5 Tips to Increase Exposure of Local Search

If you have typed in your industry into the Google or Yahoo search engine, you have seen the Local Search results for your competitors.  Having you company listed in local search is essential to receiving the future customers who are looking for your direct business.  If you don’t have your company listed, people will just find your competitors.

Local search results show above organic listings in Google’s search engine for GEO targeted searches of local businesses

As the following is a list of tips for increasing your ability to show up in the top local search results, we will not cover any more spam techniques that I feel will eventually get you caught and your company’s listing removed.  I highly don’t recommend using fake phone numbers or addresses to cheat the system.

5 Tips to Increase Exposure of Local Search

1. Links: as with all SEO one way inbound links still rule as it comes to the importance of your website.  Google knows how many links are pointing to your domain and will use this to rank those company’s listings that have more powerful sites.
2. City Keywords: if there is one city that you want to show up for then add those into your title of your company (example “Phoenix Authority SEO).  Be careful with this as you don’t want to look spammy and it can hurt your ability to show in other suburbs where people could be searching for your products or services
3. Reviews: Local search offers reviews of your business.  Send a link to customers or business partners who can give you a favorable third party review.  The number of reviews is important as well.  A company with 4 starts and 100 reviews looks better than a company with 5 stars and 3 reviews.
4. Location: as best as possible get your business address as close to downtown as possible.  If you notice the local search results that rank the highest have geo centric location to downtown.  You can get a PO box downtown to use as your business address.
5. Categories: take the time to get into the right categories.  Local search works like the Yellow Pages so it is vital you are in the right category for your business.