As a local business, it can be frustrating to provide great content about your business for your potential customers and not have them be able to locate your business through a simple internet search. As you’ve probably personally experienced, if your business does not show up in a searchers’ first one to three pages of results, the individual is not going to locate your site through a search. Optimally, you want to be within the first couple search results for your local business topic and key words. So, how can your business improve where it shows up in search engine results? In this post, I’m going to share three ways you can improve your results.
Include a blog on your website. A blog is a great way to accomplish multiple things for your business. First of all, it is a great avenue to share information your customers will appreciate and benefit from. However, it’s also one of the best ways to influence your website’s ranking because it easily allows you to incorporate keywords in a meaningful way. Consider using a keyword tool to help you select the most effective key words to share. Remember, it’s best to avoid using all the commonly used works for your topic; that’s why a tool can be so beneficial in helping your local business ‘think outside the box’ in terms of the keywords it uses.
A blog also helps ensure you’re regularly posting new content which can be another biggie in terms of search engine ranking. Let’s face it. Without a blog, it’s really easy to set it and forget it ‘so to speak’ with a local business website. Finally, a blog provides you with an easy way to link to other significant writers about your business’ topic. You can share information from a recent post of theirs and provide your spin on the topic. Of course, give them credit for the concepts!
Create a LinkedIn Business Page. If you haven’t already, make a LinkedIn page for your local business. When you set up the page, remember to include the great keywords you’ve been using in your page and link it to the other social media platforms you use. Of course, you’ll include your business website in the mix too!
Add business videos to YouTube and your website. If you haven’t already figured it out, cross posting information across social media platforms is a great idea. As a local business, you can often easily think of great video content to share with your current and potential customers. This step, if the videos are optimized and placed on both YouTube and your website, can be a great way to assist your page ranking.
In addition to these tips, remember, it’s very important to keep engaging and posting via all of your social media networks for optimal results and boosting search engine rankings.
Looking for even more advice on how to improve your business’ search engine ranking results? Visit this local business article by Social Media Magic: 7 Effective Ways to Raise Search Engine Rankings.
For nearly three decades, Chris Marentis, founder and CEO of Surefire Social, has been responsible for driving innovation and sales growth for large media and e-commerce brands as well as start-ups. With a long-history of counseling local businesses about their marketing efforts, Marentis provides insight on what it takes for small businesses to succeed and thrive in today’s evolving digital environment. His notable career includes creating the foundational blueprints for online marketing, e-commerce and content branding for AOL's Interactive Marketing group, where he served as Senior Vice President. While CEO of Clearspring Technologies, Marentis developed one of the most widely adopted venture-backed Web 2.0 technology platforms. Marentis is a frequent speaker at local digital marketing conferences and a contributor to SMB and technology-focused publications.
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Michael Davis
July 31, 2012 at 2:36 am
Before you can optimize your website, social media profiles, or anchor text for link building, you have to know what keywords you want to use. When it comes to local search marketing, you are not only targeting industry-specific terms, but geo-specific terms as well.
Natalie
July 31, 2012 at 3:31 am
This new search capability will make it much easier for consumers to shop online and target local businesses. Also, with the growth of web-enabled phones, more people are conducting searches on their phone rather than by their computer. Web searches via a cell phone are typically for local product and services information. Yahoo local is an attempt to provide relevant returns for those searches. Most businesses are still relatively unaware of Yahoo Local, providing an opportunity for knowledgeable businesses to climb to the top of search results.
smith warnes
July 31, 2012 at 6:26 am
Having a blog on your Website is a great way to improve your ranking. In your Own Blog you can even link to other blogs on the same topic this increases social network. Other Important factor is to get Quality backlinks from Same Niche and high PR sites.
Annie
July 31, 2012 at 8:12 am
Social media sites are a great way to Improving your business ranking.It helps to get more traffic and value in terms OF SEO.
Nawaz
July 31, 2012 at 4:38 pm
A blog in a website is very helpful to increase the local searches and it is one of the main source to increase get online business. Videos on Yourube are very helpful for powerful marketing.
Cindy Chua
August 4, 2012 at 5:51 pm
Another way is to set your google authorship in a professional manner that provides useful information or link for the public to seek the topic that they are looking for.
Lee
August 5, 2012 at 11:35 am
Hi
Really informative site I am currently trying to set up a couple of niche sites and have learnt a lot by reading through your site and also the comments. I feel a bit of a dummy really. It is all avery steep learning curve full of pit fills .
So thanks again learned lots lee
Michiel
August 6, 2012 at 4:20 am
Organic listing in search engines makes a HUGE difference to your business. The suggestions made in this article, if followed properly, do help. I have recently added a blog in my website, and the traffic to my site jumped at least threefolds!
Joy
August 6, 2012 at 2:54 pm
Thanks for sharing your informative tips, I also agree that a blog is an essential component of a business website, it’s a medium that can easily be updated for the reference of potential customers.
Kristine
August 7, 2012 at 10:56 am
Utilizing all social media networking platforms is a great idea, this way we are able to reach a broad audience range. Consistency is a trait that any business must possess. Thanks!
Kamini Prajapati
August 7, 2012 at 12:03 pm
I think we get more traffic in our business by Social Media Site, Back link & Link Building. Most relevant is that our website content must be unique & Contain niche content for Particular Page.
Kevin
August 9, 2012 at 7:55 am
Theres very few people with your profile that get involved so heavily with their readers.
Lee
September 10, 2012 at 9:12 am
Hi the part of your post about using videos is going to be very useful to me. As I am trying to increase my exposure and haven’t got into this field of thought yet.
So fot great info thanks lee
Emilia
September 21, 2012 at 9:03 am
The competition that happens among businesses online can be fierce and overwhelming so it’s imperative to be on top of the situation by exhausting all possible means to promote and engage with potential clients. You definitely nailed it, great tips! Thanks!
LC
October 26, 2012 at 5:04 pm
Great post. It is important to have several niche websites up and running to generate as much cash as possible.
Mia
November 9, 2012 at 10:38 am
Dear Admin,
I landed upon your article”How to Improve Your Local Business Search Engine Ranking”from google, Actually i am doing a research work on”Optimize local business”,found your article useful for my research work. Actually i was looking for more related articles on your blog but unfortunately didnt find anymore of it.Hope read more related articles in coming days…I will keep following your blog till then
Regards
Mia
Owen Richason
November 28, 2012 at 2:00 pm
“A blog also helps ensure you’re regularly posting new content which can be another biggie in terms of search engine ranking.” Agreed.
The way search engine algorithms work–in part– is coming back to crawl new content on a site which has already been indexed. This lets search engines know the site is regularly updated and as a result, authority levels increase.
Devis
November 29, 2012 at 8:54 am
A blog is very important for your website because it can describe much information about your service or products. And if you do share blog post on social sites then you will get more visitors from your blog. For your local business do some directories. Make sure you’re building links on local directories.
Jeremy Cissell
December 31, 2012 at 5:47 am
Local Search is what 90% of my customers need. Specifically targeting in most cases just a hand full of city names with the niche keywords, and long tails.
Google+, Authorrank, and the new Local is making it alot easier for business owners to beat out there national competitors. Most of my clints can outrank their non local competitors within 60 days ….most of the time by the very next crawl.
+JeremyCissell
Matt
January 2, 2013 at 7:18 am
Recently I was trying to improve search engine rank, and this might help as well.
Georgia
January 8, 2013 at 6:56 am
Social media helps also. Pinterest is on of the site that helps me boost my search engine ranking.
Jeremy Cissell
January 31, 2013 at 7:16 pm
A Business Blog is also a great Idea. Alot of Exposure, and especially helpful if you can dedicate a few hours every week to put out relevant content to your business’s services.
Lee
February 1, 2013 at 5:27 pm
Hi
I have found that for local searches just about every social media site has local area groups for just about everything and I have been using this to enhance my exposure locally and it has been very successful.
Hope this helps lee
Lee
February 13, 2013 at 11:20 am
Hi
Since I left a comment I have been playing with videos and social media and my rankings have definately gone up don’t know exactly what the best method has been as I haven’t delved to deeply yet but it seems mixing things up and not just concentrating on one method of seo seems to be working.
So for the advice thanks lee
Rusty
February 22, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Hi Chris, though this post was old but I can’t leave this site without telling you how much I appreciate this topic. You almost nailed everything on this topic. Well, as for me, creating content is a very challenging job for me. But as long as it will give weight on my blog, I will still remain positive and do the very best in me to create more content. Wish me luck! 🙂
Tanya
February 22, 2013 at 10:30 pm
Why do people still promote the local search and social networking? In 2009 I achieved a home page result in google for a local city “keyword phrase” and got less that 3 to 5 visits a day, really wasn’t worth the time it took to optimize for. Second is the social network explosion every one raves about since late 2008 early 2009. They use to say squidoo was the next big thing and if you didnt have a lens on that site linking to yours you were doomed for second page results, frankly I think I met more liars and scams since I been doing online marketing than I ever met in real life, I often wonder if their are others with similar experiences? Thanks!
Lee
February 23, 2013 at 7:12 pm
Hi
A blog is a basic requirement for the success of any website especially when it comes to trying to rank for certain keywords and interacting with your customers. It is also like anything the more you put in to your blog the more you will get in return.
Great post thanks lee
santosh Kumar
June 11, 2013 at 1:00 pm
Great Tips, Blog has great impact on traffic. it generate the traffic and increase the back links of website.
Stephanie
March 18, 2014 at 4:15 am
Thanks for blogging this topic. It’s a really informative post for local search engine optimization services for the better ranking.
Rafiul Islam
April 14, 2014 at 3:17 am
This is really a complete guide to improve search engine ranking of local business. LInkedIn also helps to promote local business. Thank you dear in advance for sharing this search engine optimization based article to improve SERP of local business.