Local SEO matters because it gets your website in front of customers who are searching for businesses in their city or region. Unlike general search rankings, local SEO focuses on showing your site at the top of results when people look for nearby services, products, or business listings. That direct visibility is what drives calls, visits, and sales for local companies.
Who performs local searches?
Before trying to rank locally, you need to understand who is doing the searching. Local search is dominated by two types of customers: people who search for a business using a specific city or region, and people who search for services or products located within a specific city or region.
Of these searchers, some arrive at a website directly, some use a search engine like Google, and some use specialized local listing directories. Knowing where your audience comes from helps you decide whether local SEO will be effective for your business.
Why Google Places and Yahoo! Local matter
When people search local listings, they usually want businesses in that region. Someone looking for local dentists is likely to search through both Google Places and Yahoo! Local. Google is likely to show the top ten websites by selecting “business directories” at the top of the search results.
The question is whether those are genuinely the top ten sites, and if so, why they show first. Using local SEO strategies makes the answer clear: when consumers say they want to find a dentist, they type “dentist,” followed by the city name, then the state, then the zip code. With those parameters, the search engines display local businesses in each of those areas, giving the searcher options to pick from.
How city-name URLs change results
The other way of looking up an address is to use a city’s name to search for businesses there. This method works, but there is one problem. Because Google, Yahoo! Local, and MSN Live Search are powered by the Google search engine, these results are highly ranked. If someone searches with “Google places” as the search string, the local services being displayed are unlikely to show at the top because they come from the outside of that listing block.
One workaround is to include the city name within the URL. Instead of searching for a dentist in Cleveland, Ohio, you could type “cheap dentisit” as the search string. By putting the city name inside the domain, searchers see the local businesses listed first, and because search engines count this in the results, those pages rank higher on the search engine pages.
What local SEO does for a new business
Local SEO can help you get local customers and visitors, which is useful for a new business. It also helps with SEO rankings and local advertising. You do not want a website that ranks high for a keyword but receives too few visits to justify paying for ads on that keyword. Many local SEO firms also handle website design and build the site itself, since most people use internet marketing to create a website.
FAQ
Who performs local searches?
Two types of customers dominate local search: those who search using a specific city or region, and those who search for services or products located within a specific city or region.
Why do Google Places and Yahoo! Local appear at the top of local results?
Google is likely to show the top ten websites by selecting “business directories” at the top of the search results, and because Google, Yahoo! Local, and MSN Live Search are powered by the Google search engine, those directory listings tend to rank highly for city-based queries.
How can including a city name in a URL help local rankings?
Putting a city name inside the domain causes searchers to see the local businesses listed first, and because search engines count this in the results, those pages appear higher on the search engine pages.
