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SEO 101 Local Business Listings
By Dwayne Goerges of www.topwebsitetips.com
You’ve no doubt done search engine searches that included a city name and noticed Google displayed a map with markers showing where the different businesses are located within the city. It’s obvious that Google is trying to highlight local businesses to give more relevant results. You may have also noticed that just because a business does well in the normal search results, that doesn’t mean it's going to do well in the local search results. How does Google decide which businesses should be display for a particular city? SEO for local listings is really pretty similar to other forms of SEO. The key is making sure your website has as many indicators as possible to help the search engines know your targeted city. While you don’t necessarily need to have everything on this list completed, the more indicators you have the higher your site is going to rank for local business searchers. 1) Your Business address should be on the site. If you only have one business location it doesn’t hurt to have your address in the footer of every page of the site.
2) A local telephone number should be listed on the site. Google can figure out area codes. Even if you have an 800 number you should also have your local number with the local area code on the site. Like the address it doesn’t hurt to have it in the footer of every page of the site.
3) Goto http://places.google.com/business and register your business. This gives you the added advantage of being able to control certain factors of your listing, including a specific landing page if desired. These three steps alone will get you somewhere in the listings. But you would probably like to do a bit better than to be on page 2 or 3 (or deeper) in these listings. Now it’s time to do a little promoting! Getting Links from other local sources Start looking for local sources you can get a link from. Normally top of the list will be your local Chamber of Commerce. Everything on the site is likely locally based; this will give your site a very regionalized link. The local yellow pages are another good regionalized link. Also, try to get a link from any of the local clubs or organizations. Nonprofit organizations are a great place to get a link; many are quite willing to add a link to their site to thank contributors and sponsors. Local Link text Devote a portion of your link building campaigns to getting links with your city or region in the link text. If links to your site frequently have a particular city in the link text the search engines will start to associate your site with that city. Regionalized sites Many sites like yelp do reviews of businesses and websites putting the review in regionalized categories. Having your website mentioned with many other websites or businesses from a particular area will help the search engines localize your site. If you own a local business or have a website that caters to a particular region getting your site listed in the local results can be one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your site. While you might not be able to beat out the big sites in the global market you can likely out rank them in the local searches.
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Contributor's Note
This is the ninth in a series of SEO 101 articles I am writing. I am a 10 year veteran of website building and promotion. These articles outline some of the basic steps I use to promote my clients websites.
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Top Website Tips
PLEASE VISIT THE CONTRIBUTOR'S WEBSITE
Wildnet Technologies
Review of Wildnet Technologies SEO work
www.topwebsitetips.com/seocompanyreviews....aspx
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 |  | sheilamarie recommended this intel. Feb 24, 2011 |  | | jannepaige supported this intel. Feb 24, 2011 | | | oxytum recommended this intel. Feb 24, 2011 |  | | Dirk Bansch recommended this intel. Feb 24, 2011 |  | | nick agreed with this intel. Feb 24, 2011 |  | | frederick recommended this intel. Feb 25, 2011 |
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I know practically next to nothing about local search. Or should I say, I knew next to nothing. Thanks for this useful guide!
 | | nick Feb 24, 2011 09:36 | |
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Surprisingly there isn't a huge amount written about it. I had a hard time finding good information the first time I tackled this problem for a client. I can pretty much get the first listing every time now using these steps. In time it will likely get harder as more people get it figured out.
The copyright for this content entitled "SEO 101 Local Business Listings" has been specified by the contributor as:
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If you use this content according to the license specified, you must link to the following URL:
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This intel was contributed by adac
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