Spork Marketing

Do you own a “local business?” While many would say that ALL business is local, some businesses are more local than others. Dry cleaners, restaurants, gas stations, etc. are inherently local, and if you want people to find your local business using a search engine, here are some tips for accomplishing your goal.

The old-fashioned printed Yellow Pages used to be the way that people found local business, but not anymore. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has gone so far as to predict the Yellow Pages will be officially dead 2012 .

1. Put local keywords in your home page’s <title> tag. In addition to including your business name and main keywords, you should also include a local keyword or two. Let’s say you own a steak house in downtown Denver called “Jason’s Steak House.” In addition to using the words “steak” and “house” in the title, you might also consider listing the city, state, and popular name for your neighborhood in the title as well.

<title>Jason’s Steak House in Downtown Denver, Colorado </title>

This way, people searching for “steak house downtown denver,” “steak house denver,” and “steak house colorado” are more likely to find your site.

MyGeoPosition.com has an excellent and free tool for creating geographic META tags.

2. Geographic meta tags. They’re still being adopted, but geographic META tags allow search engines to determine “where” your website is in the physical world. Seach engines, GPS-enabled cell phones, and other devices use geographic meta tags to find a business. MyGeoPosition.com is a great tool for figuring out what meta tags to add to your home page. Type in your business address, make sure to verify the location on the map, then click on the “Geo-Metatags” tab. All you need to do is cut and paste these meta tags into the top of the code of your website’s home page and your site is now associated with a specific geographic location.

3. Get your business listed with all the free local directories. See tip #5 on our page titled “10 Small Business Internet Marketing Tips ” for a list of free local directories. Submit your business information to each of these and you’ll increase the likelihood your website will appear at the top of the search results.

4. Get your customers to review your business online. Yelp.com, Citysearch.com, Insiderpages.com, and Judysbook.com are all examples of local business review sites. Ask your customers to review your business on each of these sites and raise your local profile.

5. Get links from other local businesses and organizations. Do you belong to the local chamber of commerce? Do you donate to local schools or community groups? Why not ask them for a link? Search engines can associate websites with a specific location, so links from other local sites may help increase your local search engine profile (only the search engines themselves know for sure, but it’s a good guess). If you make sure that the link text includes an important local keyword you can be doubly certain to increase the likelihood your website will rise to the top of search results.

Contact us to learn more about how Spork Marketing can help bring search engine visitors to your company’s web site.