Every website wants to attract local traffic. Sure, maybe that isn’t the case for some like Rotten Tomatoes (movie reviews) or TIME Magazine, but I’ll bet half my life’s savings that every blogger or small business website out there is eager to gain the attention of a local townsfolk or two.
Why is that? Because local traffic brings business and generates sales.
Making your website visible on local search engines becomes easier once you know what to do and where to begin. Without further ado, let’s start the process of exploding your website traffic by…
1. Adding your business to the Google Local Business Center
Google is the world’s most popular search engine. It is now a household name. Why wouldn’t anyone want to make their website “Google-friendly”?When you create a local business listing on Google, you 1) put yourself within reach of every person who uses Google, 2) allow Google to show your exact location through Google Maps, 3) display your website as a search hit and 4) create printable coupons for your customers to avail when they hire your services.
2. Putting your city and state as title meta tags of your webpages
Most if not all search engines pay particular attention to the title meta tags of webpages they search for. It’s just how search engines are designed. Knowing this, if you want to improve your website’s local search visibility, you should include your city/province and state (ex. Calgary, Alberta) in the title meta tags of your homepage as well as other important webpages you wish to draw attention to.3. Adding a local number and full mailing address on every webpage
An 800 number is fine, but thing is it doesn’t give any hints to your location. So an 800 number by itself is pretty much incomplete.Adding your full mailing address and local number at the bottom of every webpage achieves two things – first it improves your local search visibility and second, it’s easier and more convenient for visitors to obtain your contact information.
4. Building quality inbound links to your website
The long-term goal of every internet marketer—that is, small business owners and service professionals marketing their services online—is to build a library of quality links that directs visitors from other websites to yours.Take note this isn’t a case of quantity as it is a continuous effort over the years as long as your website is running. Search engines see inbound links as a sign of influence—a sort of “thumbs up” sign. The more links directed toward your website, the better you’ll rank on most search engines.
5. Attracting good (and bad) reviews
Review websites like Yelp help increase your local visibility.Create a business listing on Yelp. Then write something like “I’d love to hear your comments/feedback” on your contact page followed by a link to your Yelp business listing.
The thing with a near-perfect review record is that some people tend to become suspicious. So welcome bad reviews as you do positive ones. No company is perfect. Even Apple has its haters.
The problem with small business owners and service professionals who want to attract local traffic is they tend to look for solutions in all the wrong places.
If you want for people to find you on the Internet, you got to start at the place where everybody goes when they want to find anything on the Internet – the search engine.
About Jon Orana
