Can People Find Your Business? Basic Tips For Local Search

The most important aspect of an online presence for small businesses is the exposure to potential customers - just call it "Getting Found". You may or may not have a beautiful website you are proud of, but if no-one sees it, then you aren't getting the exposure your business needs. It is now imperative that you take the basic steps to optimize your website so that it can be found in local search. But local search, and local business listings sites also offer ways that people can either find your website or find your business without necessarily going to your website. This may seem like a bad thing to your web designer, but ultimately it's good for your business - you probably don't care how people find you, as long as they do manage to find you. If they find you before your local competitors you will have a huge advantage. Thus, as local search grows it is imperative that you take the right steps not only for your website, but also to get your small business included in local business listings so it can be found online. One Comscore study showed that in 2008 36% of searchers were looking for businesses within a 15-mile radius of their location, and in 2009 that rose to 42%. Below are some local search tips to optimize your website for local search and also some steps to get your business listed on some of the top listing sites.

Make sure Google knows where your business is:

Include your business' location in your website's title tag. This is the short description of your business that appears at the top of your web browser.
Include your location in your meta-tag description as well. This is the description that no one sees expect the search engines when they are crawling your site. If you are not sure how to edit this yourself you can get your Webmaster to do it.
The meta-tag description is often the text used for the short snippet under the link to a site in the search engine results page, so make sure that it also describes what you do as well as your location.
Add your address and contact information to the bottom of multiple pages on your site.
Make sure your contact information is in crawlable text - that is make sure the search engines can read the text. Items are generally not crawlable if they are in flash, iframes or images. If you are not sure whether its crawlable or not, a simple test should work: If can you highlight the text with your cursor and copy and paste it into Microsoft Word, then it is probably text that the search engines can read too. You will not be able to do this with text that is in an image format.
Add suburb, area and neighborhood names into your website text as naturally as possible.
Research and include high-ranking local keywords in the text of your website. You can research keywords using a tool like the google keyword suggestion tool.

Getting your site listed in the main local search engines, local business listings, directories and GPS navigations systems is another strategy you should employ to be found locally. It is important that you do not limit your entry to just one site because the sites reference each other in order to validate your information, and validated information will rank you higher in a local search. Thus being included in as many local business listings as possible will not only help you get found in those directories, but also help you rank higher in local search engines like Google places & Yahoo local. Here are some of the main places that you should make sure you include a listing:

Google local (Google Places)

Yahoo! local

Bing

Yellowpages

Superpages

Local.com

Info USA

You can go in and add your company to these sites on your own, or you can hire someone to do it for you - there are many businesses offering site submission services.



If you decide to do it on your own, here are a few things to keep in mind:

Include your product/service keywords in the title and description in your listing.
Make sure you correctly categorize your company - users navigate listing sites as they would the Yellow Pages, you need to be listed in the place they are looking.
List a phone number that has a local area code. Never use a cell phone from out of the area or an 800 number on a business listing. A local phone number shows that your business is relevant to local searches .

Consistency is key: Use the same name and phone number for all your listings - it will help the search engines confirm they all refer to the same business

Here are a few other things that you can do to optimize for local search and get found online:

Create a blog. Talk about the company, the industry, community events, and where appropriate , use geographically specific keywords.
Create links back to your site either through link exchanges with other local companies or getting listed in places like your local chamber of commerce.
Signup for and monitor the primary review sites. These sites include Yelp, Citysearch and Angie's List. { Not only do these help you get found, but they can also help demonstrate your high level of customer service if you interact with customers ans respond to reviews | If get a bad review you can reach out and try to resolve the issue, with that customer.

Best of luck getting your business found!

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