Getting Your Website Prepared For Local Search

Local Search Results allow local business to achieve top placement in search engine result for services and business that cover a local geographic area. Searches done that would include local services or businesses show local results first making it possible for small business to show up in the search results before other results.

Google Places, Yelp, Merchant Circle and other local geared sites are necessary in the local search equation and will be covered in detail in another section. In this section I want to cover some of the website changes that are needed for local search optimization.

Local keyword research should be done prior to modifying your site for local search. Once you know what to target focus on the following areas to boost your Local Search results

Title Tags

One of the most important areas for Keyword, use something like name city service as in C-Net Systems Detroit IT Services or C-Net Systems Troy Computer Repair

Header Tags

Use local terms in headers, SEO importance lowers from H1 to H3…

Address

Place you address and phone number on each page. Use the header, sidebar or footer to accomplish this easily. If you are using WordPress you can also use our WordPress Local Search Footer Plugin to add your address to the footer of each page. Be sure to use the exact format of your address that is found in other places on the internet like Google Places or Yelp, for example, Rd. is not the same as Road.

Page names

Where possible use your local search terms in the actual page name for example rather than using www.example.com/services you could use www.example.com/City_Services.

Contact Us Page

Your Contact Us page or whatever you call it on your site should use the hCard format for you address information and include a Google map of your location as well as contain business hours and payment options when possible to further validate your local position. Having this information match what is found on Google Places and other local search sites is important. If you are using WordPress for your site you can also use our WordPress Local Search hCard and Google Maps Plugins to help keep this information together and in the correct format as well as help with keeping the Google Map intact which can be a problem with the WordPress editor.

Content

Add local search terms where possible to you content

Meta Tags

Although not as important, you can add the following meta tag information to your pages, be sure to use the your local business location.

meta name=”zipcode” content=”64105,64113,64112,64110,64106,66207,66208,66210

meta name=”city” content=”Shelby Township”

meta name=”state” content=”Shelby Township, MI”

Add the following by using http://geo-tag.de/generator/en.html

meta name=”geo.region” content=”US-MI”

meta name=”geo.placename” content=”Shelby Township”

meta name=”geo.position” content=”42.684045;-83.035554″

meta name=”ICBM” content=”42.684045, -83.035554″

Local Directories

Claim and make any change necessary to your companies profile on Google Places, Merchant Circle, Yelp and other sites that are used to find local business and services. These types of sites are very important in validating your local internet presence and making sure the information across all these types of site is important.

Incoming Links

Incoming links to you site are important and used buy search engines to verify and discern what you site is about and with local search, where it is located.

Best Practices For Getting Your Local Business Ranked Online

Local Search levels the search engine playing field by showing local businesses in the search results before national businesses. This offers a great opportunity for local businesses to be found online and is a must for any local business looking to attract new business or improve their exposure.
Google wants to show the most relevant results possible and is refining their process all the time. As of now there is only room for seven local search results and the trick is to make sure you are doing the correct things to get your business shown in this limited space. When done effectively, you may even be shown several times on the first page improving your exposure online even further. There are many factors that work towards and against the local search results which are shown below.

Local Search Must Do List

• Have Physical Address In The City Being Searched
• Verified, Corrected and Optimized Place Page
• Quality Citations / Reviews
• Consistent Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP) On All Primary and Secondary Sites
• NAP hCard Optimized Website Pages and Page Titles
• Proper Business Categories Across Reference Sites
• Increase Page Rank and Inbound Links

Factors That Hurt Local Search

• Inconsistent Name, Address and Phone (NAP) Information
• Tracking Phone Numbers Or Having Only 800 Numbers
• Incorrect OR Uncrawlable Address Format
• Incorrect or Inconsistent Business Categories
• Poor Citations / Reviews
• Spammy Type Information On Place Page Or In Categories

Showing up in the local search results can have a positive impact on a business’s exposure and when done according to the rules is fairly easy to do. Trying to trick or spam the system may give you short term success but may also get you banned and is definitely not recommended.

Use Keywords Wisely

Once you have created your list of keywords you can begin to create your content. As you create content I recommend you continue to do keyword research as your content will lead you to new keywords that can then bring even more viewers to your site.

Typically a site will have an overall theme and depending on the size of that may have underlying themes. If you think of your site like a hierarchy you should also think of your site as having its top level or homepage having the broadest keywords on an as you break into sections those keywords are then refine and broken into subcategories or themes.

When targeting keywords, try to target no more than one or two primary and two or three secondary keywords or key phrases per page. Targeting to many keywords on one page will dilute their value and you’ll find you’ll have better results when you target one keyword theme and fewer keywords on one page.

If possible try to lay out your site design and have an overall plan for what keywords are to be used in what sections. If you lay out your keywords that you want to use in this fashion you will have a framework for content on those pages. When writing your content for the individual pages, be sure to use variations of those keywords and key phrases on the page.

A common practice on the Internet to boost traffic is to find keywords that need to be targeted and create blog posts centered around those new keywords to bring traffic into the site. Many good Internet marketers use this tactic alone to drive traffic to their site.

Remember to always have quality content, having keyword rich content that is low quality or is not of any value to the reader will not help you in the long run. Low quality content may get you viewers initially but will not get you repeat viewers and will not help your site. High-value content when used in conjunction with good keyword research is the best way to drive Internet traffic to your site and keep visitors on your site.

Choosing The Best Keywords

Keyword research is a training product in itself and the theory behind choosing the best keywords and how to find them is much debated but the results are not. If you are not using the correct keywords or using keywords incorrectly it can have devastating results on your success.

Keyword research is the single most important thing you can do to better your site. Google has shown time and time again that content is what it is looking for and then giving relevance search results is its most important goal. It makes sense; Google wants to give its visitors the best possible search results it can. Better search results mean more money for Google and its advertisers, poor search results lowers their bottom line.

The only way Google knows what your site is about is through what I can see on your site and what it sees is the text you use and what you tell it about through your title and tags. Because Google is putting so much importance on relevant content I feel that what is on your site is the most important item to focus on before any other methods are used such as incoming links and other forms of traffic boosting.

Take the time to find your relevant keywords before you start to develop content. It’s much easier to design your content around keywords that are most relevant rather than rewriting existing content for new keywords.  Unfortunately I think that people have glazed over the buzzword “keywords” because they have heard it mentioned so often or think that they know better than the Internet what keywords are being used for their industry. In some cases you may know the best keywords to use for your industry but often you’ll find that those keywords need you to much better keywords and will give you much better results.

There are many keyword tools available including the Google Keyword Tool and in upcoming videos we will be showing some simple ways to use free utilities to create a relevant list of keywords. Without using some sort of keyword tool you’ll never be able to choose the best keywords and will greatly limit your site’s ability to be found through Internet searches.

Gauging Your Successes (Or Failures)

So you have a domain name and some hosting and you’re ready to put up your first site. The very first step you should take on any new site is installing some sort of analytics program so you can track your Internet traffic.

We use Google analytics for the vast majority of our sites that are client sites. It’s free and offers many tracking reports to help you gauge how visitors find and use your site. Adding Google analytics to your site is easy especially if you’re using a content management system like WordPress which we also recommend especially for new sites or inexperience web developers.

Without setting up some sort of analytics program you will not be able to gauge your success on the Internet and will not be able to properly or correctly modify your site to its fullest potential through SEO.

Choosing The Best Domain Name

Choosing the best domain name can sometimes be hard to do given the vast number of registered domain names already taken. Choosing the right domain name is something that can have a big effect on your site and time should be taken to find one that fits and makes sense.

If the site is for a new company or new products try to pick a domain name that correctly represents the company or products in a positive manner and if possible (and if you’ve done your keyword research properly) try to use one that contains your primary keyword. For branding purposes if it’s for a company or product and you can choose a domain that is the same as the company or products that would be my first choice.

Variations on the company name or product name are also acceptable although trying to steer away from dashes or hyphens because they are often misused or misinterpreted when giving a domain name verbally.

Always try to register the .com version of your domain name. Use .net or other designations as a last resort as invariably you will find that people even if you tell them .net will either try the .com extension instead or append the .com to the end of the web address you give them.

Although it’s not necessary to have the .com if you’d like to also get the .net, .biz and other variations of your domain name you can do so. Personally I feel that if you have the .com version and unless this is going to be a huge corporate site or business it’s not necessary to register the other versions unless you feel they will be taken just to directly compete against the .com site.

We typically purchase domains through GoDaddy.com but I often use the domain name availability checking on the networksolutions.com site. Both of these sites are great for domain names but I do not actually recommend hosting on these sites as we have had problems with their hosting in the past. For hosting we typically use hostgator.com.

Be sure to choose a reputable hosting company. Cheaper is not always better as we have had many problems with cheaper hosting companies that we’ve had to move our clients away from because of slow performance and susceptibility to hacking. Although you should not have to contact your hosting provider all that often if you do have a problem it’s good to know that the hosting company will be there to answer your phone calls or support problems quickly and with most value based hosting companies that simply not the case.