Your Local Business Can Benefit From A Website
Don't Think Because Your Business Is Local, You Don't Need A Site
That's a classic mistake. Often, a local business, serving a specific geographic area, can benefit enormously from having a website. A successful "local" websites depends on two factors -- creating a compelling site, and promoting it properly. Of the two, the second factor is the one that is most often overlooked.
Find Out About Search Engine Optimization Before You Build Your Site
A website that is not built with search engines in mind will probably not succeed very well in the search engines. You need to begin by thinking about how your prospective customers will look for a site such as yours. This is called "keyword research." Make a list of likely terms. For example, if you own a catering business in Denver, Colorado, you will use terms like "catering, Colorado", "caterer, Denver", "catering firm, Denver County", "event planning, Colorado", and so forth. Note that in each "keyword phrase" there is a geographic component. This is the secret weapon of local search engine optimization. By focusing in on your own geographic area (as your customer will) you are filtering out more than 99% of all other websites. This factor makes it very likely that your site can rank well for your chosen search terms.
Plan Your Website Pages Around Your Search Terms
Sure, you want to write your webpages for your customer. But this does not mean that you can't include the keywords you need. Start by mapping out your site. You may want to include a home page, a services page, an "about us" page, and a contact page, as an example of a small site. Take your list of keywords (or key phrases, more likely) and rank them in importance. Allocate two or three key phrases to each page of your site, with your most important phrases on your home page. Then, when you write the copy for each page, simply include your key phrases in important locations on the page, such as headers, or sub-heads, or in bullets. Make sure to sprinkle references to your geographic service area around the page, and always put your full address at the bottom of each page. Your keyphrases for each page should also be placed in the title tag for each page.
Promote The Site While Building Links
Now that you have built your site, you need to let people know it is there. If you pursue a simple plan of inexpensive link building, this will accomplish two goals -- it will attract traffic and it will help your search engine ranking. For local businesses, there are lots of ways to build links to your site. A good place to start is by looking for local directories. You can search on something like "directories, Colorado," to get started. Many of these directories only accept local businesses, so you are joining an exclusive club! Another idea is to do the same type of thing for your industry. You might search on "directories, Catering," for example. For more ideas on how to get free links to your site, see our article on link building.
Easy Ways To Get In The Search Engines
You can let the major search engines know about your site in less than five minutes. Go to FreeWebSubmission and follow the easy directions, and you'll be submitted to everywhere you need to be. The days when you needed to pay to submit, or submit to thousands of search engines, are long gone. Don't fall for scams that suggest otherwise. Next, you can register your site with Google Local and Yahoo! Local. Google Local is free, while you can get a nice, enhanced listing from Yahoo! Local for $9.95 a month. That's great value, since both these search engine behemoths are putting a lot of muscle behind their local listings, and it will give you good exposure.
Keep Up The Promotion
The best way to keep up the exposure level of your website is to keep promoting it, a bit at a time. If you set aside just a couple of hours a month to look for links from directories, for example, it will help your site a lot. Any time you see a supplier, or vendor, or even a friend who has a website, don't hesitate to ask for a link. (It is only a worthwhile link if it comes from a related, and good quality site, however). Keep up with a select few blogs or forums, and you'll learn a lot. And always remember -- if it sounds too good to be true, it most definitely is!
Technorati Tags: internet marketing, SEO, links,
online promotion, search engine optimization, website promotion, small business
That's a classic mistake. Often, a local business, serving a specific geographic area, can benefit enormously from having a website. A successful "local" websites depends on two factors -- creating a compelling site, and promoting it properly. Of the two, the second factor is the one that is most often overlooked.
Find Out About Search Engine Optimization Before You Build Your Site
A website that is not built with search engines in mind will probably not succeed very well in the search engines. You need to begin by thinking about how your prospective customers will look for a site such as yours. This is called "keyword research." Make a list of likely terms. For example, if you own a catering business in Denver, Colorado, you will use terms like "catering, Colorado", "caterer, Denver", "catering firm, Denver County", "event planning, Colorado", and so forth. Note that in each "keyword phrase" there is a geographic component. This is the secret weapon of local search engine optimization. By focusing in on your own geographic area (as your customer will) you are filtering out more than 99% of all other websites. This factor makes it very likely that your site can rank well for your chosen search terms.
Plan Your Website Pages Around Your Search Terms
Sure, you want to write your webpages for your customer. But this does not mean that you can't include the keywords you need. Start by mapping out your site. You may want to include a home page, a services page, an "about us" page, and a contact page, as an example of a small site. Take your list of keywords (or key phrases, more likely) and rank them in importance. Allocate two or three key phrases to each page of your site, with your most important phrases on your home page. Then, when you write the copy for each page, simply include your key phrases in important locations on the page, such as headers, or sub-heads, or in bullets. Make sure to sprinkle references to your geographic service area around the page, and always put your full address at the bottom of each page. Your keyphrases for each page should also be placed in the title tag for each page.
Promote The Site While Building Links
Now that you have built your site, you need to let people know it is there. If you pursue a simple plan of inexpensive link building, this will accomplish two goals -- it will attract traffic and it will help your search engine ranking. For local businesses, there are lots of ways to build links to your site. A good place to start is by looking for local directories. You can search on something like "directories, Colorado," to get started. Many of these directories only accept local businesses, so you are joining an exclusive club! Another idea is to do the same type of thing for your industry. You might search on "directories, Catering," for example. For more ideas on how to get free links to your site, see our article on link building.
Easy Ways To Get In The Search Engines
You can let the major search engines know about your site in less than five minutes. Go to FreeWebSubmission and follow the easy directions, and you'll be submitted to everywhere you need to be. The days when you needed to pay to submit, or submit to thousands of search engines, are long gone. Don't fall for scams that suggest otherwise. Next, you can register your site with Google Local and Yahoo! Local. Google Local is free, while you can get a nice, enhanced listing from Yahoo! Local for $9.95 a month. That's great value, since both these search engine behemoths are putting a lot of muscle behind their local listings, and it will give you good exposure.
Keep Up The Promotion
The best way to keep up the exposure level of your website is to keep promoting it, a bit at a time. If you set aside just a couple of hours a month to look for links from directories, for example, it will help your site a lot. Any time you see a supplier, or vendor, or even a friend who has a website, don't hesitate to ask for a link. (It is only a worthwhile link if it comes from a related, and good quality site, however). Keep up with a select few blogs or forums, and you'll learn a lot. And always remember -- if it sounds too good to be true, it most definitely is!
Technorati Tags: internet marketing, SEO, links,
online promotion, search engine optimization, website promotion, small business
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2 Comments:
That's solid and current advice.
That's great advice, But I would add some location specific information as well.
Now with the advent of geographic search interfaces (Yahoo maps, Google maps, Windows Live local) it's becoming increasingly important to include geographic information. This will enable your website to be found on Map based searches. I wrote about this in greater detail in my blog post "location, location, location". You need to look into geotagging and geoRSS for further details.
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