Businesses optimizing for local search as a separate subset of their internet marketing strategy are able gain an advantage over their larger competitors who tend to dedicate large budgets to paid search marketing and banner advertising.

A local search is performed when someone uses a search engine to find products or services in their own local area or community. Maps began popping up in Google search results during 2008 with links to local businesses. Early in 2009 Google started to automatically include local site listings in their search results, based on your physical location (based on your IP address).

Here’s our ultimate easy to follow 7 step Local Search Optimisation Action Plan:

Step 1 - Optimize your website for local search

If your local search optimization action plan achieves nothing else, make sure you place your local street address and phone number on every page of your website. This achieves two things:

1. It tells search engines that you’re a local business and
2. It helps with customer usability. Don’t make your customers hunt for your contact details or address. Because search engines can’t read images, your address and phone number should be in text format and not in an image

Create a contact us page with all of your local information. A good contact us page includes the following elements:

• a photo of your business outside or inside of the building or both
• street address
• phone and fax numbers
• contact form
• email address
• facebook and/or twitter page details
• a map that will help customers find you easily and add more strength to your local listing.

If you have more than one location, create a page on your website for each location.

A more advanced technique is to have your webmaster create a KML location file to display geographic data for Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Maps for mobile. Read more about how to create these files in Google’s KML Tutorial.
 

Step 2 – Claim your listing on Google Maps

Google’s local search service is Google Maps. The business side of things is called Google Places. Use Google Places to create your free listing. When potential customers search maps for local information, they'll find your business including your address, hours of operation and even photos of your storefront &/or products. Make sure your business is listed and build out your listing with as much information and additional content as possible including videos and maps. 

1. Visit Google places at www.google.com/places.
2. If you already have a Google Account, sign in with your email and password. You can also use an AdWords login address and password, if you have one. If you don't have a Google Account, click Sign up for an account now, or go straight to the sign-up page. Google Places accounts are not transferable, so if you are planning to share this account with other users, create a Google account that you would not mind sharing with others.
3. On Google Places homepage, click Add new business.
4. On the “Find your business” tab, search for your business by phone number to see if Google already has information about your business.
   • Select the country of your business location from the drop-down.
   • Enter the phone number of your business listing.
   • Click Find business information.
5. Review the search results, if any, to see if one of them describes your business.
   • If none of the results are related to your business, you will be prompted to add business information on the Edit Details page.
   • If none of the results is your business, click Add a new listing. You'll be prompted to add more information on the next page.
6. Fill out the basic information about your business. This includes:
   • Company/Organization: the official/registered name of the business.
   • Address (required): The address should look exactly the way you'd write it on a standard mailing envelope.
   • Phone Number (required): Be sure to include the area code
   • Website: Your website URL can be a maximum of 255 characters.
7. Click Next.You'll now have the opportunity to provide the following information about your business:
   • Categories: Enter several categories to describe your business, to make it easier for others to find when they search Google. Make sure you choose one Google-suggested category before adding customizable categories. You can enter up to 5 categories for your business.
   • Hours of operation: If would prefer not to specify your hours of operation, keep the radio button selected next to “I prefer not to specify operating hours.”
   • Payment options.
   • Photos: You can add up to 10 photos to your listing. Photos will appear in order of greatest size and quality.
   • Video: To add a video, upload it to YouTube and copy and paste the URL to your Places listing. You can add up to 5 videos to your listing.

Whilst the discussion below is focussed more in your Google Places listing, your strategy should also embraces other popular search engines such as Bing and Yahoo.

Bing

For Bing create a business listing through the Bing Business Portal. Your Bing listing should include as many details as possible. Including media will help boost the likelihood that it will rank higher than competitors.

Yahoo

To claim an existing Yahoo Local listing, sign into your Yahoo account or create an account if you don’t already have one. Search for your listing on Yahoo Local. Click on the Enhance your listing link to add more details.

If your business does not have a Yahoo local listing, create one in the Local Listings Account Centre. Enhanced listings are $9.95 per month and allow you to include up to 10 photos, promotion links, and a 3,000 character description of your business.

Step 2 – Claim your place or register with local search directories

A great way to get more visibility on a search engine ranking page is to submit your business details to any number of local business directories. First and foremost this will give your business online credibility. By having your company appear more than just once on a search for your company name, this makes searchers a lot more comfortable about clicking your link. The other thing this will do for you is pull your website and blogs further up the search engine ranking page.

Below is a list of local search directories that you should consider registering with. When you do so it is crucial that you always use the same business name, address and phone number as this is how search engines will recognise your listing as the same business.

• www.AussieLocal.com.au
• www.AussieWeb.com.au
• www.hotfrog.com.au
• www.Local.com.au
• www.LocalBusinessGuide.com.au
• www.Rave about it.com.au
• www.Truelocal.com.au
• www.yahoo.local.com.au
• www.startlocal.com.au

Get maximum leverage of your free listing with these directories by including relevant descriptions of your services, images, videos and visitor reviews. Be thorough, accurate, and complete on your local listings. Include your full address (including post code), phone number, relevant business categories, and relevant service / product keywords in your page description

Step 3 - Encourage satisfied customers to post a review

Encourage your satisfied customers to leave a review on your Google places listing. A high volume of reviews (and especially reviews native to Google Places) help a lot more than a lower volume of top-notch reviews. Whenever you can influence review content, try to have those reviews include category and location keywords as this will influence your position within local search results.

Step 4 - Respond to your critics - be authentic!

Embrace criticism and bad reviews as opportunities to be responsive and to defend your brand. As the old adage goes, a happy customer will tell three of their friends but an unhappy one will tell ten. But online, you have the opportunity to respond and right a perceived wrong. Everyone knows that businesses have good days and bad days. Folks are not likely to believe that a business could only get glowing sugary sweet customer reviews. The odd bit of criticism adds authenticity. It’s the way you respond to your criticism that will count for your future fans, and may even help bring back that wayward customer that had an unfortunate experience back to you.

Step 5 – Check out what your competitors are doing

Take hints for your local search strategy by analysing what your competition are doing. Take a look at the Places page of your competitors by searching their business name. The next step of your local search strategy is to take advantage of any websites your competitors are using that don’t already form part of your campaign. Once you have researched and established references on these new sites, you can always look for unknown competitors simply by searching for core local keywords, viewing the listings that are positioned at the top of the results.

Step 6 – Take a look at the big end of town

If you’ve searched all of your local resources and aren’t entirely sure where to look next, you can target larger metro markets to find new opportunities. Remember, it doesn’t matter if they aren’t in your local market, you could still find new opportunities within those listings. In fact, if you’re searching within your industry, you can often find niche specific references that will strengthen your listing and content. Search larger areas, often times you can find industry related accounts that are highly successful within those markets, but locally the competition probably won’t be targeting the majority of what major players are.

Step 7 – Strive for continued local growth

As your business builds its local presence, it’s important to seek opportunities to list your business contact information whenever possible. Extra citations strengthen your Places account. As references build, keep your address information consistent. It may be a good idea to refer to and copy information directly from your Google Places listing whenever you’re creating a new reference or citation. Remember, local search is only going to become more relevant and personalized as it continues to evolve.

Some Final Comments

Local search is critical to all businesses.  Google estimates that 73% of all online activity is related in someway or another to local content.  In addition research by comScore Networks indicates that 43% of search engine users are seeking a local merchant to buy something offline and that 54% of search users have substituted internet search for the phone book. Developments in how search engines display their results have made a consideration of local search even more important.  
A local search optimisation strategy is different from natural search engine optimisation. This is because Google utilises a completely different algorithm for ranking local map results.  However, search engine and local search optimisation are becoming very tied together. Blended search results are overtaking many standard search engine ranking page listings. Highly optimized company sites having an obvious impact on local ranking. There is a real opportunity for businesses that operate in either a single or many geographic locations to optimise their websites so that they are found by searchers conducting local searches. 

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