subject: How Local Search Optimization Will Benefit Your Business [print this page] Whether you have a brick and mortar business that's been around for years, or are just starting a "web-only" venture, it is critical in today's marketplace to advertise and market your business on the internet. There are a handful of key internet marketing tools that will give you the biggest return on investment in helping to drive traffic to your website. One of the most important of these is search engine optimization, or SEO. Why is SEO so critical? Because it is the only one of these marketing tools that will help you to increase your search result ranking, and drive organic traffic to your website. Despite what others may want you to believe, the majority of your web traffic will still come to your from natural search engine results.
When you are first utilizing internet marketing tools and trying to implement SEO, you might think that there is simply a step by step checklist to go down in order to optimize your site. Unfortunately, you would be wrong. You want to find your own way to some extent, since if you just follow a check list you will be doing the same thing that others in your niche may have done, which could defeat the purpose. Instead, one of the ways to go about implementing SEO, particularly if you have a brick and mortar business, is to use local search. Local Search is a subtype of SEO and, if your business is of a type that can benefit from it, it should always be near the top of your list of internet marketing tools to use. This tool will help your business's website to show specifically in Google results where users are searching for businesses of your type in your local area or region.
So how do you go about optimizing for local search? For starters, you will want to have backlinks from local directories, including the online yellow pages, and any similar sites that serve your local area specifically. Backlinks are always important, for when using internet marketing tools such as SEO local search; you especially want your backlinks to come from sites that reference your physical address. The other item to remember is to always include your full address somewhere on your website, as the search engine bots will index this information, and direct local users to you and your business, without your having to do any additional work.
