More Traffic From Local Search Inquiries!

We have a regional business with good SERPs for generic national phrases and excellent visibility for many local phrases. I'm beginning to see significant growth from local search, both through local versions of Google and Yahoo and also from various yellow page placement reviews.

This is supposed to be a huge growth area for the Search Engines. Anybody else seeing increases in this type of traffic and anybody have ideas on how to maximize this type of traffic?

Dave

I have good ranking with regional keyword searches too. SEO for a smaller market like a region is sometimes the best return on SEO investment and time. As long as your product is appropriate for that reagion.

I have had good marking success in sites like citysearch.com searches are taylored to that city.

Jukeman:


Thanks for the response. Maybe we should start PM ing for hints for one another. Looked at citysearch.com Not sure about that for us. We have a school that teaches hands on bartending bartending - school . com. We do well with Craig's List in DC where we advertise a free class.

Our market is young people in their 20's and 30's that are more typically on the lower side of the income stream than on the higher side.

One thing for sure, our responses from traditional print media like newspapers has dramatically fallen off. Most of our responses come off the web where thankfully we are all over the place.

Dave

Slowly but surely I keep seeing more visits from local Google search and from web versions of phone books. Can't help but think this is a growing trend.

Dave

Hey Dave,

Yes it is a growing trend, but the reality is that it has been around for years.

We have always focused on the local or regional keywords. In fact for several clients we only focused on the local or regional keywords.

It used to be one of the best kept SEO secrets, but now Google and Yahoo have figured it out as well.

You just have to think like a user for a few minutes.

Most companies as well as individuals like to do business with someone local - for example if they are looking for a real estate agent, they are going to narrow their search by including the city, county or other cities that they know in the general area.

If they are looking for a house in the Tampa Florida area they are not going to want to look a realtors site from Michigan or New York.

It also has it benefits for companies like ours, we have had a high ROI for keywords like marketing consultant tampa, versus just targeting marketing consultant.

I believe it is because it gives us the opportunity to sit down with the potential client and really get to know each other. I think the face to face is why it makes a bigger difference for us in the local search.

Dave you know from some of my other post I am a huge advocate for optimizing sites for local keywords - and yes it is a growing trend, especially now that the search engines are getting on the bandwagon.


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We are preparing to do a bit of local adwords. We actually show very well for many local variations on our main phrase. We are playing with doing the campaign on other local somewhat connected phrases- but definately different from our main phrase since that would seem like overkill. Any comments or suggestions.

Dave

There are several ways you can do, but it really depends on the cost of the keyword, your budget and your expected ROI.

As I said there are so many of way doing I will just go over what I would do.

I rarely use pay per click, I am not a big fan of it.
We do use it for several of our clients for several reasons.

The two main reasons I recommend using it is for a highly competitive keyword that the client must have and has the budget to afford it.

The other reason is branding and they simply do it to establish their brand in their industry.

We always use PPC as a supplement to the organic results generated by the SEO.

As for your question, I would use it for the main keywords, the most competitive keywords, especially if your site has a top 3 ranking in the organic results.

It's not overkill, its being smart.

This way, no matter which path the user goes, meaning the organic results or the AdWords, you are covered.

Also it will give the user the impression that you are one of the main players, if they find you in the organic results and the AdWords or PPC results, by seeing your site twice.

On top of that it is boosting your brand in the users eyes - which is always a good thing - Branding

Also if you are thinking of using PPC for keywords that are a variation of your main keywords, you should be able to have your site rank well for the variations in the SERP's without having to use PPC - Organic results will always produce more traffic and more qualified traffic than PPC.

So I would use it on the main keywords you are targeting.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Ray Gonzalez

I totally agree.. Local keyword domain names and seo efforts are much easier and less expensive to operate.

While we have some high SERPs for general phrases our conversions are dramatically better when regional phrases are used.

Dave