Optimize for Local Search Traffic

Getting local search engine traffic is one of the things that small businesses aspire to. Some even don't know they can increase the amount of local visitors by improving their website. So what can a local small business do to get the long-wanted local traffic?

What is local search?

Before we list things to do on your site to improve your local search engine traffic, we need to define what we want. This will help us to actually get what we want.

Local traffic denotes visitors, who searched not only for a general keyphrase, but also used a geographical term (a country, state, a town or any other geographical location). From this, it can be easily assumed that to get local search traffic, you need to have both the general keywords and geographical locations on your site. At best, you'll want the search engines associate your site with the industry you are in and with the specific location your shop is situated at.

Local search ranking factors

Once we know that we need to identify our business site with a specific geographical location, let's see what factors play a role in helping the search engines associate you with your local area.

Naturally, those would be the

"Places to stay when visiting us" pages,

"Places to dine when visiting us" pages,

"Places to see when visiting us" pages,

"Parks and Museums and schools in the area for the kids of potential homebuyers" pages,

"Places to stay when students attend our school" type pages, etc.

Others appropriate to the organization and its objectives, offerings, and approach to its customers

(added from a

telephone/fax numbers with area codes, formatted like 'Phone: 1 234 567 89 01'

area names, given by locals (local slang location names)

Generally, try to find out how the local people call your product, the area, the shop and what all words they use. Use the words on your site and in your advertising. This is the laser-targeting approach to local product promotion, promising great reach and conversions for anyone mastering it completely.

Also, it is important to cover a wider range of keywords by which your customers may call your product or service (it works world-wide, too, of course):