Nine Local Search Visibility Tips

Local search visibility is an often overlooked area within a small business website marketing program.

If you clean carpets in Arlington Heights, Illinois, you'll want to ensure your on the first page of search listings when someone types in "carpet cleaner, Arlington Heights, Illinois."

By the way, Cloud Nine Systems of Arlington Heights can safely ignore this article as they come up in the #1 spot in Google (at the time of this writing).

For all you other companies out there, please follow these Local Search Tips.

Local Search Visibility Tip #1: The Google Local Business Center

Considering that Google is the premiere search engine these days, the best place to start your local search strategy is with the Google Local Business Center. Creating a local Google listing will allow you to:

Reach local customers through Google Maps
Monitor how often people viewed your local listing through the Google Dashboard
Update and add to your local listing at any time
Create printable coupons to drive local customers to your store

I highly recommend you spend some time here in order to maximize your profile.

Local Search Visibility Tip #2: Local Contact Info

In the footer for each of your web pages, I recommend you list your complete business contact info including your name, business name, address and local phone number.

Listing an 800 number is fine, but be sure to also list your local number as the area code will help improve your local search.

Local Search Visibility Tip #3: Title Tag

The search engines pay particular importance to the Title Meta Tag of your pages. By including the city and state in your title tag, you'll increase your local search results.

Include your city and state in the title tags of your homepage as well as a few other high profile pages. You certainly don't need to include it on all your pages.

Local Search Visibility Tip #4: Description Tag

Your description META tag is another place to include your city and state. This will help increase your local search results. Again, you do not need to include local info in every one of your page description tags. Do it for your homepage as well as a few other high-profile pages.

Local Search Visibility Tip #5: Submit to Local Directories

Did you know there are a good number of local search directories out there?

Don't get left out, click the link below to maximize your exposure through local directories. Yes, there are quite a few of them. Take your time and apply to all that make sense for your business.

Local Search Directories

Local Search Visibility Tip #6: Join Your Local BBB

In addition to providing trust and credibility for your site visitors, you also get an incoming link from your local Better Business Bureau online directory.

Click the icon below to find your local BBB chapter.

Local Search Visibility Tip #7: Build Quality Links

Ultimately, your number one long-term goal with your website is to build a large number of high-quality inbound links.

When other high-quality sites provide a link to a page within your site, the search engines see this as a vote of confidence.

The secret of this strategy is to consistently and continually work to build links. Building them quickly is not as important as building them consistently, week in and week out, year in and year out.

The more high-quality incoming links to your site, the more "Authority" your site has in the eyes of the search engines and the better you will rank - both locally and globally.

If you'd like some tips on starting a link building program, check out the article below.

Introductory Article on Building Links

Local Search Visibility Tip #8: Geo-Relevant Anchor Text

Anchor Text is simply the text used within a link.

Search engines pay particular attention to the anchor text as it helps them decide what a page is all about.

When you have other sites link to yours, be sure to give the site owner the geo-relevant anchor text you would like them to use.

For example, if you are a bakery in Red Bud, Illinois - you could have another site link to yours using the following anchor text.

The tastiest local bakery in town

While there is certainly nothing wrong with the above anchor text, the below example is better as it uses geo-relevant anchor text that will be noticed by the search engines.

The tastiest local bakery in Red Bud, Illinois

Local Search Visibility Tip #9: Local Customer Reviews

One easy way to add to your local search authority is to list local customer reviews and testimonials.

When you do this, be sure to include the city and state at the end of each testimonial. The search engines pick up on this local information and it will help your local rankings.

By utilizing these nine local search tactics, you'll find your website can be your number one source for local leads. But don't limit yourself locally. Many businesses are able to grow a small local website into a national sales channel.

Even if you have a brick and mortar business, find ways to sell and ship product via your website. If that is not possible, consider selling other complementary products from other companies for a commission.

I've seen many small business websites start local and grow global. There's no reason why yours can't be one of them!