First of all a definition: Local SEO is Local Search Engine Optimization.

There are two types of SEO: on page, meaning on your website, and off page, meaning on other websites that link to yours.  The local part is where you use a geographical identifier like Ann Arbor.

Nowadays, local business owners can take full advantage of the internet even though they are catering to a small percentage of the market. However, this may also be a drawback since the internet is full of big businesses that could overshadow a local’s rankings. The good news is that this usually only happens when a person looks for general keywords. With searches that include local areas by name, business owners have a big chance to be spotted by a prospective customer online. Of course, this means doing a few local search engine optimization tweaks.

Get Your Local Business Listed

There are various search engine listings that cater to the local business. Google Places is one we advocate.  Small businesses have to make sure that they are listed in each and every one by adding themselves to the service. One good local search engine optimization technique is to make sure that nothing is left blank and all characters available are used. The more information one has, the higher would a search engine place priority on it.

Social Media

Make sure to set up your twitter, Facebook page and Google plus pages with your business information. If you are planning to write articles on a regular basis you can have these pages update automatically with your new articles.  If not, do not worry.  There are plenty of business that can rank without living your life on the internet.

Upload Photos or Your Business and Include Tags

Pictures are very powerful especially when labeled correctly. The trick is to make sure that the image name is the keyword so that it would show up in the picture results. When possible use tags or keywords on the photo upload settings.  This is a local search engine optimization trick that not all people seem to consider. The fact is that people are more attracted to sites with images compared to those that don’t.

Ask for Reviews, both Good and Honest

Reviews let people know that a business actually caters the product or service that they want. However, a few bad reviews must also be included in the archive. This is because an all-good review makes people think that the information is made-up to give the site a good image.  By bad we don’t mean horrible, more like honestly neutral.  “I didn’t like the pink table cloths on Valentine’s Day.  They should have been red.” is much better than “the place smelled like a latrine”.

Before asking for a review, make sure your customer is happy.  If not, try and fix the issues first.  Perhaps then the honest review might be something like, ” I had a problem with the Brussel sprouts, but the chef brought out some Lima beans to replace them!”.

Backlinks

Some search engines rank a site depending on the amount of back links and keywords it has. This is a basic local search engine optimization technique that should never be ignored by business owners.  You get a backlink by posting content with links to your site on another website.  Deliberately placing backlinks is considered a no-no by Google.  But they own a good portion of the web so you need to figure out a balance and good way of doing this.  If you haven’t heard Google just de-indexed a bunch of sites over the last year.  Just make sure your site has useful content to appease to Google bot gods.