By nature (and in fact by its very name) the World Wide Web is a global medium. However, far too many people forget that we very rarely shop globally. For the most part we shop locally and webmasters should not forget to leverage the local market.
People who perform local searches are often far more highly qualified leads, much more inclined to buy straight away than people searching globally. Think about it, if you search for ‘latest flat screen TV’ you are conducting research, whereas when your research is complete and you are ready to buy you will probably search for ‘flatscreen TV retainers in Manchester’ (or equivalent). In relative terms, which search would it be most beneficial for you as a retailer to appear in the results of?
How To Begin a Local Search Strategy
If you have a business, you already appear in any number of local, online listings so make sure you find them, claim them and keep your details up-to-date. Simply completing your details, for free, on the business centres for Google and other major engines could get your found locally. There are also other, lower tier directories that will list your company so make sure that, at the very least, your details are compete and correct on all of them.
If you want to take this a step further (and you should) you can optimize your listings by squeezing them for every last drop of value. Enter as many categories as you can, input all the detail that you are allowed, using keywords and links when possible. Much of this is free or very low cost and well worth spending the short amount of time required.
Keep Your Local Strategy Working
For the long term, implement analytics software (if you haven’t already) and track where traffic is coming from. If you are receiving quality visits from a free local directory then it may be worth upgrading to their paid option for added visibility. If they allow customer reviews, as many local sites do, then encourage customer reviews to improve trust.
There are any number of ways to improve your visibility locally but the main point to take away is ‘remember your local market’. Everything from reading your local newspaper to reading online reviews for your local competitors will provide you with new ideas and improve the depth of your local campaign.
