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.

Submit your site to Google Local as well as Yahoo Local. Google local will let you link back to your business listing through their map. Once you have your map, link to it from the bottom of your page footer. Here’s an example that I did for a client: http://www.Realwealthnetwork.com

Also place your address at the very bottom of your page footer along with your local keyword (your city and keyword, for example, Los Angeles CPA)

Submit your site to one or two local business directories… Do research to find one that has good ranking/traffic.

Here’s an article I recently wrote for Internet Based Moms on Local Search:

http://www.internetbasedmoms.com/seo/local-optimizing.html

Here’s some basic information on Geotargeting:

http://geotargeting.org/

And Google information on GeoTargeting:

http://www.google.com/analytics/feature_geotargeting.html

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This entry was posted on Sunday, May 27th, 2007 at 7:27 am and is filed under Local Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.