Can the 'World Wide Web' really ever become the 'World Wide and Local Web'? Jamie Clouting, online marketing consultant for Manchester based PushON, explores ways of ensuring that your local website is found by local people.   

Have you ever tried finding a website for a shop down the road from you? You know where it is, but you can’t quite remember the name of it. It sells gadgets and some odd technologies that you think your dad would really like for his birthday. You try a quick search for "Gadgets" and found some national mail order site, based miles away. Frustrated, so you try to refine the search by including your location but are now faced with search results for some weird gadgets that your local football team have branded and are selling as merchandise!  

Perhaps you’re looking online for some corporate training course and no matter how hard you look you can only find courses that are being run so far away you'd spend a day travelling and lose valuable time.

Many of us have had similar frustrating experiences like this. Therefore, it is importatnt that we prevent our customers and clients from having the same off-putting search experiences when trying to find our brands online. In short, we need to find ways of being found more effectively in locally focused search.

In this article we’ll be detailing some quick and easy solutions that will help your websites visibility in local search results.

Google Map/Local Business Centre

Google offers a free service that allows business to add a brief description of their products and services, along with more detailed information such as opening hours and preferred payment methods. Google is continuing to master its ‘Universal Search’ results and we are continuing to see information from Google Maps being returned in its main results page.

Google validate your business locations by sending you out an activation pin. You can expect to receive the pin within 3 weeks of requesting it and once active, Google say that, your ad will be live within just 10 days.

Most of the other major search engines offer some form of local map functionality too. Check out Yahoo Local and Live Search to get listed in their maps too. 

Microformats

Microformats have included a geo-location tag in their hCard, business card. This search engine friendly business card allows users to hard code their lat & long coordinates directly onto their website. Here’s a quick example of the PushON offices location via hCard and geo tag:

<div id="" class="vcard">
<span class="fn"></span>
<div class="org">PushON Ltd</div>
<div class="adr">
<div class="street-address">217 The Boxworks, 4 Worsley Street</div>
<span class="locality">Manchester</span>
<span class="postal-code">M15 4NU</span>

<span class="country-name">UK</span>

<span class="geo">

 <span class="latitude">53.4733</span>,

 <span class="longitude">-2.26093</span>

</span>
</div>

As the usage of microformats become more widely used in mainstream website design and as Search Engines are increasingly indexing this marked up content and include it in their results we will start to see this become really valuable in optimising for local search.

Optimising for Local Keywords/Anchor Texts

This should be your first port of call when looking to optimise for your local search terms. When customers search any of the search engines they are typing in text and the search engine attempts to match that text to websites on the internet that has that text in their content.

To successfully optimise your keywords and content for local search terms, you should consider using them in your page headers, titles and descriptions.

PushON has recently undertaken some research into place names in the Manchester (UK) Area. In terms of search these are referred to as geographical qualifiers. This research will be published shortly via our website and will be available for download for free.

NOTE: be careful of overusing keywords in your websites content. Remember that your audience is the human reader and not just the search engine; anything over 10% keyword density is deemed as spam and may have a negative effect on your websites rankings in the search results. There are a number of browser plug-ins and websites that can check your websites content for keyword density.

Directory Listings

A directory is a web search tool that is compiled manually by human editors. Once websites have been submitted with information (such as a titles, urls and descriptions) they are assessed by the editor and, if deemed suitable for addition, are listed under one or more subject categories AND geographical regions.

Unlike search engine results, directories rely on human editing to categorise the website listings, not a long and complex algorithm. Some people feel that this gives human edited directories more credibility then a search engine and as a result the major search engines use these directories to influence how they display their own results.
 
DMOZ – The Open Directory Project (ODP)

What sets the Open Directory Project apart from other directories is its database of indexed documents that is available to other directories and search engines. A listing here results in your website automatically being listed in many other directories and search engines. The model of using volunteer editors is fairly ambitious - and surprisingly successful. It’s a massive achievement and one of the most authoritative sites on the internet.

Local Directories

Many directories on the internet are internationally focused with regional sections available deep into the sites navigation. However, to gain real value in local search you should be aiming to get listed in some locally focused directories that are specific to the town, county or region your business operates in.

Manchester UK Local Directory

One of the most successful Manchester related directories is Manchester UK. Established by John Moss in 1994 as the Manchester Project; the directory has undergone continual growth in recent years. John Moss, Author of Manchester UK, said "human edited directories are invariably more relevant then even the best constructed algorithms are a crude device and results are often completely irrelevant, silly, erroneous or blatantly misleading results."

He put the directories success down to it being "relevant to the local area and more relevant and accurate in terms of the information it contains. Content is our main concern - quality content, plenty of it and free."

Summary

Local Search is an ever-growing area that if taken advantage of will help drive quality leads to your website. The hints and tips above will help you get a feel for what is required to optimise your website but to get the best out of your website requires a bespoke online marketing solution.