Local online search volume for most offline brick and mortar business sectors keeps growing. What does this mean for your business?
Most business owners are surprised by the number of people in their local market who use the search engines to find a preferred supplier for what they want to buy.
Often the number of people using a particular keyword phrase in a local market can number in the hundreds, sometimes even thousands. Imagine what your business would look like if you were able to attract even a small portion of these prospects to your business through your website.
Instead of just entering a generic term like “widgets” in the search engine, prospects who are in an active research mode or are ready-to-buy are searching for “blue widgets AND the name of their town”, or some variation. They are actively engaged in online local search.
Prospects are pre-screening who they want to do business with online, before even contacting a business. They also want business hours, a map, and directions on how to get to your store or office.
The key to attracting these “ready-to-buy” prospects is to make sure that your website is optimized to attract local online searches.
There are multiple steps involved in local search SEO, including, getting listed on Google Maps, Yahoo Local and Bing Local. Submitting your business profile and contact information to the online directories is another step that will help in getting your site ranked. Knowing which keyword phrases people are using in their search queries is key to optimizing your web pages. There are several keyword tools that will help you do so including www.wordtracker.com and Google’s keyword tool.
The easiest way to see how your website measures up to your competition as well as how to improve your online local search engine ranking is to request a FREE consultation.
