Going Local
What is Local Search Marketing?
Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines are constantly making efforts to improve their search results by making them more relevant to what is being searched for. In Google, and many other search engines, if you are searching for a product or service that can be found or purchased locally those local results will be shown on the first page above organic results.
These local results allow local business and services to get tremendous exposure and increased traffic by getting shown on the first page of the search results. The importance and placement the search engines give the local results make it much easier for local businesses and services to compete against national companies with much larger Internet budgets and campaigns.
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Try it yourself, type in a product or service such as golf or chiropractor into Google and view the results. You will find the local search results apear above many organic results and also include “pushpins” with letters that relate to a map that appears on the sidebar. These Local Search results have dramatically changed the way local businesses and services are found on the Internet which make traditional methods of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and promotion obsolete.
Mobile Internet Changed Everything
When was the last time you left the house without your cell phone. Cell phones have changed the way we communicate and the way we do business and now with Internet enabled cell phones and other portable devices mobile Internet is changing the way we look for and find local businesses and services.
Studies show that searches done through mobile devices have a much greater rate of purchase than other types of searches. For example, when a search is done for a restaurant on a mobile device the person searching is typically looking for a local place to eat. When a search is done for a plumber typically the searcher need some plumbing work done. If your business or service is not listed you just lost that client or sale.
Mobile devices look at mobile versions of many popular sites and those mobile versions of sites give results that are more geared towards local businesses and services such as restaurants, bars, chiropractors, auto parts stores, car dealers, banks, computer repair, gyms and on and on… If your business is not among the search results you are losing business plain and simple.
Can You Be Found Online?
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Open Google.com in an Internet browser and type in the name of your product or field of service (not your business name) and look for the results that have “pushpins” next to them. If your business is on that list, great, you have a head start but more needs to be done. If you’re not on that list you’re ready losing potential business. Google is just one of the hundreds of sites used to find local businesses and services and although is may be the most popular for PC based searches it is usually not the first one used on mobile devices.
Local Search Increases Sales
Studies show that searches done with local qualifiers such as a city state or zip our searches that are more likely to lead to a sale from a local business or service. It makes sense, broader searches that are not geographically refined are usually done for research and searches with geographic qualifiers usually end up with a local purchases. All you need to do is be one the results listed when the search is done, that’s what we provide.
Why Use Our Services?
Local Search Promotion and Optimization can be a huge boost to your local business or service and makes your local business or service easily findable in thousands of Internet and mobile sites and directories. When done properly and maintained local search promotion and optimization will have a lasting positive effect. When done improperly the results can have a negative effect on your listing and may actually get you banned especially if done with black hat techniques or through automated tools. The best way to ensure positive results is by meticulous manual submission in a deliberate order along with continued maintenance and optimization. Services that promise to get you listed quickly or inexpensively can damage your local search placement and results long-term and are often difficult to reverse.
Local Search Technologies
Online Services
Search engines carry the bulk of the search traffic and because of this he large portion of our efforts go to securing and optimizing your position on the major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Directories Online Directories feed search engine’s and give credibility to your listing and further boost its placement.
Over the course of a year we will place your business in nearly 1000 online directories.
Geographically aware sites such as Yelp, Facebook Places and FourSquare are widely used on cell phones and other portable electronics such as iPads. Each of these types of sites list slightly different businesses and services we make sure you get listed correctly and in all of the correct ones for your field or industry.
Review sites such as merchant Circle and insider pages are extremely important and help feed your business or services reviews on the major local search engine results. Getting reviews both online and off-line is an important part of our service and should not be ignored.
Depending on your business or service we can do online classified ads to increase your exposure on the Internet. These online classified ads not only add credibility to your results but also add to the number of results shown in the local search engine searches increasing your odds of being found by potential clients or patrons.
Mobile Marketing
Short Message Service (SMS) or texting as most people refer to it is a quickly growing vehicle to reach your target audience. Text messages get better readership than e-mail or other types of advertising. We offer a number of SMS services to help promote your business or service.
Mobile applications are applications that can run on mobile phones and portable electronics. Building applications for these types of devices has never been easier. We can show you ways to promote your business using these types of mobile apps for a variety of devices and platforms.
We can help you optimize your existing website or create a new one which is mobile enabled to reach a broader audience. See our Other Services section To see what we can do for your website needs.
Offline Marketing
QR codes are a two-dimensional bar code that can be scanned by most mobile devices with a camera using a free app. QR codes can be put on almost anything and lead to any site or page on the Internet. QR codes can be used to link to pages that gives a products specifications or a services details or even a promotional discount. QR codes can be used to lead to pages where client information can then be gathered for client content at a later time. QR code should also be used to link to sites where reviews/citations can be left or a page on your website where comments can be left.
Reviews and citations are an important part of any local search campaign. Unfortunately you will find it difficult sometimes to get people to leave reviews online if they don’t already have an account set up to do so. Not only is illegal and immoral to put up false reviews it is difficult to put up reviews for clients who do not set up their own accounts. We have a solution which allows us to post validate the legitimacy of a review giving your business credibility and a placement boost in local search.
Features
Listings when done properly and completely and value to your business or service and give it credibility. Poor, incorrect or incomplete results if they are shown can have a negative impact and can sometimes be worse than having no results at all.
Our local search promotion and optimization typically results in local search placement and other organic results on the first page of Google. Being found multiple times on the first page of search results will also increase the odds of potential clients and patrons finding your business or service and adds to your credibility.
When was the last time you picked up the Yellow Pages? Studies show that the majority of searches are done online and that prints type directories have quickly lost their usage especially the younger the demographic is. Most searches are done through search engines, directories or location aware sites and applications such as yelp and foursquare. These are the sites that are services cater to and optimize for.
98% of businesses listed in the search results are unclaimed and not optimized and because of that fact we can guarantee to get your business or service placed for your category on the first page of the local search results. By securing your position quickly and properly you will gain an advantage over your competition who more than likely has done nothing with Local Search.
If your business or service does not come up in the local search results for your businesses or services category and location do you really think the people doing those searches will continue looking or do you think they will pick from the results shown. Realistically if your business doesn’t show up on those results the person doing the search may not even know your business exists. In the coming years as local search becomes the only way people search for businesses and services because no one uses the Yellow Pages and longer your business will continue to lose potential clients and patrons.
The search engines want to give the most relevant results may assume that what searches are done for businesses and services the most relevant results are local results. Typically 10 or fewer local search results will show up for a given area and search term. If your businesses among the local search results your potential clients and patrons will be able to find your business or services. We can guarantee placement in the local search results or you won’t pay for our services.
Internet & Marketing Terms
Search Engine Optimization. The act of altering a web site so that it does well in organic listings of search engines.
Results that come up naturally based on their indexing within a search engine.
Words that are used by search engines to determine the topic of a given web page.
QR is the abbreviation for Quick Response; QR codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards, or on just about any object about which users might need information. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader application can scan the image of the QR Code to display text, contact information, connect to a wireless network, or open a web page in the phone’s browser.
A format for publishing the contact details of people, companies, organizations, and places, in HTML, Atom, RSS, or arbitrary XML.
