Connor BrookeThis article gives advice to local businesses in how they can optimise their online presence and improve their search rankings.
Modern Times
If people are looking for a waste collection service, they no longer look in the Yellow Pages under the relevant section and call the one with the biggest, flashiest advert. In fact, given the cost of those adverts there are probably not that many people doing it anymore.
If you still are, then you are missing a trick.
Modern search trends mean that people are, more often than not, searching for a service and the place. Therefore, your site might be well optimised for “professional occupational therapist,” but if you have missed the bit from the end that says “in Plymouth,” then you will have limited success.
Follow these top tips for making sure your local marketing is done correctly.
Avoid PPC
Because local businesses generally have nothing bigger than a five or six page website, the quantity of keywords you can target is obviously limited. We would recommend optimising your site for your local area. People want to find something on their doorstep, so if you are based in Eccles, say that. To you “Manchester” will probably sound better, but how many more businesses are you competing with if you spread to that wide an area?
PPC ads will tend to focus on larger areas, which is why they are best avoided if looking for true localised optimisation.
The Bigger Picture
While we are focussing on your local area predominantly, you also need to look at what search terms people are using to look for you. Do this on a national basis, so you have the biggest sample of people and know accurately what the trends are for your industry. A simple tool such as Google Analytics will help you achieve this easily enough.
Spamming
Look at this list:
- Nail technician in Newcastle
- Newcastle nail technician
- Nail technician Tyneside
- Nail technician NE1, NE2
How often do we see sites stuffed with similar paraphrases or targeting several postcodes?
Just don’t do it, as it will be clear you have just set your site up for search engines, and browsers will leave your site very quickly, if they bother to visit at all.
Local Directories
Ensure that you are signed up, and your profile is kept up to date, on local search directories. Google Places is obviously the big one, however you will generate a lot of traffic from the likes of Bing and Yahoo too, so do not forget to complete as many local directories as possible, even including social media pages within this.
Bough SEO is a leading UK seo agency based in London. They offer a custom-made SEO solution for clients in a variety of industries.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Connor Brooke.
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Making the local business directory listings and following the webmaster guidelines then the website will get more traffic with the optimized keywords with out stuffing as shown in the blog.