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Connecting with Customers through Local search

One of the most paradoxical shifts we currently face is that while global currents are now making it possible for us to conduct business activity with countries that are literally located on the other end of our planet, the search engines are bringing us closer to the communities in which we live and work through powerful local search technology. In our cover story, we explain this recent phenomena and suggest a number of strategies that will help you to position your enterprise in the new age of localized search.

Executive Summary
Many Internet scholars consider local search to be the hottest online trend of the day deserving newsmaker status. In our cover story, we explore:

• The importance and relevance of local search
• How to leverage local search to nurture your bottom line
• How to evolve a hard-hitting geo-targeted local search strategy

Local Search is No More Local
Local search is ubiquitous. It is fully functional on all the major search engines and manifests itself in various ways depending on the depth and level of information available on a local business. The need to intuitively serve up local search results through a process called “clustering” was an issue that the search engines were grappling with and researching as far as ten years ago. It could be implemented only when the overwhelming body of local data and the accompanying algorithm could be streamlined by the major search engines. Depending on the search engine you are using and the amount of cumulative data available about your company, local search results are fully capable of displaying your company’s street address, contact information directions with a map and even the coordinates (latitude and longitude) of your business.

Benefits of a Local Search Presence
Being listed prominently in local search results for your community makes good business sense:

• Your company will be featured at the front of the millions of search results the relevant search phrase might generate
• Increased business and long-term profitability
• Local recognition within your community specially when your friends notice you in Google search engine result pages (SERPs)
• Additional exposure in the front pages of organic search results for free
• Improved access to local community resources such as bank loans and business credit lines from local financial institutions
• Increased possibilities of being featured in your local media and press stories
• Other tangible and intangible benefits that may become apparent only in the future

No Brick and No Mortar for Local Search
What do you do if you do not have a brick-and-mortar store or a publicly accessible office. What if your company location happens to be the home office in your basement? Our recommendation in this regard can be designated as being contrarian in nature. Except for the fact that your online business is not set up to welcome local walk-in business, there is nothing to stop you from doing business locally, specially in major metropolitan cities where the demand and scope of the service you provide just might be more extensive than you think. Use a reliable private mailbox address with a suite number as your address and do not provide topographical data if you have the option. Instead, focus more on your phone number with your local area code as the primary mode of communication and contact with you.

The Two Faces of Local Search
Local search results are currently being displayed by your favorite search engines in two ways:
First, the search engines are displaying local companies in their results when searchers specifically use what is called a “long tail” keyword or key phrase to identify a product or service provider in a specific geographical location. For example, if you are planning to send flowers to your Mom on Mother’s Day and your Mom lives in Los Angeles, it is almost a given that you are going to type:

Los Angeles florist home delivery
Into Google’s search box. This is a perfect example of the perfect local query on a search engine. The search results will feature Los Angeles florists who deliver flowers within the local area almost exclusively. It goes without saying that those LA florists who have prepared themselves to receive this segment of targeted traffic are the ones who will benefit the most from this type of inquiry—an area on which we will focus upon momentarily.

Secondly, the major search engines have recently begun to display search results within the searcher’s area even when the searcher does not key in the name of the city or geographical location in the search box during an online search. For instance, depending on how well-equipped the Google data center of your region is, if you typed “tennis academy” in the Google search box, chances are that Google will first display the names of tennis academies in your city before displaying the names of tennis academies in other parts of your country. How to ride this new, exciting wave of search results? We will tell you in a moment.

Prepping your Company for Local Search
Very few happenstances take place on their own and so you will have to devote a little time and effort to get listed in the local search directories of Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. We will illustrate the procedures of achieving this by using Google. The other search engines use similar processes which you should replicate.

In order to list your company and register it on Google Local Search, visit:

http:// google.com/local/add/businessCenter

and answer all questions. Once you submit the information accurately, you will receive a letter in the mail from Google containing a verification PIN. Follow the instructions in the letter, enter your PIN online and you are done. The entire process may take upward of four months depending on how busy the system is. Moreover, this functionality may not be available in your geographical region. As a part of your supplemental endeavor, be sure to list your business in all the local web directories that serve your city and region. The search engines often aggregate data from these resources.

Once you complete the local listing formalities, you are ready to prep your web site for local search. Your web pages should use local geographical references in your content as keywords. This includes rearticulating your meta data information. If your company happens to be a genuine brick-and-mortar store with an online business presence that generates revenue from out-of-town customers, refer to your community and your neighborhood in your content only on select pages: We recommend that you not give your entire web site a local flavor in the larger interest of preserving your existing online business activity from all parts of the world. Instead, create one or two landing pages exclusively for local search. Sprinkle references to your city and community prominently in your page as well as meta data content. Use long tail keywords that clearly announce your niche, domain and focus areas.

[ If you are particularly keen on being featured in local searches that are initiated by searchers from your own community, we recommend that you set up a second niche web site that is hosted with a dedicated IP address from within your geographical region. Your design firm or SEO company should be able to set this up. Also, make sure that they check your DNS record to ensure that the local elements are properly listed on the DNS record. It is your DNS record that the major search engines use to accurately pinpoint, classify and categorize your web site for local indexing purposes. If you decide to set up a small niche site to cater to the needs of your local community, the content on this site should be original so as to avoid being penalized for duplicate content by the search engines. ]

Web Analytics and Local Search
One of the unexpected benefits of localizing your online presence that has emerged recently is that this enhancement strategy tends to generate highly focused web analytics data. You can determine, for instance, what your conversion rate is from within your community. You can also geo-target your search marketing campaigns and closely monitor your PPC CTRs.

Get Ready for Local Search
If you haven’t included geo-targeting strategies in your online marketing arsenal, it is still not too late. Gain an edge over your competition by being proactive and getting ahead in the race for search prominence and increased search visibility.