How To Effectively SEO Your Website To Be Local Search-Friendly

Whether You Own a Traditional Storefront Business or Work From Home … Make Sure Your Website is “Localized”

The SEO experts predicted there was going to be a big explosion in local online advertising in 2007. Possibly as much as a 30%+ growth rate. And it does seem that prediction came true. I don’t think we’ll see any slow-down in this trend.

Let’s face it … more and more people are buying computers, so of course these folks (consumers) are going online to find whatever product or service they need. In many instances, these people do want to find a physical establishment to drive to and visit. So, if you maintain a traditional brick and mortar storefront, you NEED to get an online presence in order to try and capture those potential customers who are looking for what you sell or offer in services. I will wager you’d welcome more business (which hopefully equates into more income!).

For those of us who work at home, myself included … we, too, need to take advantage of letting those internet searchers know about our geographic location. I’ve had some very nice clients based on the fact they wanted to deal with an SEO consultant who also lived nearby their city, or in a couple of other cases, who at least lived in their state. Even though all our contact was over the phone or internet, these clients were reassured in some way that I was “within their radar”.

So then, what does this trend in localized online advertising mean to you, me and our websites? It means that Google, Yahoo and MSN have become very aware of this trend and they’ve made darn sure their little spiders know what to look for as they crawl around. These spider-bots are looking for information pertaining to the specifics of our business address.

So, here are some of my professional search engine optimization recommendations on how to make your website and web pages more local search-friendly:

• 1. Have your physical location on every page of your website. Believe it or not, too many small businesses do NOT do this! If you work from home and don’t want to list your home address in order to protect your privacy, then you could get a mailbox at your local post office or at a “rent-a-mailbox” store. You can provide this information either in the footer at the bottom of each web page, or in the sidebar or within a widget on your blog.
• 2. Your local phone number needs to be on every page of your website. I’m not talking about an 800 number. I mean an actual local phone number with your area code. Those search engine spiders want to “see” a local number because it’s one more way the engines connect you to your location. (And by the way, 800 numbers are wonderful for your customers, just not great for SEO purposes.)
• 3. Place your physical address at the top of your “Contact Us” page. Yes, give yourself a little SEO boost by placing your street address, city, state, ZIP code, and local phone number right at the top of the page where the spiders will get to it quickly.
• 4. If you have a real brick and mortar establishment: create a page on your website titled “Directions” or “Location” or “Visit Us” (or similar). Make sure to clearly define where your business is located and how your customers can get to you. Be very descriptive and offer lots of location descriptions. This helps your customers and once again, gives those search engine spiders valuable information. It’s OK to use a Google Maps or MapQuest image. Just don’t let a map image be the only thing on this web page.
• 5.Mention the name of a shopping mall, or industrial park, or other significant place (street, avenue, etc.) that will help people find you. Mention you are “nearby historic Washington Square” or other details like these to make this page a nice meaty one for the spiders.
• 6.Driving directions from all directions should also be included. Use lots of descriptions as I’ve just explained.
• 7. Link to Google Maps and Yahoo Maps on your “Location” page. You can get a free-to-use link from both of these search engines. Many experts feel that it is beneficial to utilize these links on one’s website because they both include the latitude and longitude of the location in the URL, and that can help the spiders learn more about where you are.
• 8. Wherever appropriate, include your location in your page Titles. Titles carry a lot of search engine ranking importance … so take advantage of this. To learn about Title tags, please read: Why the Title Tag is So Very Important.
• 9. Make sure to list all the cities and towns your business covers. If your business is located in Smalltown, but you also serve many other outlying locations, then by all means do list those on your Home page, About Us page, or your Contact page.
• 10. List your street, city, state and zip code in the “keyword” meta tags for all your web pages. Though with Google it is true that the keyword meta tag is “good for nothing” nowadays, I am of the belief that you needn’t ignore it. There are still some minor search engine spiders that look at it.
• 11. Finally, do take advantage of internal linking opportunities with effectively worded anchor text. When linking to your “Location” page, don’t say “Click Here for Directions”. Be specific! State: “Click here for directions to our Name-of-your-town, State-name location”.

Right at this moment, someone could very well be searching for your products or services … is your website properly SEO’d for high ranking local search results?