I am very sure you must have heard of search engine optimization. If you are having a business and have a website then many SEO guys must have proposed you with an offer that they will rank your website at so and so position on Google. And that they will bring a lot of quality traffic to your website and make your business hot marketplace. Well SEO is an art how you optimize your website for search engine so that they will crawl the content and display your web address whenever users are searching in your niche.

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However SEO is a big thing. Local SEO is a part of SEO and it is based on main three things-

(1)    Local search listing

(2)    On-site SEO

(3)    Online reviews

We will understand these three factors but before let’s look at the stats shared by MOZ – as per MOZ survey “ 4 billion desktop queries in United States are about local businesses, products or services”.

The number is huge. Now you understood the importance how important it is to be listed in local search for you business. If you are not taking it seriously you are lousing a lot of potential local customers.

Hmm now you are serious J

Let’s understand these three factors how you can improve your local SEO-

Local Search Listing– when a user searches for any product or service in Google. Google try to provide the user more local search results. Say you are searching a courier service and if you observe Google will detect your location and display the courier service providers around you or in nearby locations. If you want you business to displayed in such way you should register your business on Google Places for Business. www.google.co.in/local/add

You will have to provide these details when registering for local business listing-

(1)    A business Name

(2)    A local phone number

(3)    physical address of your business

(4)    contact person

Also the quality links pointing to your business websites will be an advantage. Such quality back-links gives Google an intimation that the website is authentic and running a genuine business.

On site SEO- On site optimization is a huge topic to cover. I would rather cover this topic in my future posts. You can focus on optimizing your website for local search keywords. Also you can implement these basic SEO tips to optimize your website for Google.

Online reviews- reviews play very important role in decision making for a user. In today’s marketplace user has many options to choose from. in such situation users generally go with the other consumers reviews. 52% consumers say that positive reviews about a business make them user its services. Reviews also make your website more visible in search results. Reviews on your website show how users are engaged on your website. The more positive user reviews you have the better chances you have to come on Local search listing.