Inexpensive Search Engine Optimization and Placement – LocoBee.com

http://www.locobee.com

If there is any local aspect to your business – that is, if your business serves customers in any specific geographic area(s) – you should strongly consider making the effort to get into Local Search. Google, Yahoo! and MSN all position applicable Local Search results at the top of the regular, web search results when a city/state or zip code is part of the search.

You, too, could have this enviable placement in the search results by using Local Search.
 

GOOGLE LOCAL – GOOGLE BUSINESS LISTINGS

Google Local is considered one of the most powerful Local Search areas, mainly because of the integration of a large, sophisticated map that appears alongside the Local Search results. When a visitor searches for local businesses, balloon icons are also overlaid onto this map showing the exact location of the results. Clicking on a balloon icon opens a larger balloon with the full address, phone number, and convenient links to the company’s web site, past customer reviews and directions.
 

If you are in the Google index, there is a very good chance that your company will already appear in Google Local Search results if your existing web site – or a business directory containing your company’s information – clearly states your address and phone number. This is because Google has been adding entries to its Local Search database for quite some time based on identifiable addresses and other text found on indexed web sites.
 

MSN LOCAL – MSN BUSINESS LISTINGS

Similar to Google, there is already an excellent chance that you will already appear in MSN Local Search results as long as your business has a valid business white pages or yellow pages telephone listing. This is because MSN gets most of its results from local telephone records.
 

YAHOO LOCAL – YAHOO BUSINESS LISTINGS

Yahoo! Local Search is similar to Google’s, although Yahoo’s search results page is focused more on the search listings, rather than the large map that Google presents. (Yahoo! displays a map of its own with functionality similar to Google’s, but it is smaller and located off to the side; it dynamically expands to a larger image when you hold your mouse cursor over it.)

Another difference between Yahoo! and Google is how they get customer reviews. It seems that Google will only display pre-existing reviews from sites that it has categorized as providing this information. Yahoo! allows anyone with a Yahoo! ID to create a review directly from the Yahoo! Local page for the business.

 

Although the number of searches for local businesses is clearly much less than for most generic search terms, the number of people using the major search engines as their Yellow Pages is growing steadily. Each and every Local Searcher is extremely targeted; the odds are high that if a person is searching for your type of business in your locality, he/she will be ready to pick up the phone almost immediately to contact you. If your listing isn’t displayed, it’s also likely that you will lose the online searcher to a local competitor.

Whether or not your company has its own web site, it is apparent that you can greatly improve your rankings for targeted terms – and increase the online visibility for your business overall – by participating in Local Search.

Original: January 2006

Tags: google local, local internet marketing, Local Search, MSN, msn local, msn local listings, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, SEO, SES, Yahoo, yahoo local