Sep
24
2010

Get Local With SEO And Smartphones

Local search has emerged as a sub-category of SEO. While most businesses are running around panicking about getting their site listed for the major keywords in their industry, an industrious few have been quietly building up their profile in local search results. For some of those businesses, the hard work is paying off through the increased use of smartphones for local search.

Smartphone search is an interesting area of the search industry. Most search engine optimisation experts are still trying to figure out what is required for success. Indeed, the industry itself is still figuring out what it takes. It’s an area of the net that is still volatile, with players changing seemingly every week. It’s also an area where internet users themselves are still figuring out their preferences. This leaves a lot of factors up in the air for any business trying to get the attention of smartphone users.

One thing that is emerging, however, is the use of a Smartphone for local search. It’s almost inevitable, really. While it’s fun to read articles or tweet while on a Smartphone, for practical purposes mobile search and local search go together. Someone wandering around the streets on a Saturday night is likely to use their Smartphone to find the best pizza joint nearby. A smart pizza joint, then, will try to get themselves listed high in the mobile local search results.

How to optimise

Similar search engine marketing techniques apply for mobile search as regular local search. Here are a couple of the things to do:

*List your business with Google Local and the local sections of Bing and Yahoo
*Generate reviews, to boost your profile in the local listings
*Be sure to list your locality on your site on your contact pages, as well as step-by-step directions
*Thread local keywords throughout your site

Talk to our consultants at http://www.seoconsult.co.uk about optimising for local search.

Who to optimise for with mobile search

Deciding who to optimise for is a tricky one when it comes to mobile search. Although the different Smartphone makers have some influence over which mobile search provider they go with, internet users are tending to access their favourite search provider out of habit. This makes it hard for anyone trying to choose a search engine to optimise for.

Happily, when you’re trying to gain attention in local search, a lot of the things you need to do have to be done off-page. This means that rather than having to commit to one search engine or the other with your SEO tactics, you can try to appeal to several. This also means that you’re covering your bases in terms of Smartphone users who use a broad range of search providers.

Every business that has a local angle should have local search as part of their search engine optimisation campaign. A few have been, but to judge by the lack of competition in local search pages, many more businesses have simply overlooked this area of search. Don’t let your business be the one to miss out.

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