Local Search Is Coming - Is Your Site Ready?
Google Local has arrived, which allows users to enter
geographic search terms, and get results with physical
street address and phone number, along with a MapQuest map
and related links. Yahoo! launched SmartView in March, which is integrated
with Yahoo! Maps and provides information on nearby
businesses such as restaurants, hotels, discount stores. Verizon's SuperPages.com now allows small businesses to
target consumers in a geographic region, and pay only when
visitors click through to their site. AOL's "In Your Area" local search function allows users to
look for business listings, entertainment and events
nearby. Notice a trend? Almost 40% of Internet searches are for local goods and
services. If yours is a local business with mostly local
clientele, you need to make sure your web site is optimized
for your local market. Although local search technology is still evolving, there
are some things you can do to increase your chances of
being found by local consumers: - List the physical address of your business on your web
pages, preferably near the top
- Include city and state/province location in your meta
description and title tags, i.e. < meta name="title"
content="Coffee News Fort Bend: Affordable Local
Advertising">
- Use location information in the site's content, both
within the body of the text and in links to other other
local businesses or places of interest. Keyword rich
content should now include geo-location information.
- Use location info in your heading tags, i.e. < h1>Coffee
News Fort Bend: Affordable Local Advertising for Small
Business< /h1>
- Gigablast.com recommends adding geosensitive meta tags, i.e.
meta name="zipcode" content="77459,77479,77478?
meta name="city" content="Sugar Land, Missouri City, Stafford"
meta name="state" content="Texas"
meta name= "county" content="Fort Bend"
meta name="country" content="United States, USA, United States of America" - Visit http://geourl.com and learn how to add a GeoURL
tag to your site. This is a tag that gives the longitude
and latitude of your location, for example:
Sure, it's a long shot, but what the heck...
As local search evolves, we'll find out more about how
search engines determine location. In the meantime, local
businesses that can be easily found via the search engines
will be ahead of the pack, and it will be that much harder
for the competition to catch up.
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