If your business is targeting their product or service to customers in a particular area your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy should be targeted in a similar way. There are several steps that businesses can take to ensure their website is optimised for their local area. These include:
Use the location in page titles. If, for example, a business is offering personal training services and they’re targeting customers in Newcastle upon Tyne, the page title should include both of these pieces of information. If the page title was “Personal Trainer | Company Name”, they’re going to lose out a lot on SEO and most likely find that traffic from search engines is pretty low. A better format for the page title would be “Personal Trainer in Newcastle | Company Name”.
Make sure the location is mentioned in the content. Seems pretty obvious, but it’s surprising how many websites don’t do it. It’s essential for SEO that the location is mentioned in headings and frequently, without going overboard, in the copy of the page.
Get listed with Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Local. The three major search engines all have local business listings. Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Local Listings all allow you to add business details, add your location to a map and also let customers add reviews.
The top results from these local directories can often show up before the natural search listings, so it’s essential that a business is included in them.
Include the location in backlinks to the website. Backlinks are links from other websites to your website and they’re hugely important for for SEO. Getting good quality backlinks is a whole subject on it own, but once you have them it’s beneficial if the link text contains the location that your business is targeting.
For example, there is more SEO benefit in having a link to your website with the text “Web Designer in Newcastle” than the link text just containing the business name.
Get listed with local directories. There are plenty of web directories that categorise their listings by locations. Identify the best ones and get listed.
Use social media. Using social media can have huge benefits for local businesses. Facebook pages or Twitter accounts can be used to reach out to potential customers, give you the opportunity to interact with customers and enable you to promote special offers.
The most important thing to remember with social media is that if you’re constantly giving it the hard sell, you’re likely to put customers off. Good social media strategies are those that invest time in building a following, developing confidence in a brand and providing interaction with customers.
4 Comments
Nice post.
I would also add that reviews from sites like Qype, Thomson Local & Google Places are important for local companies as they will all help with your company’s image but also help your Google Places listing to show above your competitors.
Other things such as glling out as much information as you can in your business profiles & removing incorrect/old i formation (like an old address) helps with this too.
Good point on reviews.
Something else that I didn’t mention in the post is Free Index which I’ve noticed sends a decent amount of traffic to this site. Listings on Free Index also seen to do pretty well in Google’s rankings too.
Qype, Thomson Local and I think also Free Index are some of the authority websites that Google Places UK uses to pick up reviews and citations from.
I also find I get some traffic from freeindex.co.uk as well as hotfrog.co.uk and a couple of others.
It is very important to have your details correct on these citation sites, E.G. If your company address is different on the above sites, this can result in your Google Places result ranking below others.
It is also worth mentioning that submitting your business details to these sites is beneficial but it also can result in your company telephone number, and in some cases, your email address being added to contact/SPAM lists and you can end up with a lot of cold calls and SPAM emails.
I hear you on the cold calling – most of the directories that offer free and paid services are pretty relentless with their cold calling after you sign up for a free listing.
Something that I’ve noticed with Google Places that can penalise some businesses is that the proximity of the business address to the centre of a location can quite significantly affect a listing.
For example, a listing with an address right in the centre of Newcastle would have an advantage over a listing with an address on the outskirts – even if both were targeting customers from the same area.