How Does Local Search Engine Marketing Work
Dec 20th, 2011 Bob Sommers
One of the fastest growing and most successful forms or local search marketing revolve around the simple idea of a local business listing. "What is a local business listing?" you ask. It's the equivalent of a free Yellow Page ad on Google, Yahoo!, Bing and dozens of other heavily searched websites. It generally shows up with your business name, address and telephone number located on or near a map showing the location of your business.
More importantly, once a business listing is optimized and publicized, it will generate significantly more leads than a Yellow Page ad.
Why Is A Local Business Listing Important?
Local Search allows customers to easily find your business. They will be able to reach you from their computer, on their smart phones, with their GPS devises and more. Local Search allows your business to be seen where and when your customers are looking for you.
How is a Local Business Listing Different from a Yellow Page Ad?
Unlike a Yellow Page ad, your local business listing allows you to include a clickable link to your website, color photos, videos, up to a 1,000 character description of your business and the ability to be listed in multiple categories.
It also includes customer reviews to help encourage customers to select your business over your competition and you can make changes at any time. Oh, and along with not having to pay a monthly fee, your listing will show on these sites for a long, long time!
What Kinds Of Businesses Benefit Most From Local Search Marketing?
There are two types of businesses that will benefit from local search marketing. The first is any business that wants to attract local customers. Some of these businesses include: plumbers, doctors, auto mechanics, cleaners, banks, beauty salons, contractors, equipment rental companies, janitors, liquor stores, nurseries and more.
The second type of business that will benefit from local search marketing is the type of business that wants to attract out-of-towners to their local business. These business include: real estate agents, hotels, bed and breakfasts, event companies, tour companies, wedding photographers and more.
If your business relies on outsiders finding the service you provide when they arrive in your community, local search is for you.
Virtually anyone who advertises in the Yellow Pages will benefit from local search marketing.
What Results Can You Expect From Your Business Listing?
Results will vary based on your location, your industry and your willingness to participate in your own success. At this time, local search is still a very new tool on the Internet and most of your competitors have not figured out how to use it.
Here are three ways to quickly tell how quickly you'll be able to dominate your market using local search.
1. Consider the size of your community. The smaller your market the easier it will be to take the top spot.
2. Count the number of reviews for each competitor. If the number is low, you will dominate your market quickly.
3. Count the number of business citations your competitors have in Google and Bing. You can find this by look for the number of listings under "More about this site" on Google.
The vast majority of people who understand and undertake a local search marketing campaign will see fantastic results. You will too.
How Will You Know If Your Local Search Marketing Is Working?
The only way you will know if your local search marketing is working is to ask every new customer where and how he or she found you. Don't you do this anyway to make sure your Yellow Page ad is working? Unfortunately, the answer is probably not.
The success of your local search marketing, nor any other form of marketing should be judged by how many people visit your website. You don't even need a website to take advantage of local search marketing. It should be judged by how many people call your business, visits your store and buy what you're selling.
What Is Your Role In The Process?
No one knows your business better than you do. So, in order for anyone to maximize your success, they must get into your head and understand your business, your customers and something about your business location.
At that point, either you or a professional local search-marketing expert will take that information and do their magic, which includes keyword research, copy writing, category selection, photo, video and coupon uploading and more. Now, here comes the most important part.
The businesses that jump to the top of the search results page and generate most of the leads do two additional things that their competitors don't do. They generate additional local and industry specific business citations and they encourage their happy customers to review their business on appropriate websites. This is something you can and must do yourself.
Conclusion
Do a search for the products and service you offer on Google and add your community to the search. Does your business show up? It can, it should and it will as soon as you get serious about local search marketing.
Local Search Marketing is new and it's much more effective than the print Yellow Pages or newspaper ads for most businesses. If you've not undertaken a local search marketing campaign yet, now is the time to get started.
About the Author:
Learn how to improve your Local Search Engine Marketing ranking on Google, Yahoo! and Bing from Local Search Marketing expert Bob Sommers at http://www.VisOnTheNet.com You can also learn how to remove bad reviews from Google. Bob Sommers Internet Marketing Association of Hawaii 821 Kumulani Drive Kihei, HI 96753 808-891-0449
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