Local Search Engine Marketing
Virtual every business, large or small, requires new leads and new customers in order to grow. Yes, you can continue to increase revenue from existing customers, but for most companies there is a limit to that. So, how do you get new leads and customers?
Today, there are more options available to businesses, particularly small local businesses, than ever before. Let’s face it, the printed version of the Yellow Pages, which was the “Go To” resource for many, many years is quickly becoming a relic. people are searching for everything from pizza to plumbers online. They are doing this from their smart phones, tablets, notebook computers and their home desktop computer. More and more small businesses that draw the majority of their customers from a 10 or so mile radius around their location are discovering local search engine marketing is the best way to find new customers and increase their profits. To do this, you first need a website.
Your website doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Just a basic site is fine. There are many freelance designers who can get a complete site up and running for a few hundred dollars. Once the site is up, it is time to get visitors to it and then get them to take the desired action. This means hiring a person or company that specializes in local search engine marketing
How To Successfully Use Local Search Engine Marketing
There are several ways to get involved in promoting a small business online. One of the easiest and fastest ways is by using what is known as Pay-per-Click advertising. These are the ads that appear on the side of the search engine results pages (such as Google or Bing). They are triggered by the specific words that the person typed in while searching. While this is a very fast way to drive traffic to your website site, it can be expensive and there is a bit of a learning curve involved in doing pay-per-click well. But you only pay for the ad when someone clicks on the advertisement to visit your website.
A second method of driving traffic to your website is to get it ranked on the first page of the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. This method is known as Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Local Search Engine Marketing(SEM). Using this method, a search engine optimization specialist will perform a variety of tasks that are all designed to get your website to the top of the search engines when people type in specific search phrases. A good SEO expert will do a considerable amount of keyword research to find out what the “buyer keywords” are for the client’s particular market. For example if your business is a dental office, one of the “buyer keywords” for that market would be “emergency dentists in [town name]“. This search says a lot about the person. It indicates that they have an immediate need (problem) that they want to solve. It also tells us that they are ready to spend money to solve that problem. A search like “choosing a dentist” is called a “research keyword”. The searching is after information and is not ready to spend money.
The organic or natural search results are clicked on about 3-4 times as often as the paid advertisements. So a top 5 ranking for “emergency dentists in [town name]” is worth a lot of money because of the potential traffic it can generate to your site. The downside of local search engine marketing is that it takes time to perform all the necessary tasks to get a top ranking. The time needed varies from market to market, but anywhere from 30-60 days is a good benchmark for starting to see some results.
The future for the hundreds of thousands of small owner/operator businesses around the country is online local search engine marketing. Businesses that embrace local search engine marketing will prosper.
