There are a number of things you can do to help the search engines properly list your business or website prominently in their local search results.
- Use your City and State in the name of the site/blog title
- Use your City and State in article or posts titles
- List your phone number with area code on a contact or about us page
- Use your business name, address, city, state and full phone number in the footer of every page.
If you are geo targeting a business location using keywords in the proper locations on the site you will rank better as well. You can use the Google AdWords tool to research the exact searches for your city and state.
Here are a few things to keep in mind ;
- The city name usually gets more searches.
- City and full state name (ex. Denver Colorado) will get the second highest volume.
- City and state abbreviated (ex. Denver CO) will usually be used in search a lot less but is highly targeted and has less competition.
So let’s say you are a Ski Shop in Vail Colorado.
Since there is only one city named Vail in the US that is synonymous with skiing, the search term “vail ski shop” would turn out to be a good keyword phrase to use.
But let’s say you are a criminal lawyer in Hamilton, Mississippi. There are other cities named Hamilton in places like Ontario Canada, Montana and Ohio.
In a case like this “hamilton mississippi criminal lawyer” would probably turn out to be the best keyword phrase to use in the title of your site/blog articles.
In the case of your local business listing with the search engines including keywords in your business title will help also help you rank better. But remember: if you try to stuff TOO many keywords into your business title, the search engines will find out about it and penalize your business.
All of this is to say:
The potential to attract new customers via Local Search is enormous.
1 (source – David Mihm)
2 (source – Chris Lang – Gwave Mastery)
