What is Local SEO and Why Local SEO Preferable By Local Business?

 SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, so Local SEO is Local Search Engine Optimization, but what does that really mean? Let Discuss

You can find all kinds of confusing definitions of SEO, but for a local business SEO means making it as easy as possible for prospective customers to find information about your company online, either when they search specifically for your enterprise or for any businesses that provide particular goods and services nearby them.

Sometimes people are looking for more knowledge about your business. They may know the name, but want to find the phone number or address. Other times, they may know a certain type of enterprise, like a Yoga Studio for example, exists at a location, but need to discover the name. They may need to check operating hours, find driving directions, learn what brands are carried or discover what’s on the menu or where to park. When people search for this kind of information, SEO helps the search engines provide it to them via the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Sometimes people are searching for the types of services you provide or the products you sell, but they don’t necessarily have a specific company in mind. Local SEO helps the search engines find the businesses – including yours – that can best satisfy their needs and display listings for them in the SERPs.

Imagine someone searching for a plumber who will come to their house at 4am to stop a burst pipe from flooding the basement. They will likely search for emergency plumber, 24 hour plumber, or plumbing emergency. The search engine will try to find businesses it can identify not just as plumbers, but as plumbers who are clearly available for emergencies on a 24 hour-a-day basis. If your company meets those requirements, but doesn’t clearly convey that information to the search engines via proper SEO, it is not likely to appear in the results for that type of query.

It’s necessary to have your own company website containing all the information people may wish to know about who you are, where you are and what you do. It’s also necessary to employ SEO best practices on your website to make that information absolutely clear to the search engines. Without SEO, your pages may not rank highly and unless it ranks on the first page of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), potential customers are going to have a hard time finding your business’ website. Here’s an example of a business’ website ranking for 24 hour plumber in Glenwood Springs, CO:

At other times, the knowledge someone is looking for may be more easily discovered on a page about your enterprise on another website, such as Yelp, Angie’s List, City Search or DexKnows. When this happens, the search engines are likely to display those pages in the results. Here are some examples of local business directories ranking for 24 hour plumber in Glenwood Springs, CO:

The search engines may also present business listings found on their own local search engines – Bing Maps, Yahoo! Local or Google+ Local. Therefore, it is best to create and improve business listings in all of the important local places for your industry across the web to help potential customers find your business’ information on other websites, too. Here’s an example of a Google+Local business listing ranking for 24 hour plumber in Glenwood Springs, CO

As you can see, SEO isn’t just one single thing. Yes, you definitely need to use SEO best practices on your website (we’ll discuss those in future posts), but you also need to make certain that your business is listed elsewhere on the web, too. Then, prospective customers have a much better chance of finding your company when they search either specifically for you or for the services and products you sell.

Off-Page SEO Strategies to Build Your Online Reputation

When we say Off page SEO, we are referring to the techniques use beyond our website that will help us improve search engine ranking. In another words, we are not dealing with the site itself but rather the surroundings factors that contribute to the site's ranking. Just like how the environment would influence a baby's development. Many people often relate Off page SEO as link building. And what web-masters want are links which point back to their website. 

As we all know, the Search Engine Optimization field is booming day to day with new inventions and innovations. People may not know that much of what they have learned yesterday will be out of date by tomorrow. Unless one updates his knowledge by reading SEO news/articles, there is no doubt he'll lag back in the SEO race.

Being an SEO Professional, I hereby suggest some the factors that deal with off-page SEO. I found this forum to be the best suited place for sharing. Below is a list of some things most people may be familiar with, but I have also added a few advanced things that you may not know. Try these Advanced Off-Page SEO Strategies to market your website, get ranked in search engines, and to build online reputation (branding) for your company/website so that you can survive in this competitive SEO world.

Note: These things have to be done after the completion of on-page SEO. Before doing these things you must be aware of your competitors who can able build a negative reputation against your company/website.

1). Community Creation in Social Networking Sites

Also known as online reputation management, this is the first and foremost step with which you have to initiate your process. Try to become a member of the most popular social networking sites like Orkut, Myspace, Facebook, Linked In, Ecademy, etc., and create a profile of your own. By doing this you can extend your network online, get connect with your friends, share things with each other, and promote your company/website to build an online reputation. This is most likely the same as Web 2.0 (Participatory Web), which means you have to show your active participation on a regular basis.

2). Blogging

This is one of the most powerful ways to promote your company/website online. Write a blog of your own for your company/website and include lots of unique content. Be precise in what you're trying to convey for the users in your blog entry and promote your blog in blog directories and blog search engines. You can also promote your blog/website by posting comments in other service-related blogs which allow links in the comments section that are crawlable by the search engines (these blogs are commonly identified as Do-Follow Blogs). If you're not very good at writing content for blog posts, hire a guest blogger for your blog and ask him/her to write precise and unique content so that your blog can gain more credit from a search engine point of view.

3). Forum Postings

Create a forum/online discussion board of your own and start a discussion or share topics with your friends. You can also post/reply to a thread in other service-related pre-existing forums that allow links in your signature which can be crawled by the search engines (aka "Do-Follow Forums").






4). Search Engine Submission

Submit your website to the most popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Altavista, Alexa, Alltheweb, Lycos, Excite, etc., to get listed for free.

5). Directory Submission

Many people may say that directory submission is dead. As far as I'm concerned it is still alive. It is purely based on how effectively we are selecting those directories and how efficiently we are choosing the category for submission. Of course, I agree that it gives quite delayed results, but it is worth doing it. Submit your websites to the topmost quality directories like DMOZ, Yahoo Directory, ZoomInfo, One Mission, Pegasus, etc. Nowadays many web directories may offer paid listings but don't go for it.

6). Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is yet another powerful way of promoting your website, but nowadays most people are spamming social bookmarking sites without knowing how to use them. Since content in these websites update frequently, search engines like these types of sites and often visit them (this is commonly termed as Tagsonomy & Folksonomy in Web 2.0). Do some social bookmarking in popular bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Propeller, etc. You should be very careful while doing this and you must properly handle the tags which are very essential to broadcast your news on a wide area network. This may increase your website traffic based on how effectively you have participated.

6). Link Exchange

Exchange links with service-related websites (this is commonly termed as Thematic Link Exchange) that can help increase your link popularity, which is a major factor of Google's PageRank algorithm. Beware of Black-Hats while doing exchanges.

7). Link Baiting

Suppose you have copied/published another website's news or content in your blog/website. Don't forget to place their website link as a reference. Do it for others and, if your content is trustworthy, let others do it for you. This is another way to increase your link popularity.

8). Photo Sharing

Publish/share your website product pictures and make them public. Let your friends see them and comment on them too, which will help drive traffic towards your website. Do this in major photo sharing websites like Flickr, Picasa, Photo Bucket, Picli, etc.






9). Video Promotions

Like with photo sharing, you can publish/share your product videos, expert opinions, and reviews of your product and make them public in YouTube, Metacafe, Dailymotion, etc.

10). Business Reviews

Write reviews about others businesses or ask your friends/clients to write a review of your business in major business review sites like RateitAll, Shvoong, Kaboodle, Stylefeeder, etc. 

11). Local Listings & Yellow Pages

Instead of going global and facing huge competition, make your website local so that search engines can easily view your website and fetch the content. This will help you to reach a targeted audience. Submit your website to Google Local, Maps, Yahoo Local, Yellow Pages, Superpages, Hotfrog, etc. 

12). Article Submission


Write articles of your own and submit them to popular article sites like Ezine, Go Articles, Now Public, Buzzle, etc. This will help you to attain some deep links for your website (though it's usually a slower process).

13). Press Release Promotion

If you are a business/service provider then go for PR submission in popular PR websites like 1888pressrelease, Open PR, PR Leap, etc. This will help you to publish your site in Google News.




14). Classifieds Submission


Do some classifieds submissions to advertise your products for free. Try Craigslist and other major classifieds sites like Kugli, Myspace, iMadespace, Vivastreet, etc. 

15). Social Shopping Network

If you own an e-commerce website, this is a good strategy for advertising and easily branding your products for free. Submit your products to Google Product Search, Yahoo Online Shopping, MSN Online Shopping, and other major social shopping network sites like Kaboodle, Style Feeder, Wists, Five Limes, Buzz Shout, Ohmybuzz, etc.

16). Answers

Participate in Answers by asking and answering relevant questions and placing a link to your website in the source section if necessary. If you don't spam, this is another great way to increase your link popularity (Yahoo Answers, Cha-Cha, Answer Bag, etc.) 

17). Document Sharing

Share your website documents like business documents, information brochures, and slides in Google Docs, Slide Share, etc. This will help you brand your website.

18) CSS, W3C & RSS Directories Submission

If you have a web design site or offer services related to web design, submit your website to CSS and W3C website directories which may drive traffic towards your website. Also submit your website to RSS feed directories which, again, will help you attain more traffic.

To me, Off page optimization mainly deals with marketing and advertising the site but not limit to, link building, guest blog posting, blog commenting, Social media marketing etc.. 

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