Local search is something that people have always been doing, but it’s presence on the web has been increasing over the number of years as people become ever more interested in what is happening in their local communities.

Part of the reason for this growth can be attributed to the number of reasons including economy and expansion of Internet in rural communities. People are not traveling as far from their homes due to tightening of the purse strings. Instead, they’re searching for products, services, and activities closer to home. Rural families and schools are also getting access to internet in areas of the country where internet did not exist before and are now able to search outside of the phonebooks and traditional media.

Mobile marketing campaigns have also added a depth to hyper local search. Cell phones can be taken anywhere and with the expansion of mobile search, searching for a great restaurant or a car repair center is only a phone call away.

Google honed in on this concept of hyper local search back in 2003 and created a patent for its geo-targeted advertising, giving advertisers a chance to localize their advertising to a specific target market. Google knew the importance of local advertising, even back in 2003, and was able to leverage this information and become the largest search engine on the Internet.

Businesses who utilize hyper local search with their websites have an enormous opportunity to tap into consumers who may have been overlooked before. In fact, they may be able to arouse trusting, loyal customers who buy their product over and over again.

Hopefully, you’ve never said this, but if you have, there may be hope for you. Every person with a website wants someone to view their site (otherwise what’s the point?). While it’s exciting in the beginning to see how many views your site is getting, it can taper off after a while, especially if you don’t see any return on investment (i.e. ROI  or advertising effectiveness).

This is when ‘where the pay clicks are coming from’ ideology starts to count, especially if you have products or services you are selling through your website. If you’re a small business in Whatitsname, Arkansas and only cater to people in Whatitsname and the surrounding area, you probably don’t care about clicks coming from the United Kingdom or Outtherein, Nebraska. Why would you want to pay for clicks outside your target market? You want something that is more local: hyper local.

People who are not your target customers generally exit your website as soon as the first page loads. This leads to something called “bounce rate.” Ideally, you want to own a website with a low bounce rate, that is few people exiting the site soon after it loads. A low bounce rate typically means that people are viewing the content on your website and interacting with it in a positive way.

Ideally, if your website is correctly search engine optimized (SEO) and linked properly for search engines to rank effectively in their lists, then you should be getting your target customers who have interest in your business. SEO is a way of artfully implementing search terms people are using to find information into the content of your website. A search engine will scan your website for search terms and if they match will page rank your site in its results.

It’s easy to be sucked into catchy marketing companies that create websites, but many times these companies will ask for thousands of dollars just to create the site without actually helping you market it.  Before you make the investment of creating a search engine marketing campaign, be sure that your target customers are within reach and actually viewing your website.

With the interest in hyper local, the internet community has recognized the value in domains that may get only 10-100 unique visitors each month. For a local professional, owning a hyper local domain is a low cost alternative to advertising on vertical directories. If 1 out of every 10 visitors converts to a lead (by filling out the contact us form) and 1 out of every 3 leads converts to a paying customer, a domain with 30 unique a month would mean 12 new customers each year. Not bad for a domain name with an annual cost of $10-$20.

In the past week, my company has gotten leads on the following domains:

BaltimoreReception.com
SyracusePhotographers.com
CincinnatiVideographer.com
ProvidenceDJs.com
OaklandDJs.com
AtlantaOfficiants.com
DenverOfficiants.com
CharlotteOfficiants.com

All these domains were available for registration by local photographers, videographers, djs, and wedding officiants. We regged the domains to generate leads for our local advertisers. They could have easily been regged by local professionals looking for new customers via direct navigation traffic. All these domains, except SyracusePhotographers.com, were available until last summer. There are still many other hyper local domains available for registration. Each day, internet users type hyper local addresses into their browser, only to be disappointed when it does not bring up a local businesses’ web site.

Spend 15 minutes of go daddy and see what hyper local domains in your specialty are available for registration. If you are an lawyer, you can procure new customers without owning Lawyers.com

Why?

Because people are understanding that with the penetration of GPS capabilities in mobile devices and people using the internet more frequently on their mobile devices it is possible to targeted advertising and other services on a more granular, or as we are saying, hyperlocal basis.

The initial hyperlocal talk was really focused on news and local bloggers writing about neighborhood level topics, true community level news rather than the more regional or city level  news that typically existed.

The web allowed for bloggers to become journalists on a hyperlocal level based on the cost of entry.

Well, from an advertising standpoint this works too, between geo targeted ads, hyperlocal content, and mobile apps taking advantage of all of the above we will see more targeted advertising than ever before. Location based services have arrived.

From a news standpoint even local news stations are starting to use the “hyperlocal” buzz term, just tonight I was listening to a local weather forecast when out of the blue I heard the weatherman say “Lets go hyperlocal and see what is happening in your neighborhood.”

Six months ago you would not of heard that, now the news stations understand that online you are getting more focused and targeted, they have to find away to catch that shift. Does using a buzz word make that happen?

Nope, it will be extremely tough to take the easy distribution the web offers to a broadcast level.

Enjoy the age of hyperlocal online.

I guess the first question we should discuss, is what is Hyperlocal? Wikipedia defines Hyperlocal as:

“A new term used to refer to someone or something that is the best at connecting people, locally.”

So Hyperlocal can refer to a region, city, county, town, village, community, neighborhood, or any local community you want to target.  How far down you drill in the Hyperlocal space, depends on your target audience and desire to produce quality content tailored to local communities.

For example, if you are a real estate agent who specializes in certain neighborhoods, then you might want to target the larger communities in your area. You could produce one landing page for each neighborhood, with a list of homes for sale and historical sales data for that community. Boilerplate content for your neighborhood landing pages could include a small write about the community, school information, local resources, links to the homeowner’s association, and other information that would be helpful to prospective homeowners.

If you run a limo company that serves an entire metro area like Washington, DC or Miami, FL, you might want to target the primary cities/towns and counties that comprise the metro region. A city or town landing page could include restaurants, entertainment, and hotels frequented by travelers and residents looking for a fun evening out on the town. Your landing pages would attract people who are searching for local “hot spots”,  informing potential clients about your limo service that can help enhance their entertainment experience.

Whether you live in the city, suburbs, or rural area – one universal rule to your Hyperlocal SEO efforts is that you must connect with local residents. The more you engage local users, the better results you are going to see from your Hyperlocal SEO efforts.