Looking to boost local traffic to your site? It’s a must these days, especially if you’re a small business. Getting listed puts you on the online map. Optimizing that listing lets your customers and potentials know where and how to find you. Local SEO: it’s all about getting local consumers in the door and the phone ringing.
Here are 6 things that you absolutely must do when optimizing your local business listing. We say ‘must do’; you don’t want to lose out on higher rankings, do you?
1. Claim and submit. List your business at Google Maps. This, you should know already. But it doesn’t end there. Take advantage of other search engines. Claim your listing at Yahoo! Local, Bing Local and Best of the Web. They’re free to submit your information. On top of that, submit your information to major data providers like InfoUSA, Acxiom, and Localeze. The more listings you have in more local business directories, the more chances you have of getting more local search exposure. Less chances, too, of having someone falsely claim your listing.
2. Be consistent with the information in your listing. It’s going to be really confusing if the phone number that shows up on your Google Maps listing is different from the one on your Bing Local listing. So make sure you provide the same accurate information over and over. If you can, list yourself in the right business category throughout the whole process of claiming your listings. Be inconsistent and you will only mislead potential customers, not to mention search engines like Google who checks if details of your listing match across the web.
3. Use title tags wisely. You want to be relevant to your geographic target, not to some island on the other side of the world. So make sure you include your location in your title tags, along with important keywords and official business name. Instead of just writing “antique toys”, write “Chicago antique toys”. It’s a pretty simple concept, but not all businesses remember to do this.
4. Sign up for the small local info providers. Promoting your business devoting yourself exclusively to creating a nationwide profile. There are local info sites out there which are actually pretty helpful. Conduct some research on yellow pages providers in your area, local newspaper sites, websites dedicated to local events, and even your local chamber of commerce. Contact these providers and ask them if you can get yourself business listed in their sites.
5. Add your address and contact information on every page of your website. This is another tip which most businesses are prone to overlook. Ideally every page should have your address and phone number. Not only is this helpful to users; it also reinforces your local listings on search engines.
6. Install analytics on your website. Information is power. Knowing where your traffic is coming from helps you gain more insight about things like what keywords to use, what external and internal links your visitors are clicking, and which pages are engaging them.