The difference between local and traditional search is that you are adding a “where” part such as street address, city or postal code to the “what” part such as product, keyword or service you are hunting for.
For years these search results have been controlled by countrywide rivals such as massive directories with thousands of pages and non-local firms that spent a lot of money on S.E.O firms or in house S.E.O departments. The game has changed and the search engines now wish to feature your local enterprise, your goods.
Corporations without a local presence are finding it more and more difficult to contend for these valuable search queries. These search questions are increasingly being performed on smart phones or mobile devices by consumers that are looking at making a purchase at that moment.
Consumers have always been used to finding and purchasing goods locally because they needed to see the products and touch them or they wished to have future service performed locally. Keep in mind that shoppers are now ready to search out prices on products online very easily so you have to make sure that your products are at least in the price range of related products available on-line to bypass the “show case effect.” The “show case effect” is where customers come into your store to try on a jacket, as an example, and then purchase the product online to save money.
In the sector of local search, Google is dominating with Google Maps but the landscape is constantly changing. As well as Bing and Yahoo, many options like Yelp, Foursquare and Merchant Circle are giving purchasers what they desire, reviews and feedback on local merchants and their goods and services. This current and continuing focus on Local SEO implies now may be the time for your business to focus upon a Local SEO strategy to help boost your business. Local SEO is more cost effective and less time consuming than global SEO and you can accomplish good local search results in a small part of the time it takes to achieve results on a worldwide scale in a tough market.
Frank Tibbetts is an SEO expert who has written an on-line SEO course for a Canadian University as well as completed website development work for business clients.