Local Search
Local Search Overview
Local search history began with the invention of the phone book. Traditionally, in order to find local businesses, people used "White Pages" and "Yellow Pages" paper bound directory books. These books, though helpful, had some drawbacks. They were updated once a year, took up room on the bookshelf, and the search for a particular business was limited to the geographic area of the book.
Local search is the convergence of the traditional local phone book and modern search engines. Local search includes features such as reverse phone lookup, mapping, integrating coupons and other forms of advertising. Local search optimization is becoming a popular method of connecting to potential customers and making sales. Local search works well for businesses that have a physical presence, to convert online web surfers to offline clients. Local search transitioned to online local search with the advent of the Internet. White Pages and Yellow Pages directory books transitioned to online directories, for example: superpages.com.
Most recently, local search experienced an expansion when some of the more popular search engines started local search capabilities. Local search options expand to search engine portals as: Google Maps, Windows Live Search, Yahoo! Local, AOL Local Saerch and Citisearch, which all attract millions of searches each day.
Some popular features of local search include:
- Search by business category
- Search by product name
- Search by street address
- Search by city name
- Search by zip code or geographical coordinates like latitude and longitude
Local Search Engine Optimization
Local search engine optimization by Prime Visibility is growing in popularity as more and more people turn to the Internet to find local businesses. Local search engine optimization has many benefits such as having a low barrier to entry and being affordable and easy to implement. Prime Visibility can assist local businesses with a comprehensive local search strategy.
Prime Visibility applies local search engine optimization strategies to help your business to improve your local search results including:
- To make sure that you have a crawler-friendly website
- To include your business address twice on the page
- To monitor your business listing on the major search engines
- To get your business rated
- To solicit local links
- To analyze your competition
- To verify directory information
- To create separate web pages for different cities/regions
Learn More about Local Search Engine Optimization
Contact Prime Visibility today to learn more about local search engine optimization, to obtain answers to any questions you may have or to request your Internet Marketing Information Kit. Prime Visibility is a full-service Internet marketing firm offering a broad array of services.
If you would like to receive a PRIMEVIEWsm (an analysis showing you what the search engines "like and don't like" about your website) including a Keyword domain Ranking Report (showing you how well your website currently ranks in Google, Yahoo! and MSN using keywords for which you would like to be found) and an analysis of your website through the "eyes" of four search engines (an $895 Value), please click here.
