3 Best Local SEO Tips to Reach New Customers

Local SEO marketing is vitally important to the success of any local business, big or small. Whether you are selling services or products, the best way to attract new customers in 2013 is through Google. As a search marketing professional, I have seen local businesses reach new consumers, expand services and increase revenue from a simple local search engine strategy. Here are the Best Local SEO Tips for any business looking to expand their customer base.

1. Set up Optimized Local Directories

• • Google Places, Apple Maps and Yelp.com are some of the most popular online directories. It’s important to create directory profiles that include keywords that are important to your business. For example if you are a local plumber your listing should including high search volume keywords AND the location of your business. For example if you are a plumber in Libertyville, Illinois, your listing should include words like “Libertyville Plumber,” “Libertyville Plumbing Service,” and “Plumbing Repair in Libertyville.” Many online directories now allow you to show a radius of the areas you are servicing so that if someone searched for a plumber in a town near Libertyville like “Plumber Highland Park,” the Libertyville plumber’s directory listing will still come up in the search results.

2. Create Unique Location Pages for your Website

• • Let’s say that you own an HVAC service in Plymouth, MN. If your website has quality, keyword-rich content, it should come up in Google search results for keywords in the Plymouth area like “heating service Plymouth” or “air conditioning installation Plymouth.” But if your website is only coming up in Google for keywords including “Plymouth” when you provide services in a variety of surrounding suburbs like Minnetonka and Golden Valley, you are missing out on a lot of potential customers.

• • So how do you reach customers in the other suburbs? Create new pages for each suburb you want to target with UNIQUE, optimized copy. In this example, you could create a new page for Minnetonka. The page should contain original content that does not appear anywhere else on your website or anywhere on the web. Describe your services in a new way: use different words, explain your services instead of listing them. DO NOT copy and paste the text from your general Services Page and plug in the word Minnetonka instead of Plymouth. Google will catch on to that trick. It’s called “duplicate content” and Google penalizes websites for it. You need to create fresh, new content that includes high search volume keywords AND the targeted location, Minnetonka, in this example. The copy has to be well-written, comprehensible and completely original. These pages will continue to bring in targeted visitors and they will become stronger the longer they are live because Google favors history.

3. Create a Blog

• • Blogs are a great way to bring in organic traffic to your website. Blogs consist of posts while websites are made up of pages. Pages, like the location pages just mentioned, are a great way to strengthen SEO and bring traffic to your site but once your website it is built out properly, the next step in local SEO is creating a blog. You can write posts about virtually anything relating to your industry. A great way to bring in local traffic is to post blogs that are specific to surrounding neighborhoods and towns. For example, if you have a roofing company and storm is supposed to hit the area over the weekend, you could write a post about roof repair after a storm and include the name of the neighborhoods and towns that may be affected. Blog posts are a great to interact with your customers or clients and gain their trust, especially if you are a local business.