Location! Location! Location!

Obviously, the actual location of your business will be a key factor in determining which businesses are called into the “Lucky 7″ box.  If you go to Google and type in “dentist” + “phoenix”, leaving out the parenthesis and plus symbols, Google will only list the top 7 local businesses.  If you are a dentist in Scottsdale AZ, Google isn’t going to list you for this search, since your business isn’t relevant to Phoenix.  Unless, you just happen to be right on the border of Phoenix and Scottsdale and there isn’t a ton of dentists in that particular area of Phoenix.  Since Phoenix is such a big city, Google is going to give preference to the dentistry listings within a certain area surrounding that searcher’s IP address.  And remember, this also applies to the other major search engine operators.  Now if you are a home-based business or service-based business, Google will allow you to define your service area based on a surrounding radius, cities serviced, and zip codes. 

Get Your Business Listed Across The Web!

Unlike traditional SEO where your goal is to get many established, authoritative websites linking back to your webpage, Google give credence to local businesses that have their “mini-site” info splattered across the web.  However, it CANNOT be just anywhere!  Again, Google is looking for relevance to appease its search users.  Thus, Google will only rank you on the front page IF it finds your business listed correctly on MULTIPLE, authoritative websites that have relevance to your particular business.  One example would be MerchantCircle. Sounds complicated, right?  You could figure it out over the course of months, but you would lose out to those smart enough to hire experts like us at affordable rates.  We will list your “mini-site” info correctly on at least 150 relevant websites and mobile platforms within 45 days!  And we also do ongoing research to add to that total over time so you will ALWAYS stay ahead of your competitors!

Claim Your Free “Websites” and Optimize Them!

In order to ensure its dominance in the local search engine optimization wars, Google went out and created one-page ‘websites’ or Place Pages for EVERY local business across the globe!  And to stay competitive, Yahoo! and Bing followed suit.  Thus, every business can utilize these mini-sites to drive traffic to their primary website, if they have one.  (If you don’t have a website, then visit our web design page to get one!)  So it is quite important to activate your mini-site on each major search engine.  Once completed, in order for the search engines to find your mini-site, you MUST optimize your page!  How?  Well, poke around our blog to find more details, but this is something that is best left to us experts! 

Ask Your Fans To Talk About Your Business!

Perhaps the most critical element to your local search engine optimization success is implementing a review system for your business.  Research has shown that objective 3rd party evaluations highly influence people’s purchasing decisions, especially in a down economy.  People are still buying just not as often.  If you aren’t marketing the right way, then you are on your way OUT of business.  So ask your fans to go online and post reviews of your business.  There are two challenges with this… unfortunately, most people won’t take the time to do this because people feel so busy.  The second is that the review sites don’t make it convenient and it is time-consuming and inefficient.  However, the good news for you, is that we have a specialized review system that is EASY for you to install and even easier for your fans to complete!  You simply give them review cards to fill out in less than 1 minute, you collect them, and send them to us.  That’s it, you’re done!  We do the rest.  This is also a fantastic retention concept as you can resolve any challenges with unsatisfied clients prior to them spreading any negative news about you and turning them into another FAN!