How To Dominate Local Search Terms For Your Small Business
If you own a small business, be it a product based business or a service based business
, odds are you are on a shoe-string budget. One of the last things that you can blow money on is ineffective advertising. Well fret not, my friend, because there is a form of advertising that is extremely effective as well as extremely cost effective. It just takes a little know-how and a little consistent effort. If you are a business owner or are thinking of starting a business, then this is an avenue that I highly advise you to use and it is referred to as "local search".
The term "local search" is referring to the search results in search engines based around keywords that describe your business and geographical area combined.
No doubt you are familiar with search engines such as Google, YAHOO and Bing. You probably use them all of the time and never think about others finding you or your business and the services you offer using this avenue, but believe it or not, there are people searching for your services as you read this article that do not know you exist. Welcome to the world of Search Engine Marketing (SEM). How does this work? Imagine for a moment that you have a small local start-up business focused on computer repair. If you go to Google and type in the search term "computer repair + your city name", your website, if you have one, should appear on the first page. If it does not, you are leaving money on the table, literally. How can you fix this? Simple. Focus on local search.
Focusing on local search can be done two ways. The first way is to launch a small website that will act as your landing page. Ideally, the domain name should include your keyword and location, such as your state or preferably the name of your city. GoDaddy is a good place to pick up a domain name for about ten dollars. Once you have the domain name head over to HostGator and purchase some hosting. Hosting can be purchased for as little as five to ten dollars per month. This is money well spent. Once you have a domain name and hosting, log on to your hosting account and upload a landing page that will act as your online business card introducing your business and talking about the products or services that you offer.
It is important to note that your keywords and your location name should appear in the page copy in several places. As mentioned before, you want them to be in your domain name. In addition to your domain name, you will also want them to appear in your home-page title, your meta tags and you page copy. These are the basics of what is referred to as on-page search engine optimization (SEO). Once this is accomplished, you can move into the next phase, article marketing.
Article marketing accomplishes two things. First, it brings traffic to your website because article directories allow links pointing to your website in the resource box. The second advantage is that the links pointing to your website have SEO value, meaning that search engines count links from articles pointing to your website as votes of relevancy. This will help you move up in the search rankings. Ideally, the anchor text for the links pointing to your website in your resource box will also contain your keyword and location.
Last, but not least, your want to make sure that you submit the URL of your website to the local listings section of the major search engines such as Google Maps. This is a must.
As mentioned close to the beginning of this article there are two ways to market yourself via geographically oriented search. The second way is to fore-go the launching of your own website and skip directly to the article marketing. Simply write articles that contain your keyword and location in the title and article copy and submit them to article directories. In the resource box, instead of placing links to your website, you would simply put a short description of your business and its products or services and your contact information. This method of marketing is also effective, but does not have as much potential as the first method which includes your own website.
Follow these steps and you will dominate localized search results for you product or service. Why would anyone not do this? There are only two reasons. Either they do not know how or they do not know that they should. Since you have read this article, you are not one of those people. You are informed. Now go dominate your local listings.
by: Mark T H
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