Powerful local search engine marketing strategies

Most small business owners struggle with the idea of ​​online marketing. For many it is something they are not yet familiar with, but seem to envy those who master local search engine marketing. Here are six strategies every business owner should consider, and in fact, some of them will cost you nothing but time.

1. Creation of local commercial profiles. Google, Yahoo, and Bing (the top 3 search engines) offer businesses the opportunity to create free profiles for their business that can help them appear in local searches. A key to success here is to create a complete profile and not leave any fields blank.

2. Search engine optimization (SEO). To rank well locally, you need to include your city and state along with your primary keywords in both your headlines and copy. Also, having your physical address on the contact page is a huge plus. Second, you must acquire links to your site from other sites, such as directories and related websites. Using this combination of on-page optimization and link building will pay off over time as you develop strong local search engine rankings.

3. Pay Per Click (PPC) Search Marketing. Through PPC, you can target local website visitors immediately. The key here is to use the geo-targeting feature so you don’t get hits from other areas where people aren’t likely to do business with you (unless you can also take orders online).

4. Submission to Local City Guides. There are dozens of local city guides and most of them allow you to submit your business information for free. These include sites like Merchant Circle, CitySquares, and Yelp for starters. There are also search engine marketing companies that can help you submit to these sites for a small fee, as they use technology to mass-submit to these local city guides.

5. Participate in mobile search marketing. There are three ways to take advantage of mobile search. The first is to have a mobile version of your website, the second is to appear in mobile search directories, and the third is to take advantage of text message marketing which currently has a much higher response rate than email marketing.

6.Marketing in social networks. Many small business owners have done well blogging about local community information alongside their business. Also, using sites like Facebook and Twitter can be effective, but only if you have the manpower to stay up to date and engage in conversation with your followers.

I hope this helps you in your search for local clients.