulletin boards, and other similar sources are all great places to advertise your website. Don’t forget to tell your existing customers about your website, too. Some business owners don’t understand why they should be sending existing customers to their website if the purpose of the website is to get new customers, but in the next blog post, I’ll let you know exactly why this is a VERY good idea! Marketing online could make your site or your products go viral and that’s what we’ll try to achieve for your business.
This is very good information!