If you are a business owner looking to get into online marketing and, in particular, search engine optimisation, don’t forget to think local.
More and more people are searching for local companies through the search engines so it’s never been more important to ensure you have a strong local SEO presence on the web.
Many companies concentrate their SEO efforts on fairly generic terms that relate to their products and services but forget about their geographical details.
With the advent of increased and improved mobile search, it is vital you stand out in your local area. And the best way to do that is by utilising the power of local search.
Location, location, location
If your company covers a specific geographical location, make sure those details are added to your HTML through page titles. You should also try and use these details within your copy and headings but be sensible.
Remember you are first and foremost writing for your reader – if you over do it, the page will look clumsy. Other areas for location information are within the footer along with your address and also within your internal hypertext linking structure. Instead of linking freelance copywriter, use a geographical reference such as Suffolk freelance copywriter.
YouTube
You can also boost your online presence through marketing. Upload your video to YouTube and then use very localised tags – without being spammy. The chances are (depending on the competitiveness of your keywords) you’ll be able to get these ranked and the more entries you can get on a front page local search results, the fewer your competitors can have.
Wider areas
If your business covers several geographical areas you could consider creating specific landing pages for each area. They should have unique content (you don’t want to fall foul of the duplicate content trap) and optimised for each specific area. Hypertext links within these pages can then drive your visitors to your main website.
Boost your profile
Social networking sites make it easy to spread your business name to a wide audience. Set up social media profiles which relate to your geographical region. But, as with the landing page content, make sure each description is different. You should also utilise Google Places, Yahoo local, and Bing Local to boost your local profile.
Remember to always think local by adding location modifiers to your keywords.