Local Search Marketing
Local search is rapidly
becoming a critical component to success for any
small business. It doesn't matter if you own a restaurant, a
florist shop, a health club or even if
you're a pet sitter, dentist, lawyer, auto mechanic or real estate
agent. All of these businesses are finding it more
difficult to get new local customers to come on board.
These small business owners are also finding that the traditional advertising
vehicles that they have relied on for years just aren't as effective anymore. On the other hand online searches continue to surge
from increasingly savvy local customers who are turning to the
internet to find goods and services in your local area.
We have dealt with many entrepreneurs who are either too busy to devote the necessary resources or they don't know where
to turn when it comes to dealing with leveraging the internet. Link Juice understands
where you are coming from and more importantly what needs to
be done to drive high converting leads into your
businesses.
What is Local Search?
Maybe you've heard a
little bit about local search but you aren't exactly sure
what it is. Recent research has shown that over
50% of all online searches are from potential
customers searching for local goods and services.
To illustrate this as simply as possible - local search is the
map of businesses in the area (neighborhood, town or city) that provide the
service or goods that the searcher is seeking.
Ideally you want your "local ad" to be in the top five positions in the
local map box to greatly increase your chances of getting
found. Now depending on your area, you do not necessarily need a website for your business to show on
your local map but it does greatly increase your odds.
Now again this is a very simple explanation as organic
and paid search can also play instrumental roles in driving potential business. Having these additional
listings on the page (with one listing coming from the
local search box) greatly improves your chances of getting
clicked on and driving more traffic from potential
customers to either your website or to your phone.
Here are some of the typical questions that we receive from
small business owners interested in local search:
- What has to be done to
get my business to appear on the map?
- What is the local
business center?
- How come some of my
competition shows up multiple times on a page?
- I've added my business to the local business center but I am on the fifth page - how do I get to the first page?
- What exactly is local
search?
- Do I need to be on Yahoo and MSN local search also?
Now if you have the time and energy, you can DIY and spend a
tremendous amount of time researching all of these questions
and reading through tons of information on what each of
these particular pieces of the puzzle are. You would then
need to experiment on many of these to find out what works
and what doesn't until you get
it where you think that it's right.
Or you can go to somebody that has a deep understanding of
how the local search process operates.
We can support your DIY efforts and answer all your questions and help guide you through this
somewhat complicated process or we can do the heavy lifting
for you --- whichever you prefer. We also stay very in tune
with local search so that we are able to quickly see when
the search engines (and Google in particular) have altered their local search algorithms causing
everything to shift. We can then quickly do an
local search tune-up to keep you humming along.
Are Traditional
Advertising Vehicles Like the Local Newspaper and Yellow
Pages Dead?
What we have found is that business owners who have been
around for quite some time are seeing rapidly diminishing returns on these marketing investments.
Newspaper advertising costs are continuing to rise and fewer
customers are coming from the yellow pages, FSI and Val-Pak types of programs. These vehicles while not dead certainly appear to be dying.
We have seen local yellow page advertising costs range from $40 a month in
smaller towns to over $1,000 a month in a larger metropolitan
area. And this is just for one yellow page book! How many books do you have to advertise in? And as many smart business owners tell us: "It isn't what you spend it's what you get that matters. I would gladly spend twice as much if it works!"
Does this sound like you?
Do you know how much ROI
you are getting from these traditional advertising vehicles?
Meanwhile local search marketing is evolving at a lightening pace and
the way that potential customers are looking for goods and
services is continuing to change with it. We are able to build affordable small
business websites that are well designed, have
fully optimized content
that ensure that your pages rank for both long tail as well
as the important short head keyword phrases. With our SEO
friendly web design and our local search engine
optimization services you will be set - other than an occasional tune up
to make sure that you stay up to date with the latest search
engine shifts. This is all done at a fraction of the cost of
your current offline advertising efforts.
What Does Link Juice Bring
to the Table?
This is a critical question.
After all in many ways your future depends on it. Pick a
wrong strategic local search partner and it will at the bare
minimum set you back several months and worse case it could
get you banned if they are practice unethical local search tactics.
Link Juice has been involved with building websites for
small business owners since 1999 and has been working
side-by-side with entrepreneurs since 1992. Because of our extensive hands on background we too have had to wear many hats in these businesses and understand what it takes to build a successful
business from the inside out.
This experience is what drove us to start Link Juice, we saw
an opportunity to really be able to help small business
owners by giving them a level of expertise that is usually
only found at larger corporations or from consultants with
hefty price tags.
We don't farm out projects,
we don't take short cuts and we continuously strive to over
deliver and provide tremendous service to our clients. This
again goes back to our background of building businesses ---
it is all about providing long lasting value.
We would love to hear from
you --- tell us about your challenges and your
vision of how you would like to see your business grow
in your local community.
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