subject: Do You Want To Do Local Seo? Start Here [print this page] If you are a local business owner, and have been in business for awhile, there is a pretty good chance you have bought an ad for your business in your local yellow pages in the past. Yellow Pages advertisements used to be one of the only ways to advertise to local shoppers.
As consumers begin to replace their phone books with cell phones and search engines, local businesses owners are beginning to realize the need for local SEO along with Google Places SEO and Google Maps SEO.
Search engines only show a small amount of businesses on the first page, and most users generally click on the search results at the top, so being listed high on Google for your business search term is now more critical than ever. Optimization for Google Places and Google Maps is referred to as local SEO, and it is currently the most rapidly growing service online marketing.
One of the first steps in any local SEO effort is to create and/or claim a profiles for your business on popular websites like Google Places.
By starting a profile on Google Places, business owners can share their business phone number, location, hours, types of payment accepted, services provided, and more, and with Google Places SEO this information can then show up in local search results.
Google Places isn"t the only site where business owners can enter a profile. Bing, Yahoo,Yelp, MerchantCircle, and many other companies all give business owners the chance to create a profile for local SEO and Google Maps SEO.
Creating and claiming your business profiles on a variety of websites is part of local SEO, because it improves the chances that your business will show in local search results.
When someone conducts a search on Google, Bing, or Yahoo for a local business, the search engines will use their algorithms to figure out which business should show up at the top, and which businesses will appear lower.
While the particular details of these algorithms are secret, we know that citations, or a mention of a particular business in an online directory, local business organization website, helps with local SEO.
The reason that search engines look for citations is that they can be a very good indication of a business"s authority and popularity. If a local business has been open for awhile, or is well regarded, and uses local SEO they will have a lot of mentions for that business in local business directories, on the local websites, and even in local media.
If you want your local business to show up at the top of local search results, you need to use local SEO strategies to get mentions and that means you need to create profiles on as many authority local directories as you can.
