Small Business Local Search Essay

A couple days ago I came across an SEO contest on Bruce Clay's website that was giving out prizes for the best entry on this question:

How would you advise a small business owner on how best to use SEO, PPC, or Social Media to drive conversions to a local business? (You had to pick either SEO, PPC, or Social Media).

So, naturally I was bored and had enough desire to write an essay on the subject. I was then thinking about sending my entry in and competing for the prizes that were being given away, but then I realized something. Chances are, I wasn't going to win this contest, and this piece of content would find a better home on my blog instead of his. Secondly, if I did submit, I wouldn't get any links in return, just an entry into the contest. So, here's what I wrote. I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments below, and tell me anything I missed.

SEO is beautiful. Imagine a lead generating technique that costs little of your time to learn, and can target the largest concentrated audience this world has ever seen. Every day millions of people are searching for your product through search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, and all you have to do is to get noticed by them. Yeah, it’s not as easy as it sounds, and it will takes hours and hours to make it all pay off, but this isn’t exactly marketing; you don’t need a big budget, you won’t have to worry about revenue offsetting fixed costs, you just have to worry about how creative you can get. Through search engines your business can get exposure that local advertising and business cards can’t compete with.

As I said before, you have to get creative, but first you have to get to the point where you can do that. Your goal is to have the search engines be able to read (index) your site, understand what each page is about, and help it understand just how truly important your content is.

To help search engines index your page and make it worth featuring in their search results, you have to make your website SEO friendly. This is basic, yet 100% necessary. I don’t care how great of an SEO you are; if your page isn’t readable by the search engines, it won’t make it to the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). This would take too much time to explain every detail, so I suggest using online sources, free e-books, or even an actual book on the different things to make your website readable to the search engines. If you have this done, you’re on the same playing field as all your top competitors.

By Definition, Search Engine Optimization is the practice of using the search engines to feature your content when different keywords or phrases are searched. Therefore, you want to designate different pages for different keywords on your site. This is called creating a landing page. A landing page could be your home page, a blog post, or an article on your site. Once you choose which page is your landing page for a specific keyword, you need to optimize it for the search engines. You can do this by featuring the keyword in the Title of the page, the meta description, the content (I recommend a 2-5% keyword density), and even in the Alt Text of a picture. This is letting the search engines know that this is in fact a page about *Your Keyword*.
How serious are you about local search?

I say this because when you create the title of your home page, lead generation pages, landing pages and beyond, you have to figure out just how focused you are on local search. If local is your undoubted #1 and only goal, consider putting your location in your home page title. For example, if I wanted to rank high in local search in Tampa for SEO Services, I would make my home page title something like “Tampa, FL SEO Services provider”. This has it’s advantages and disadvantages – if you put the location in the title, you rank a lot higher for local search, and get higher quality traffic. At the same time, on global search you will have a lot lower CTR (Click Through Rate) because the majority of searchers are not from Tampa, FL. This is a vital decision – you need to figure this out before you start any type of Off Site SEO.

Now, the single most important aspect of SEO that separates Rand Fishkin from the average SEO is creativity. Creativity is HUGE – it doesn’t get talked about much because it is such a broad subject. Here’s what I mean – creating a landing page can take a day, but promoting it is an endless process. The top analytic that Google uses to show a page’s importance is through how many links it has pointing to it. This is called link building. You want to build a link profile that features diversity, quality, and bulk. You want links from as broad a range of websites as possible, you want high quality links on pages viewed by large audiences, and in general a large amount of links. There are a number of specific link building techniques local business owners can take advantage of immediately. Here’s a quick list.