A recent PEW Internet survey reports that people are increasingly using the Internet, search engines, specialty websites and social networks to search for local businesses.

In the Fast Company article, E.B. Boyd summed it up nicely, “Not being online today is the equivalent in earlier eras of not having a storefront or a Yellow Pages listing. It’s effectively impossible for potential customers to find you.”

In this post we offer a definition, additional reasons why it’s important to optimize and ten tips to ensure that businesses can be found through local searches.

First Things First: Local Search Defined

Local search is the use of specialized Internet search engines that allow users to submit geographically constrained searches against a structured database of local business listings. Typical local search queries include not only information about “what” the site visitor is searching for (such as keywords, a business category, or the name of a consumer product) but also “where” information, such as a street address, city name, postal code, or geographic coordinates like latitude and longitude. Examples of local searches include “Hong Kong hotels”, “Manhattan restaurants”, and “Dublin Hertz”.
(from Wikipedia)

Why Optimize for Local Search?

As Corey Eridon points out in a recent post:

• Approximately 3 billion search queries contain local terms every month;
• 70% of online searchers will use local search to find offline businesses;
• 20% of Google searches are for local information.

How Businesses Can Get Found in Local Search

1. Website Tags
Make your website work for you locally
– add your location to the title tag and meta-tag descriptions  of your website, add contact information with name, full address, and list a phone number with a local area code (vs. an 800 or toll free).

2. Organic Search
Use local keywords you want to target; business type and city, city and state, street, zipcode, address and phone number. e.g. office supply, Boston, MA; office supply, Boylston Street, Boston, MA; office supply, Boston, MA 02116; office supply, Boylston Street, Boston, MA (617) 315-1234.

3. Pay Per Click Search Engine Advertising
If you’re willing to go the route of paid search engine advertising, also known as pay per click (PPC), advertising you can capture additional leads from online searches e.g. Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. Keep it mind though that some are finding programs on Google AdWords to be difficult to navigate and as a result, Google launched a “lite” version of AdWords called “AdWords Express,” that’s touted as being “both easier to understand and faster to use. And last spring, it introduced free phone support to help AdWords customers learn to use the product. That service is now available in about 70 countries around the world.”

PPC results are shown first in search listing

4. Google Places
Google Places is key for local businesses. They are free pages that are listed within google search results right after AdWords listings, but before organic search results. As we discussed in an earlier post, Google Places may very well be one of the best kept secrets and something that local businesses who aren’t already using will greatly benefit from. The pages are linked to maps and directions, details about the business (transit, prices, hours, reviews) and space for photos and videos, and opportunities to create coupons for customers.

Create an effective Google Places pages by adding photos and videos, writing interesting copy, completing all categories, encouraging customers to review you, adding coupons, and keeping your listing up-to-date.

5. Mobile Friendly Sites
Create a mobile-friendly site by creating a site that eliminates flash, pop-ups, simplifies complex navigation structures, limits the amount of information listed on each page and is optimized for quick loading. 
Research from Omniture found that “mobile-optimized experiences produced an average 75% higher rate of engagements per visit for mobile users.” More importantly, well-designed mobile-ready sites focus on providing the mobile user what they need on the go like phone number and address.

6. Get Listed
Submit company profile data to local directories (e.g. YellowPages.com, SuperPages.com, etc.) One easy way to get started is through, Get Listed where you can quickly see which sites you may have already claimed your page on and by clicking on the link, you can add your business info to better optimize your social search.

If you’re looking for even more directories, Eric Vreeland at Hubspot has compiled a list of 50 business directories for  local marketing.

Results from a Get Listed search

7. Photos
Use a range of different kinds of photos e.g. on Google Places, your website, blog, to show your business and surroundings (e.g. winter, summer, indoor, outdoor, employees, special events, serious and more fun types of shots, too).

8. Pinterest for Local SEO
Chris Silver Smith offers some unique tips for using Pinterest for Local SEO
–”Set up boards using your city name, collect pics about your area (such as Dallas), and name a Board after your business type, products or services.”

9. Participate on social media platforms

As Sean Daily suggests you can use your Facebook fan page, Twitter profile, Foursquare brand page etc. to motivate customers to rate and review your business. Leverage the potency of YouTube by embedding video clips on your Google Place page and public profile pages, and give social media active customers advertising and marketing incentives for discounts on products or services.

10. Blog
You can use your business blog to write about people and events in your local community, making sure to use local keywords in the necessary places e.g. headings, title, tags, keywords, body of the text, etc.

What are you doing to get your business found on local searches? Tell us about your experiences.

MORE: Check out our post, Local Business Marketing: 3 Strategies to Leverage Engagement for more ideas!

photo credit: Ed Yourdon via photopin cc