The Importance of Local Search Marketing
The Internet is becoming increasingly localized, meaning customers are now searching online for products and services in their own geographic location. New digital technologies are coming online every day to make local search easier and more powerful. Savvy businesses are making the most of their marketing dollars by targeting customers based on their customers’ locations. The data shows that over 30% of the 4 billion major search engine web searches every month are for local products and services. Location-based paid search campaigns are a cost effective means for small and medium sized businesses to target very specific locations.
Local Search Marketing Explained
Local Search Marketing is a process to optimize websites for location-based organic search and establish credentials as a bona-fide local company.
The pre-Internet analog of Local Search was the Yellow Pages and at that time, that’s all there had been. In today’s digital age, web search providers (such as Google Maps) rely on a very large number of directory services to ascertain the relevance of you business during a location-based web search. For this reason, companies need to establish and maintain free listings at scores of directories. These listings must include business categories consistent with overall search engine optimization strategies.
Choosing a Local Search Marketing Provider
Search engine providers continue to innovate and new features continuously come to market. A local search marketing provider must be aware of these changes and be ready to help your company remain relevant to users of these technologies. For instance, Google has recently added a feature to allow businesses to display photo and video thumbnails on the map next to the company’s listing. Companies that use this feature will stand out against the rest.
A provider must also have the expertise to optimize the website for the company’s location including the domain/web page URL, meta title and meta descriptions tags, dedicated pages that display the company name address, and maps of the company’s location, and linking from authority sites, etc.
Our Digital Marketing Specialists at NetEdge Marketing have years of experience creating a local presence on the Internet for businesses large and small.