A few months ago, I helped a client and friend Michael Roby with his website SEO. Just a few weeks ago he thanked me because he’s ranking in the first few results of Google for “motivational speaker Minnesota”

A lot of Michael’s business comes from local clients who are looking for motivational speakers and sales trainers… so we optimized his site using the keywords someone in his area would type if looking for a motivational speaker.

Small businesses often spend huge amounts of money on advertising and yet ignore the free advertising options right in their own backyard.

Local media attention can be great for your business (even if you operate online). The best part about getting local media attention is you can do so without having to spend a penny on advertising. Even better than free publicity, you’ll gain media attention that’s much more credible than any print ad.

So how do you attract local media attention?

Just recently I was asked a question about local searches and local SEO. There’s a lot of information about general SEO online, but not much for local businesses. Having owned a local business in the past, the techniques are certainly different.

Here are a few tips and resources for local search engine optimization:

The first thing you should do when optimizing your pages and tags is use local keywords. If you’re a CPA in California add the keywords California CPA. You should also add your City, Los Angeles CPA.