Local search optimization

Online business directories are simply search engines that are powered by people. Listing your business in key online business directories will allow people from those areas to see your listings. In addition, by listing in high-traffic directories, the web crawler-based search engines will also find your listing and add it to their search listings for free.

In the last 24 months, local search has become a major focus for most of the major search engines. Google is currently channeling more money into their local search engine business than they are on their web search.

It’s critical for a local business to be listed in as many local business directories, classified directories, online telephone directories as well as all of the local search engines as possible. This will help you cement a top ranking position within your market niche for your local community.

Your customers are no longer turning to yellow page phone-books or local newspaper classifieds to source info on new products or services. Consumers are turning to the internet because search engines are increasingly responding to the local search demand.

Are you familiar with the difference between normal and local search represents?

If you search Google.com for the term “used car”, Google knows where you live by the IP address of the computer you’re searching from. Google also has the phrase “used car” flagged in their database as a local search phrase because of the number of times people searching that phrase have ended up on local websites catering to those same words.

Google will show you results of local user car businesses that are in the closest proximity to you. Now, most small local businesses may not have websites at all, or the sites are not updated and optimized. To counter this, Google relies on “Citations” to determine a business listings relevance, to determine the most important websites to display in the search results. Citations are simply the number of mentions a business has across all of the online directories and 3rd party web-pages, that may or may not include a website link.

Some local businesses service a small geographic area and others serve larger regions and even whole cities. Crafting your business local search presence to dominate listings within your niche is just as much a science as optimizing a mainstream website’s search presence. This includes: unifying your listings keywords, to strategizing the optimum address and phone numbers for better ranking within particular postal-codes, plotting which online business directories carry the most influence when it comes to search rankings.

Social Traffic provides a service where we ensure consistency in your business listings using words that guarantee that it is shown to the right people against dead-center keywords. We also perform the monotonous work of ensuring your business address has the most citations across all of the local directories that matter, so that you can dominate local search results.

What’s important to recognize here is that local search is the next big thing online. What we know about dominating local search listings is that it is 12 months ahead of the curve. If you get us to work your listings now, you will have less competition in ensuring your listing dominates the search results. Our long term service contract ensures we will take it upon ourselves to maintain your lead. This space is dynamic. The rules are going to change every month as it evolves over the next few years. You can secure your place at the top of the local search engines regardless of the changes, by letting us maintain that presence for you.