5 Tips For Utilising Local Search

As everyone who runs a business knows, advertising and marketing your business well is key to long term success.  And businesses that have had a taste of being on the first page of the search engines, know only so well how many potential new customers you can get your products or services in front of.

It's fact that more and more people are turning to the internet to find products & services, and as the current young generation get older the number is set to rise dramatically - This year we have seen for the first time online advertising has over taken traditional television advertising, and along with it making it even more competitive for businesses taking the first online plunge.

What many people tend to overlook is 'Local' search, people searching for specific products and services but using their location in the search term.  The first time companies look at trying to get to the 'top of Google' they usually insist on going for very broad one or two word phrases, which will of course bring in higher traffic than a local based search - But with budgets in mind, its better to think of quality instead of quantity when you first start.

Not to mention the search engines are really starting to give local search prominent positions in the search engine result pages, just look at what I get if I do a search for 'Computers Bedford'

All these results were at the top of the page, and to get your company ranking for local terms is easier than you think! Yes you can turn to Search Engine Marketing companies like ourselves (and we are more than happy to help), but there are so many basic and free things businesses can do to increase their local search results.

Here are my top 5 free tips to help your local search:

1.) Get yourself in Google's Local Business Centre. (The screen shot you can see above is businesses that have added themselves to this free section of Google, and tagged themselves in appropriate categories)

www.google.com/local/add

2.) Sign up on InfoServe to get yourself in Yahoo! Local UK and City Visitor

http://search.infoserve.com/index.asp

3.) Get a free standard listing on Yell.com

http://www.yelldirect.com/internetadvertising/standardlistings/

4.) Sign up for a free listing on Business Magnet (Be aware they will probably call you to confirm details, and try to sell you featured advert spots - A standard listing is ample in my opinion)

http://www.businessmagnet.co.uk/CompanyAdmin/NotAuth/RegisterNewCompany.aspx

5.) This isn't a link to a site, but a final very simple tip.  Make sure you have your FULL address with postcode (NOT a PO Box) somewhere easily accessible on your site, and it must be in text form so the search engines can find and crawl the text.  There is no 'concrete' evidence I have seen that confirms this helps with local rankings, but consensus is that it does help - Not only this people like to see real contact details on websites, it gives people trust that your site is genuine.

If you would like more advice on local search, feel free to get in contact and we'll be happy to help.