Local Search-Do’s and Don’ts

Having discussed the importance of local search and the basics/strategy of approaching it from an SEO point of view, there are a couple other important things we try to keep in mind when listing our clients. However, like most aspects of internet marketing, local search evolves alongside SEO strategies, so it’s important to keep in mind that SEO is a dynamic, continual process–not a “set it and forget it” machine.

Backlinks:
We’ve pointed out the importance of backlinks before: search engines rank a website on a variety of factors, one of which is the validity of their links. The more verified sites you link to, the better your rankings. Upping your ranking helps ensure that a site will appear on the first page of results, and that’s every bit as important with local search as with global search.

One way to rack up valuable backlinks is to check out the sites that currently appear on that first page. What sites do they link to? If you can find a few common denominators between them, there’s a good chance that the search engine considers such sites valuable references.

Page Titles:
Page titles are an often overlooked aspect of web design. When creating a page, it’s important to designate title tags — those determine the words that are displayed at the top of a web browser when a web page is visited. They are often the first thing a search engine categorizes, so it’s important to list keywords there. However, just listing a nonsensical string of words wastes valuable messaging space. It’s important to work keywords into a description that includes the business name, services, location, or other topics unique to your specific offers, such as:

“Marketplace Mail, Website Design, Search Engine Optimization Raleigh, NC”

Address:
You may have noticed that many business websites have a standard footer on each page, often listing their name, address and basic contact information.  There’s a very good reason for this: the more often a site displays a physical address, the more “geographically relevant” it’s considered. It’s important to incorporate this information into the website’s content seamlessly. If the business office is open to the public, it’s a good idea to include driving directions.  Embedding a map service (whether Google, Mapquest or another) is a great way of proving that you exist.

Algorithms:
No SEO provider can be 100% sure about how Google, Yahoo or Bing populate their search results.  One April Fools Day, Google introduced something called “Pigeon Rank“, and sometimes the selection of one site over another does seem as arbitrary as birds pecking at keyboards. But there’s method to this madness. The search engines don’t want to make it too easy for spammers to shoot to the top of results pages.  While it may seem frustrating to slowly climb up search engine rankings, at least you can be assured that your legitimate competition is in the same boat.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Internet marketing, Marketing Tips, Search Engine Optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.