Just a bit about search engine optimization.

Do you think local results are important to search engines? What if you learned that they placed the local results at the top of their results? Then you really should take advantage of this fact. Here are two other reasons to convince of you of their importance:

1. The person searching online in their area is ready to act, in other words, spend money.

2. Reaching Mobile searchers is very important as local listings display on cell phones. More and more people are now turning to smart phones to find local businesses.

So where do you start in order to get listed locally?

First step, go to Google Local. It’s always a good idea to set up a free account and a free Gmail account too in order to use that email for all of your listings.

If your business is already listed in Google results, this might have happened because of services such as Yellowpages. What you need to do is claim your business listing and optimize it to fit the right keywords, city, state, zip code and category.

Here are 9 tips that will help you to do this the right way the first time:

1. If existing business already exists for your company, do not choose it. Have only one optimized listing for your business. This would cause you to have competing listings so that only one active listing is there at all times.

2, Categories are very important to get right. Google will give you options so be careful that you represent your products and services the best possible way.

3. Put your industry and target area in the title of your listing. Google can quickly see it and give your keywords more visibility. Google will use your description, phone number and address to determine where you show up when people type in certain search phrases.

4. Using a local phone number in your listings is also important. This lets both the user and search engines know you are in fact who you say you are.

5. Informing your searcher is done by creating a good description of your service or company. Use keywords and lots of details to fully inform your customer base.

6. Reviews are important! Positive reviews are a huge factor on whether or not someone will choose you business over another. Not only that, but the presence of reviews (both negative and positive) can increase the ranking of your listing.

7. Keep your listing up to date. This tells the search engines that you are still active. It could be something as simple as updating a coupon or a picture.

8. Since Google looks to giving the user the best experience, a complete listing will be given more importance than one that is only 50% done. So do the whole thing.

9. Since Google will pull your business information from other sites too, don’t forget to submit your business to other directories as well.

This may sound like a lot of work to get your business found by clients, but doesn’t the end, having more customers find you, justify the means?

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