The rise of local search and the integration into search results (Google especially) in the past few years has created an increasingly vital avenue for small businesses and retail chains to promote awareness about their businesses and gain additional traffic.
This has created a need for Local Search Optimization, as many business-owners simply aren’t aware of the impact that their local listings can have on their site’s traffic. In fact, most have no clue or no time to actively manage their listings in such places as Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Superpages and the like.
Why is Local Search Important?
- Due to vastly different algorithms, local search provides opportunites for small businesses to compete in the listings within larger brands.
- Local search provides larger retail & franchise stores an opportunity to market each individual store in that specific geographic location.
- Provides great brand exposure to highly-focused geo-targeted services areas.
A Small Example with Big Implications
If anyone is familiar with Dublin, Ohio then they will know about the historic dublin district. In downtown historic Dublin, there is a major 4-way intersection. There are 3 competing pizza joints literally right on top of each other. One of the shops is a Domino’s franchise (right on the corner), another is a Donato’s franchise (on the opposite corner), and the third is a small shop called BridgeStreet Pizza that is tucked away in the shadow of the Domino’s.
You would think that being large national brands, Dominos and Donatos would have a clear advantage. If you look a little closer, you will see that the Yahoo Local listing that I submitted for them is ranked #1 for the term “pizza” in “dublin oh”.
If that doesn’t help, do that same search in Google and you will see a group of Yahoo Local listings ranked #2 currently (just click on the listing and they are #1 again! Just an FYI, this just happens to be right below their #1 organic ranking for “pizza dublin oh.” Pretty sweet exposure for a small business.
Now you see the true impact of Local Search. If you were at all interested in this article, then stay tuned for my upcoming article on How to Optimize Your Google Local Listing!
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