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.

In the past it has always been about eyeballs, there was no targeting, at least not in the sense we talk about today. If you were to advertise in the newspaper or on the radio you were advertising across a large region and you bought the ad based on eyeballs or listeners even if those people had no interest in your product or even if they just happened to be passing through town.

This is the model most small business owners are typically most familiar with. The web changes all of this.

Now, with local search taking a larger role in online search queries making sure you are found when people search for a service or product in Bing, Google, or Yahoo is more important than any newspaper ad someone could run. And one statistic says a lot as well, 80 percent of people in one survey reported searching online to research a product or service then going locally to buy it.

If your business cannot be found online then it is likely they are not going to your business to buy it.

With local search and hyperlocal targeting you can make sure that when people search for your business online that they find your web presence. Making sure your business shows up in the Google local listings (or Bing and Yahoo) is very important, but with people becoming even more targeted in their search making sure you show up at a neighborhood level in major metros and even in rural areas can be very important if someone is looking for a local service or restaurant.

It is not about having hundreds of thousands of people reading the newspaper and possibly seeing your ad with the web, on the web when someone searches in the search engines they know exactly what they are looking for which means if your business can get that traffic to your website then the conversion ratio is much higher than you may be used to in legacy methods of advertising.

By building your website in a way that attracts the people searching in your local area you can make sure that the customers you are looking for find you and not your competitor. These customers convert, you want them to be yours.

In the past advertising solutions have been about one thing, eyeballs. That is how people determined what they charged for their advertising product. The more eyeballs the better, right?

Well, local search engine optimization has changed that and turned it on its head. With the ability to optimize a website to show up in the search engine listings when people search for specific items in your local area you can receive higher converting visitors to your ad or website at a lower cost.

Why pay a newspaper thousands of dollars for an ad that you are not sure that anyone even cares about when for much less you can optimize your real estate website to be in the first page of Google search results when someone searches for the exact subdivision you are selling a house in.

With the economy, and especially real estate in a very tough downturn finding more cost effective, high converting, marketing solutions is very important. Being able to use local search engine optimization to target people searching for the exact location you are selling a property in is the best way.

If you are not thinking about this it is likely that your competitor is. With more and more people becoming more web savvy people are understanding that the search engines are not a technical subject anymore, they are your marketing tool. They have taken over for the newspapers and billboards of the past.

I you are interested in marketing your real estate website to the people searching for exactly what you are trying to sell then contact us for local search engine optimization.

Have you ever watched “The Amazing Race” on CBS? The reality show features two person teams racing around the world, performing a series of cultural tasks before they are given a clue to their next destination. During certain legs of the race, teams are given the option of pursuing a “Fast Forward” that will allow them to skip all tasks and go directly to the check-in station at the end of each leg. The “Fast Forward” doesn’t guarantee that the team will win the leg, but it gives the team who secures it a big advantage over the competition.

In Hyperlocal SEO, owning Geo Domains can give your business a significant leg up over the competition.

What are Geo Domains?

Geo Domains are domain names comprised of two subparts: A Geographic Name and either a Product, Service, or Piece of Content sought by internet users. Examples of Geo Domains include:

• WeddingsInBaltimore.com
• BaltimoreChiropractors.com
• MiamiPhotographer.me
• AtlantaNews.net
• TampaBayJobs.pro
• ChicagoRemodeling.TV

Why are Geo Domains Important?

Geo Domains are important because search engines, like Google and Bing, prefer legitimate businesses. Search engines recognize that domains, tied to high search terms, are valuable resources.  The more competitive the search term, the more valuable the geo domain. Owning a great Geo Domain implies that your business is legitimate and worthy of strong consideration.

In your market, there could be hundreds of competitors all vying for top placement. If you are a Chiropractor in Baltimore, and a user searches for “Baltimore chiropractors”, Google must decide which 10 Baltimore chiropractor sites to display to the user.   To determine which Chiropractor sites are more important than other Chiropractor sites, each search engine uses a proprietary set of rules to filter the results.

One rule common to all search engines, is that a well constructed site, built on top of a geo domain, will rank higher than the same site located at a non geo domain name. In our example, a site located at BaltimoreChiropractors.com will have an excellent chance of displaying at the top of the search results for “Baltimore chiropractors”.  Why?  The answer is that only one chiropractor in Baltimore can own BaltimoreChiropractors.com. Since you had the foresight or resources to acquire this valuable domain name, then your business is viewed as more legitimate than a competitor who is targeting the same local search term.

Dot Com domains are not the only domains preferred by the major search engines. While BaltimoreChiropractors.com and BaltimoreChiropractors.net see the greatest SEO benefit, over time, sites built on alternative extensions like BaltimoreChiropractors.pro, BaltimoreChiropractors.me, or BaltimoreChiropractors.TV can take advantage of Google and Bing‘s preference for geo domains.

From the day to day interactions I have had with customers my experience has been that it is best to start with a few minor changes to get things moving and then over time work to integrate more advanced web development techniques for making sure your business is found online.

With local search growing fast (in 2008 the growth rate was 58%) it is important that your site is properly setup so that the search engines can determine where you are located and what types of services you offer to your customers. If you are not doing this properly or do not have a website at all there is a real good chance your competitors are showing up when it should be you.

So, with that we here at HyperlocalSEO.com are focused on providing you with real world, easily implemented tips to helping you build customer growth for your business, even if you are the most offline of business.

Our first tip is a simple one, make sure that you put your address on each and every page of your site, or at a minimum on the About Us and Contact Us page.

This one thing can make all the difference in the world in how the search engines view your site, it can be as simple as the following:

Address:

ABC Company

1234 ABC Drive

Flat Rock, AZ 87733

Phone: 555-555-5555

Although that will work great in the content on your contact us and about us pages another couple great options would be to :

• Put a site wide text box in your navigation menu bar on the left or right of your site
• Put the address horizontally across your footer

I have witnessed both of these work for customers.

For more information visit us at Localtek.com where we provide local search optimized web design for our customers in Missouri.

We look forward to providing you with local search tips, tricks and news:

LocalSEOGuide.com

DavidMihm.com

Look for more info from us real soon.