For small and medium size businesses, the potential to attract newer local based customers with local search optimization is the best.  Increasingly users are looking at more localized or personal results that can be easily reached from where they live or wherever they mat be.

If your business offers products or services to customers located in your geographic area, optimizing for local search is imperative for you.

Consider these facts:

• A recent Search Engine Land report showed that over 60% of online consumers search for local businesses each month and out of that more than half use zip codes and city/town names to localize results
• Another separate study showed that people are looking for (80% of them) local information only. For instance, a person in Calgary suffering with tooth pain,would search for only local dentists around his/her area
• .

Depending upon what type of business are you, what are your marketing budgets and your resources, you can easily leverage the potential of ‘local’ in search engines for your business –  making it one of the most cost-effective and targeted channels to drive results.

But, How Does ‘Local Search’ Work Anyway?

A large part of what goes into ranking higher in your local area is telling search engines and Canada’s local business reviews ecosystem more about who you are and what you do.

How?

By feeding it with vital information such as the name of your business, the type of service that you provide, your physical location (with zip code and address) and working hours. All this makes your business much easier to discover by customers and improves the value of your local search ranking.

Here’s what Wikipedia says:

“Local search is the use of specialized Internet search engines that allow users to submit geographically constrained searches against a structured database of local business listings. Typical local search queries include not only information about “what” the site visitor is searching for (such as keywords, a business category, or the name of a consumer product) but also “where” information, such as a street address, city name, postal code, or geographic coordinates like latitude and longitude.”

Here are some tips to help you get started with Local SEO:

Search and Optimize your Web Pages for Local Search Terms

In order to optimize your size, you need to first determine what people are looking for and then address that. For the same, you need to understand what local terms are highly used by visitors to find your site. This could include a combination of the town or city where your business is located, with the type of service you offer.

Once you’ve identified there terms you need to include your town/city in page titles and meta descriptions. Remember to keep page titles to less than 70 characters and descriptions to 160 characters or less.

It is also good to add local contact details on your contact us page or other pages appropriately.

Localize your Content

If your business has multiple locations, then creating separate landing pages for each location is a better option. Also make sure that the service offerings listed here is not duplicate to the content on you other page.

Wherever possible, localize your content as this will help improve your site’s local search engine ranking.