I once read an e-book from an internet marketing company that said they created 50 different pages for a local business website.  The idea was to have a targeted page for each town in the coverage area to increase search engine rankings. 

I thought this was a great idea, so I went to work on it immediately.  I mapped out the local towns and created a couple of pages, but soon abandoned the project because it was boring, time-consuming and I was creating ‘hidden pages’ with ‘duplicate content.’ 

But after converting my wife’s property management website to WordPress, I had an alternate strategy.

With WordPress I am able to add a new blog post for each town in our coverage area.  This creates a new page for the search engines to index, with keyword rich URLs.  The content of each post includes zip codes, keywords and links.

This improves our search engine rankings by adding new, relevant content to the site. For smaller, more obscure searches, we are able to dominate the rankings.  If there is a certain area that we want to focus on to get more leads, we can simply write more posts about those particular areas. 

In our case we created Property Management Perspective which is a series of local reports on the towns and neighborhoods in our coverage area.  We give quality insider information on the area and current rental market. 

This strategy can be applied to any type of local business.  The posts should not be hard to write since you already know the area and can give some expert advice.

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I know what you are thinking, I’m an accountant, not a writer, or I’m a roofer, not an author. But, your future customers are online seeking information and you must be able to deliver it.  In the Information Age, writing on a blog can be the most effective way to market your business.

Blogs are considered to be more trustworthy than static web pages.  They allow your business to provide useful information and news, become an authority in your field, express personality, build communities and keep your website ranking high on search engines.

Blogs are naturally search engine friendly because they are constantly updated with new content.  They also allow you to incorporate lots of your keywords in the titles, posts, categories and tags.  Readers can participate with comments and build a community around your business through email and RSS subscriptions.

Having a blog does not have to seem like an impossible task.  It is actually free and easy to set up and update.

WordPress and Blogger are the most popular.  You can go to these sites and create an account, pick out a template and you are ready to go.  The hosting is free on these sites but you can buy the domain name at a place like www.GoDaddy.com so you do not have wordpress or blogspot in your url.

Your content can come from helpful tips you have learned from your experience.  Observations and opinions on the state of your current industry,  Links to local news stories, company news, promotions, tips, etc.

Most businesses offer services that people could do themselves, if they have the resources and wanted to invest the time required to learn how to do it.  Usually hiring a professional will save time and money.  For my wife’s property management company, the strategy I employ is to give away the information for free, and then when they choose to hire a professional, they call us. Example- a new real estate investor read our blog and learned how to buy investment property and manage it.  He would comment on the blog and email me questions.  He was enjoying managing his property until his job transferred him out of state and he could no longer effectively manage it.  Who do you think he called to manage his property?

One tactic is to have your domain as your business name, but then set up the blogs with keyword phrases and links pointing to your main site.This works well for building relevant links to your main site and long term branding.

Don’t think taking on multiple blogs will take up all of your time.  You can use Windows Live Writer to post to all of your blogs from one spot.  Just make sure you change each article so that none of them have duplicate content ( a negative in search engine rankings).  Include links to your main site in the content of your posts with strong anchor text.

Blogs are a great way to connect with your clients, become an expert in your field and a resource for information.  Blogs are also a great way to network with other bloggers in your industry in order to generate referrals and traffic to your site.

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There are MANY different directories on the internet and it is a good idea for the local business owner to get listed on as many of them as possible.  Most of them are free and submitting your listing creates valuable backlinks to your website.  The more backlinks you have the more you increase your search engine optimization and exposure on the internet.

But wouldn’t you be in a better position to Dominate Your Local Market if you owned the directory?

I know that you are an expert in your business and were not planning on launching an online diirectory, but this tactic can be accomplished quickly (about 3 hours) and inexpensively ($10).  Since most of the directories are national, setting up a “locally targeted” directory will put you into a more specific category with less competition.  This will also give you an opportunity to make money anytime someone clicks on the site, regardless of whether they are clicking on your link or your competitors.

For my wife’s local business I went to DevHub and set up a site.  Her company manages properties in Manatee and Sarasota County, Florida, so I expanded it to Southwest Florida Property Managers.  Then, I created a page for each of the cities in the region (you get unlimited pages) and added local listings for each page.  The listings are affiliate links for SuperPages so they are really pay per click ads.  I included a few pictures, but gave her company premium listings at the top right of the pages for the cities she covers.  This creates a premium advertisement for her business and more links back to her website. I also added a page where businesses can purchase a premium listing for $19.99 for six months.  This can be set up easily with a paypal subscribe button and is essentially a way for your competitors to buy advertising from you.

You still have to build a few links to the new directory, but this can be done on bookmarking or social media sites.  You also should buy the domain with keywords that will rank high for the local category.

By using this tactic you create a site where you generate leads for your business, create relevant links to your company website, make money when someone clicks on a competitor’s link or when you sell a premium advertisement.

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Yes, this is one of the more cutthroat tactics, but the internet is still ‘the wild west’ and you need to leverage every opportunity possible to compete locally.  If you are optimizing your website, you probably have a few “GIANTS” in your category that always dominate the top of the search results.  They have been around forever and probably have huge advertising budgets.  Fortunately for you, the internet is quickly leveling the playing field for the “little guy” to compete. 

The local GIANT’s big advertising dollars allow them to place ads on many offline advertising mediums, such as television, radio and print to establish and promote their brand.  However, with the growing importance and convenience of the internet, the purpose of their offline advertising is simply to direct customers online where they can take action. 

Naturally this is going to produce searches where consumers are specifically searching for their business name.  So why not leverage their offline advertising budget and show up in their search results?  In local search this can be done relatively easily as  competition for these searches is non-existent.

What you can do is include variations of the competitor’s business name in the meta data or keywords for your site.  This will not appear on your website but the search engines will pick it up.  This will help optimize your site for searches of your competitors.  If you are right there when people search, those that want to compare services or “shop around” will visit your site and give you a shot at their business. 

Have you ever decided to do business with a company, but to ensure you were making the right choice you did some investigation?  You probably searched for the company name,  the company name + reviews, + scam or + news.  If you have optimized your site to include these keyword phrases, these types of consumers will find you and you will have the opportunity to capitalize on any doubts they have.  You can also leverage the fact that you are not a GIANT company, but a successful small company built on customer service and developing strong relationships with clients.

Some other tactics for finding keywords that will bring you more leads: 

• Include some common misspellings of your keywords.  You can get ideas here
• Put keywords in quotation marks and you will rank higher when people use quotation marks in their searches for your keywords
• Use the Google Adwords free keyword tool

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Whenever I am searching for something local, I will usually include my zip code in the search.  This is because I want to find the location of the product or service closest to me, for convenience.  As a local business, I would want the zip codes that my local business covers on my website, so that my website shows up in search rankings for all of the zip codes I cover.  But, after checking out competing websites I found that zip codes other than their business address were not covered.  Adding a “Zip Cloud” to your site will help you rank higher for local searches.

In order to get the zip codes in you can add them to your keywords, or you could have a page or column with a list of zip codes, but something I have found that works better is actually having them within the content of my website.  On most blogs they have a tag cloud, with keywords that they want to optimize for and they are usually grouped together in a “cloud” of words.  I applied this technique to the local business website in a paragraph at the bottom of the content on each of the landing pages.  This lists the cities and zip codes in content form and is shaded to a lighter color so that it is not prominent on the page.  I made some of the words bigger and some bold.

Example:

34216 Anna Maria 34201 Bradenton 34202 34203 34204 34205 34206 Lakewood Ranch 34207 34208 34228 Myakka City 34251 Oneco 34264 Palmetto 34220 34221 Parrish 34219 Sarasota 34260 34270 Terra Ceia 34250 34209 34210 34211 34212 34280 3428 Bradenton Beach 34217 Cortez 34215 Ellenton 34218 Holmes Beach 34218 Longboat Key

In tests I found that when I would search for my keywords with a specific zip code, the local website would rank first, because having the specific zip code in the content makes it the most relevant.  This is a great way to make sure your website is optimized for all of your coverage areas and you can easily dominate some of the more obscure searches.

You can also use some of the zip codes or towns to create links to other pages on your site. This utilizes good anchor text to create a link to your most important pages.  This will help with your on-page optimization and internal linking structure, which helps your search engine optimization overall.

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