Local Search by Anita Campbell
Search - What Is It?
Local search is when people search in Google or some other search engine using geographical parameters.
For instance, let's say I want to buy a new car. I might search for "Toyota dealers" plus the name of my local city "Medina" or maybe my city AND state, "Medina Ohio". Or perhaps I plug in my zip code in place of the city and state if I want to be especially precise.
That's local search.
But there's another way local search occurs: when the search engines help out. For instance, some of the search engines can detect from my IP (computer) address where I am located, and will deliver up local search results even without my adding the city, state or zip code to my search terms. The search engine technology "fills in" my location.
I can see how local search is valuable to the person searching. But is it important to my business?
If you run a small business, chances are that most of your sales come from customers in your local area. Sixty percent (60%) of small businesses get the majority of their customers from within a 50-mile radius.
But local search is equally important to large businesses, especially those that have branches, local stores or neighborhood locations. Banks, insurance companies, retail stores, chain restaurants, even hospitals and clinics - all want their local outlet to be the one that searchers find online.
And increasingly people are turning to the Web even to find a vendor or outlet in the same town:
- The Web is gradually taking the place of newspapers and yellow pages books. Newspaper circulation has been declining for 20 years. Usage of print yellow pages has been declining for the past five years. Print will still be around for a long time to come, but each year sees a bigger shift to the Web.
- The volume of local searching keeps growing. Today, more than 11 % of all searches are specifically "local" searches.
Bottom line: you may not want to eliminate newspaper classifieds and yellow pages advertising from your marketing mix just yet. BUT -- you also can't afford to ignore online search because every year its importance grows, even for local businesses.
If I want my business to be found in local searches, what do I do?
Start by listing your business in the following six search engines, directories and yellow pages sites. These are the sites with some of the highest local search volumes.
Google Maps -- http://local.google.com
Yahoo! Local -- http://local.yahoo.com
Windows Live Local -- http://local.live.com
Judy's Book -- http://www.judysbook.com
Superpages.com -- http://www.superpages.com
YellowPages.com -- http://www.yellowpages.com
There are also Ohio-specific business directories to consider, such as Ohio Biz (http://www.ohiobiz.com) and Cleveland Rocks (http://www.clevelandrocks.com).
Check first to see if your business is already listed. If not, you'll usually find a link near the bottom of each site that says something like "add/edit your business."
If your business is already listed, check over the information carefully. It may be inaccurate or outdated, and need correcting.
Submitting a listing to all seven sites shouldn't take more than a couple of hours. If your business is too small to have a marketing department, never fear: this is the kind of project you can assign to a receptionist, virtual assistant or student intern.
What else can I do to increase the chances of my business being found by local searchers?
Don't forget to include geographical information in your website. Make sure your website has your full street address and phone number prominently listed, in text (not an image, since search spiders do not read images). That way the regular search engines can find and index address information when they spider the pages in your site. This will give you more ways for your site to be found (more indexed pages that link your business to a zip code, area code, state, city, etc.).
Some savvy businesses put their address and phone in the footer of each Web page right next to the copyright notice. If you have multiple locations, then set up a separate "locations" section of your site.
What if I know all the basics already?
Congratulations! In that case, you might want to consider other advanced strategies:
- (1) Paid visibility -- Most search engines and yellow pages sites offer paid upgrades or paid search ads for higher visibility. If you decide to go with upgraded listings or paid search ads, try them for a period of time and measure the ROI. Some offer statistics to let you see how many times your listing or ad was viewed. You can also use a traffic-analytics program to measure whether the paid listings or ads drive traffic to your website, get searchers to fill out lead forms, and so on. Google offers a free analytics program.
- (2) Geo-targeted ads -- Geo-target your paid search ads. Google, for instance, allows you to target your ads geographically, in several different ways (zip code, city/state, even mapped out in irregular shapes).
- (3) SEM services -- Consider engaging the services of a search engine marketing (SEM) firm. A good SEM firm can tailor a program to increase your business's chances of being found by those searching for local vendors.
Learning about local search and taking action to be found in local searches involves some extra work. But if your business is all about local customers, the results will be worth it. Your Web traffic will be better qualified and you are much more likely to attract foot traffic from those who are planning to buy locally. Wouldn't you rather attract Web searchers who might actually buy from you, instead of people halfway around the world who are never going to walk into your local store or never likely to become a customer?
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About the author: Anita Campbell is a writer, speaker and radio talk show host who closely follows trends affecting small businesses at her site, Small Business Trends (http://smallbiztrends.com).
