Is your business taking advantage of local search?
Posted by Tim on the 21 January in SEO
SEO
When it comes to SEO, companies are not taking advantage of the power of thinking local. Ofcom (2008) reported that 76% of UK adult Internet users find out about local services online. Since more people search for local businesses online then anywhere else it's crucial to make sure you're found on search results but more importantly - on local search results.
How does local search differ to normal search? We're are no longer just searching for "guitar lessons" or "Chinese takeaways", we're searching for "guitar lessons in Bristol" or "Chinese takeaways in Bristol" (Bristol being any town). That’s way its vital to optimise for local search.
The trigger for local search is the town name and sometimes Google may just bring up local search results if you’ve set your default location.
Don't forget that more and more people are using their mobile phones to search for businesses on the go. Whether they search via their mobile web browser or use mobile applications (Google Maps on the iPhone) to search, making sure your website is accessible for mobile search is key.
Optimising towards local search should be done on-site such as making sure your physical address is displayed on the page with the correct mark-up (microformats), as well as off-site by claiming your business listing on the right services such as Google Maps and picking the right keywords.
Design Militia can help your business optimise towards local search in the following ways:
- Optimise the country of hosting
- Optimise your top level domain (i.e .co.uk, .com)
- Add your business address details to your website
- Claim and tailor your business listing from search engines
- Help you obtain key inbound links from other regional sites.
To start taking advantage of local search and to get a free quote, give us a call on (0117) 9639968 or send us an email.
