Best Techniques to Generate Local Traffic from the Search Engines



by Beverley Estep


Local SEO is currently the hot trend in search engine marketing because it provides business owners with great response. This article talks about local SEO that will help you out.

One of the simplest methods you can use for local SEO is writing optimized classified ads. This is a simple way to take advantage of local search efforts because the big search engines really like those kinds of sites and the more you use them the more likely it is that you can send targeted local traffic to your business's website. Craigslist should be your starting point because it is the most popular of all of the classified websites. Posting SEO'd ads on Craigslist regularly is something that you need to do. You need to make sure you target your ads to your chosen market. Make sure that the ad is not loud and that it is as simple as possible. When you write your ads you should focus on your title because this is what will get people to read it. The keyword phrase and your city and state should be included in the title. Be as careful with your Craigslist ad as you are with your landing page because, typically, the ad will outrank the actual site in the search engine rankings. The main goal you should have when you use Craigslist is sending targeted traffic to your website, which is just good strategy. Apart from that, you can use USFreeAds, which doesn't work as well as Craigslist, but nevertheless it can give you a good response since it is a well ranked classified oriented site. What you need to do is send traffic specifically to your best offer through these classifieds sites (though piggy backing off of those sites traffic is also an option).

If you've used SEO for quite some time, you know how important the title tag is. When you're first starting out with SEO, you'll find yourself wanting to ignore the title tag, but that's the worst thing you can do if you want to rank well. If you hope to get the most out of local SEO, you need to pay attention to the title tag. One great part about going after local searches is that the competition is much scarcer than if you were to use keywords that were more broad.

It's important to have distinct landing pages if your business has more than one location. For local listings, don't try to create more than one targeted listing for a single business, though if there are several locations there's nothing wrong with targeting each separate location. But you need to make sure that each of the location links back to a landing page that is about that particular location and whatever is being offered in relation to it. You don't want to have multiple local listings pointing at the same landing page or the site's main page, as this would make things unclear. It's important to make everything clear to your prospects, and distinct landing pages accomplish this. This is one of those seemingly small points that can make a real difference.

A simple SEO tip that is obvious is linking up with the locals. A large part of local marketing is becoming known and networking with others in your area. One of your most most helpful resources as a local business with a website are quality links back to your site from respected groups, businesses and organizations in your own area. The search engines favor sites with a good number of quality backlinks, and getting links from prestigious local sites is the way to get your site highly ranked for location based keywords. It gives a green signal to the search engines and makes your journey even easier. When it comes to getting backlinks, it's always more helpful to get a few quality ones than many lesser ones. While getting links from local bloggers won't do you that much good, one or two from high status groups in your area can do a lot.

In conclusion, local SEO is the way to go if you want more exposure, period..




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