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It is estimated that 20% of all searches have local intent, especially for restaurants, insurance, legal, retail, hotels and other types of companies within the service industry. A recent comScore study revealed that 61% of local searches result in purchases. These overwhelming statistics show that millions of potential customers are searching the internet, then buying online, calling for more information or making purchases directly from local stores – those are numbers you can’t afford to ignore.

Reaching more customers in your area doesn’t always mean printing out reams of flyers and hitting the pavement. Now more than ever, even potential buyers in your neighborhood are hitting the search engines first, looking for local bargains and researching information where your company is the perfect fit. Google Local Search can help you secure a spot in the top of the search engine for searches done by residents in your town, city, state or region. Here’s how.

Local search isn’t just reserved for small mom and pop stores anymore. Even large mainstream companies are narrowing their focus to attract more customers to their individual bricks-and-mortar stores. For example, a significant revenue stream for Boston Market is its catering service. If you’re looking for catering in New Jersey for your big event, would you trust just any caterer or would you go for a well-known brand like Boston Market that serves consistently good food? Notice how Google Local Search has helped Boston Market secure 7 of the 10 top spots for catering in New Jersey.

Companies who dominate local search results acquire greater name recognition and brand loyalty among local searchers. Visitors rationalize that placement at or near the top of a broad search like catering New Jersey equates to reliable and trustworthy sales and service.

As you’ll see, search results and a map come up well ahead of any other organic results when you search Google. Whether you already have a local listing or not, there are several other things you can do to keep your position strong in both Google Local Search and elsewhere on the web:

• Reach Out to Local Directories – Start getting local placement by listing your website through Google’s Local Business Center. The next step is to add your site to Yelp, online Yellow Pages and other local directories for two reasons. First, you will obviously garner visitors through direct traffic from these websites. Second, these sites are considered to be authorities by Google, meaning that placement will actually give your local Google results a bump in rank for the targeted search term (e.g., catering in New Jersey). Note that this placement does not necessarily translate to higher rankings in the standard organic search results, just local. The real benefit comes from Google’s placement of local results above all other results on the page. Keep in mind that some of these directories are free and some are not. You should start with free placements and measure results to determine if it makes sense to list your business on some of the paid directories to further enhance results. You may find that manual submissions take a great deal of your time that can be spent more effectively. If that is the case, then consider ECommerce Partners for periodic syndication to numerous local directories.
• List All Store Locations – Be sure to list all of your storefronts if you have multiple locations. Each physical location is entitled to its own listing, so take advantage.
• Get Great Local User Reviews in these Directories – Reviews of local businesses often come up near their local results in the search engines. The more reviews you have, the more you solidify your high ranking in local results and help ensure your site comes up when a user from that area is searching for your product or service.
• Optimize Your Website For Organic Listings – It stands to reason that having your site appear in the local results as well as the natural listings will yield greater click-thrus and brand recognition. So, use proven SEO techniques in conjunction with the local placement methodology discussed in this article to reach more customers
• Matching Domain Registration – Match your public domain name registration address with the one you’re optimizing for. This is just common sense for a local business.
• Include a VCard – Although it is not required, a vCard helps separate your physical address and contact information from the rest of a web page. The universal tags are a recognized standard that search engines understand. Simply put, this microformat is embedded in a page to allow a search robot to decipher this information quickly and efficiently, rather than guessing which part of the page contains an address. At present, there appears to be minimal benefit to search results, however it may be used more in the future as such webpage organization becomes more widespread.

Several other local and regional directories include Yahoo Local Merchant and Ask Business Search.

Contact ECommerce Partners to capture local traffic through Google or Yahoo. Our experienced search professionals will help you grow your business using local search traffic. If you prefer, call for a consultation and price quote at
1-866-431-6669 or email dennis[at]ecommercepartners.net.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 5:41 pm and is filed under SEO/SEM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.