Use Local SEO to Target Your Traffic Effectively

By vine | September 7th, 2011

If you have a local, offline business, you want to be well ranked in the search engine so you get local traffic. If you are looking for some good ideas for local SEO, the following techniques will help you.

As a marketer using local SEO, you really have to get into the mindset of someone in your target market who is doing a search engine query. Before you can do SEO for your site, you have to get into the customer’s mind. You have to picture yourself as a prospect using a search engine to locate the kind of item you sell, and try to figure out exactly what they would type into the search field. Let’s say that you have a store that exclusively sells golf accessories. If the searcher enters something like “golf” into the site’s search box, they aren’t looking for what you’re selling since this term is too generic. Those who search for “golf balls” are not right for you either, as this isn’t the kind of item your store stocks. You are looking for customers who search for “golf accessories,” which is a match to what you have to offer. It’s common for website owners in search of local traffic to ignore potentially profitable keywords that don’t get tens of thousands of searches. They only look at the most popular keyword phrases, which get a high number of searches but also have lots of competition. It is the ability to put yourself in the shoes of the customer that allows you to come up with the best keywords. Once you perfect the art of targeting such specific keywords, you’ll not only increase sales but also get higher rankings on multiple keywords. Another local SEO strategy that generally gets ignored is that you should try and mention all the other locations that you’re serving in. This means that you should let the search engines know about all of the cities, counties and states that you serve with your products and services. How can you accomplish this? If you just make a bullet list of places your ads won’t get a lot of attention from the search engines but if you mention them within the context of your content you should do okay. The reason for this is, you’re helping the search engines get more data about your activities and in what areas you’re functioning. Your local SEO efforts can really be helped by this. The main thing that you need to remember when you are working with local SEO is that you need to use all of these tips: they might look simple but they go a long way toward giving you the results you want.

You should also look for quality backlinks from high status websites in your area that will help you with the search engines. The most beneficial sites to get links from are those that are popular and well respected, such as the local BBB (Better Business Bureau) or Chamber of Commerce in your area. If you do a local search for terms such as “business directories” you will find more suggestions you can use. Contact these groups and find out what it takes to get a listing with them. Finding these sites will only take you a few minutes, so it’s well worth the effort.

In summary, what we’ve seen above are simple local SEO tips that you can apply to your current business and get more traffic.

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