Where are you on Google? How about Bing? Yahoo? You can easily
increase traffic to your site by improving your rank in the organic
search results of popular search engines (organic search results
are not the sponsored links which are paid for). There are a few
easy things you can do to move your site's listing higher in the
search results without spending anything but a little bit of your
time.
Get listed
Each of the three major search engines has local listings.
Think of these listings like a web based phone book. Make
sure you have a local listing for each city in which you have a
physical location.
- Go to getlisted.org
- Type the name of your business and zip code
- If you're not listed, follow the instructions to get
listed
Make some links
Search engines look for how many of your links are on different
sites. Create some of your own links by setting up a profile about
your business on any one of these sites:
- Facebook
- MySpace
- Twitter
- ZoomInfo
- LinkedIn
Directories
There are a variety of local directories where you can get your
business listed as well as industry specific directories. We
suggest these directories but you can do a search for "your town
local business directory" and get a list of even more
directories.
- Hotfrog.com
- ShowMeLocal.com
- MerchantCircle.com
- MyHuckleberry.com
Ask for Links
We wouldn't ask just anyone, though! Ask your local Chamber of
Commerce, your Current Clients/Customers, Business Partners, and
any reputable site that lists local business but isn't a directory,
you can help them out by providing the html code for your link when
you request a link. For our client College Nannies and
Tutors their code would look something like
this:
<a href='http://www.collegenannies.com'> College
Nannies and Tutors </a> and look like this on our
website College Nannies and
Tutors.
Advertise your website
One way to improve your ranking is to increase the number of
people who visit your site-so first you need to let people out
there know you have a site. Put your web address on every marketing
piece: business cards, brochures, ads and everything else including
your radio advertisements.
Things to remember
Keep your info up to date on local listings and update your
address, phone numbers, and website address if they change, build
your links, and be consistent with your social media updates and
blogging. All of these things will help to optimize your search
engine rankings.