Local SEO Tips for Your Business
If you want to get more targeted traffic from people in your area, local SEO is the best way to do it. If you apply some of the local SEO techniques we’ll be discussing, you’ll be able to get your site ranked more highly. One of the simplest SEO tips that you can take home is creating optimized local classified listings. This is a very easy way to leverage the local searches in your area because the major search engines really like those kinds of sites and using them a lot is a great way to send local traffic to the website of your business. Starting off, you should aim at Craigslist, which happens to be the most popular classified site out there. To help your business, you should make a habit of posting optimized SEO ads on Craigslist regularly. Your ads need to be targeted specifically for your market. Make sure that the ad is not loud and that it is as simple as possible.
Focus first on the title of your ads because this is what will get people to check you out. Your title should include your keyword phrase as well as your city and state. Be as careful with your Craigslist ad as you are with your landing page because, typically, the ad will outrank the actual site in the search engine rankings. A smart strategy for your Craigslist ad is to use it as a means for sending very targeted traffic to your website, which should be your main goal. You can also use USFreeAds; it doesn’t have the same rate of success as Craigslist but it can still garner you a good response because it is a highly ranked classified ads site. What you need to do is send traffic specifically to your best offer through these classifieds sites (though piggy backing off of those sites traffic is also an option).
When you’re targeting local sites listing services such as Yahoo! Local, Bing Local and Google Places, you should first start off by logging into them and claiming your profile. When you get into these sites, you’ll notice that there is an option to claim your profile by going through a few verification steps that includes a simple phone call to know if your address is yours and verify it. Doing this won’t take you long and it boosts your overall efforts at promoting your business. Besides that, upload pictures to these local site listings because they make you appear genuine in the eyes of the users by providing them pictures of your business. So to make sure this process goes smooth and people see good, worthy pictures, upload a few from your site. Use the best pictures you can to show your business in a good light, but they don’t have to be taken by a professional photographer.
When you want to rank well locally, you should focus on getting links from well regarded local websites. If you want to succeed as a local business, it’s essential to make inroads in your own town or city. One of your most most helpful resources as a local business with a website are quality links back to your site from respected groups, businesses and organizations in your own area. The search engines favor sites with a good number of quality backlinks, and getting links from prestigious local sites is the way to get your site highly ranked for location based keywords. It gives a green signal to the search engines and makes your journey even easier. Besides that, once you start getting these links, you’ll realize that it’s better going for quality rather than quantity. While getting links from local bloggers won’t do you that much good, one or two from high status groups in your area can do a lot.
Your main goal, then, should be going after the best quality links you can find.
All in all, if you use the SEO methods you just learned about, you’ll see success in no time.