---

---

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Local Search

Optimizing for Cities

Many business owners understand that a good, professionally designed website is critical to attract new clients and customers. Their customers will search for them on the search engines, look at their website and make a determination before they ever call or step in your front door.

It’s relatively easy to get a website set up for the search engines for local search. It’s also easy to go down the futile path of trying to get listed for extremely generic and highly competitive phrases such as “auto repair shops” (3,000,000 results in Google for that phrase).

Instead, by focusing on your local market, you can get your business listed for people who are searching for you in your neighborhood. For instance, the search phrase “auto repair shops, walnut creek, ca” only returns 100,000 results, most of which are accidental listings.

Create a page of content on your website for each city and phrase that you want to get listed. The Title and Description tags should include that phrase and city location. The page should also contain content about that specific phrase and city. Sprinkle the name of the city throughout the page.

Repeat this process for each phrase you want listed. It’s very likely that you won’t have much competition for these niche phrases, and the search engines will reward you with top placement.

As an example, here’s an electrical contractor that shows up both in the Google Places maps and with two listings just below the map. One link is specific for Livermore, which is intended to attract people who are specifically looking for an electrician in Livermore.

Optimizing for Zip Codes

Similarly, people do search by postal code (zipcode in the USA). As an example, they might search for “auto repair 94583”. Be sure to include your postal code in the Title or Description META tags and content on that same page for that specific city. You’ll have very little competition for this, because no one else is doing this step.

Your customers will love that you have taken the time to build these specific pages just for them, and they’ve found exactly what they’re looking for.

Here’s an example of a law firm that has optimized for postal codes. If you choose “View” “Page Source” from your browser, you’ll see that they have their postal codes embedded in the META “Description” tag.