How to Promote your Website in Local Searchs Engines Earl ier we wrote about local opt imizat ion in the context of country-specif ic s ites and dupl icate content f i l ters. This t ime we expand on this topic and wi l l te l l you about the web promotion of a local business as a whole.

Before you start, make sure your web site is search-engine-fr iendly: created with a SE-fr iendly technology ( l ike HTML), having robots.txt and a Sitemap in the root s ite directory. Next, you can get down to opt imizat ion for local search. Here are the most important steps to take.

1) Optimize your site for the targeted keywords

Af ter you def ined the r ight keywords for your business, include them together with the city name into your pages’ t i t les and Meta keywords and descript ion tags. I t would be perfect if the t it le that you use to name your business should include not only your company name, but also your most targeted keyword, for instance ‘Greenstone Vi l la – Beach Hol idays Austral ia’.

The site pages should give al l the information people may use for search in your location - area codes, street name, city, and country names. Add as much local information as you can to your site – this raises your chances of getting listed high in Google local search results.

2) Submit Your Website to Google Places (ex-Google Local Business Center)

I t ’s one of the best ways to get to Google’s f irst results page. : ) Together with the snapshot of the map with the exact location of your business, people wil l f ind out al l the necessary details l ike contact phone number and email, business hours; they wi l l get discount coupons (at your convenience), view the photographs and obtain other information you’ve found appropriate to include.

Besides, the local business l ist ings are also present in mobile search results, which should urge the people passing by to vis it a local off ice or shop.

Some t ips f rom Google:

• I f you have more than 10 locations, submit these locat ions via a bulk upload and then request verif icat ion for the bulk upload.

• I f you have two locations, but only one is l isted, you can create a separate l ist ing for your other locat ion - create one l ist ing per business.

• Fake reviews are against Google’s Comment Posting Pol icy.

• Providing an accurate and complete l isting can help your local l isting rank better.

More advice f rom Google can be found at http:/ /www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en-uk&answer=148047

3) Get local inbound links

Take care to get inbound l inks f rom local TLDs (top level domains), especially l inks containing your targeted keywords and city in their anchor text.

Where should you look for such l inks? Consider the fol lowing opportunit ies:

• contact your local business partners • get registered with your local chamber of commerce • get registered with some government agencies • contact your suppl iers • submit your site to local directories, for example:

SuperPages Yel low Pages Switchboard Yelp

• submit your site to local search engines: Yahoo! Local List ings Bing Local List ings

• leave your comments in some local blogs

Only some potential resources for local promotion in the USA are l isted above. We bet you wi l l f ind more directories that are relevant to your business and its location and wil l g ive you more targeted local traf f ic (for instance, in Yahoo! Directory, Dmoz, or Google Directory, or by organic search).

4) Get the most out of customer reviews and Web references

Other people’s experience in social mentions is very important for someone who considers contact ing you. Ask your customers to wr ite a review about your business on their preferred shop site, forum or portal.

I f someone wrote a negative review, don’t leave it as is. Contact them to f ind out why they didn’t l ike your service - maybe you can change their opinion. Respect has always been a winning tact ic.

Here are some helping art icles on where to get references for Europe and the US.

http:/ /www.davidmihm.com/blog/local-seo/citat ions- in-continental-europe/

http:/ /getl isted.org/resources/where-to-get-citat ions.aspx

5) Local domain and local hosting are also very important factors. Register a domain name in your regional DNS zone: *.co.uk for UK, *. it for I taly, or even a subdomain of your targeted place - such as *.sardegna.it or *. trent ino. it . Addit ional ly, choose a hosting provider in the same region, this way search engines wi l l consider your site as being more relevant to that region.

6) Make use of Google Webmaster Tools

I f your domain is in .com, .org or any other global TLD zone, you have a possibil i ty to choose the target audience f rom within your Google account by means of Webmaster Tools.

7) Involve paid search advertising

I t always helps, if you have funds. Being the most eff icient and inexpensive among the paid advert is ing opportunit ies, PPC campaigns can attract not just people f rom your ci ty, but those who are most interested in your product or service.

8) Promote business in local social media

Research local groups in popular social networks (check global networks as well as the most popular local networks). Promotion via these groups may bring you a lot of vis itors interested in your services. For more information, read the art ic le on how to choose the best social media channel we issued earl ier (http:/ /newsletter.webceo.com/issue-28/).

Af ter all of the above is done, it would be great to check how you rank in the local search engines. And here the Web CEO Ranking tool can be of help – you can either check your posit ions on your local search engines or search for your site in the Google Local results.