All Class Kitchens in Naas, Co. Kildare are a typical local business trying to get more visibility online. Having redesigned their website (and a lovely job done too – thanks to Amosh Designs ), the next challenge is how to reach their prospective customers.

Local business search marketing is key to providing a return on the investment in a website and here we’re going to look at the things they could/should be doing to market themselves. A similar strategy applies to other local businesses.

Online is a big place, so it’s all about relevancy and targetting.

Geo-target with Google

In this example, the website allclasskitchens.ie is already relevant for Ireland because it has a .ie domain. But it could also be set to target Ireland in the Google Webmaster Tools facility.

Localise with Maps

A great way to localise a business is to place a map on the website. You can use Google Maps to pinpoint your business and make it easy for Google and customers to find. Our case study could add a map to their ‘Contact’ page.

Address and Phone No.

Also have the business address prominent, so that search engines can tell where the business is located. Ensure consistency of the address across all places it appears online. A local landline phone no. will create trust with your local visitors. All Class Kitchens have this clearly laid out on their Contact page, but it could also be added to the footer of each page to emphasise

Google Places

Formerly known as Google Local Business, a Google Places listing is a must for every local business. This is even more important with the increase in smart phones. The Google Places app for iPhone and Android is being used more and more to tell people where the nearest coffee shop or kitchen supplier is. The business in our case study, All Class Kitchens, already have a listing but this could be enhanced in a number of ways:

• Tag with all the keywords relevant for the business.
• Place the business in all the relevant categories
• Add pictures. This enhances the result for visitors and search engines like to return quality results to searchers.
• Get reviews from your existing customers. This is an important one. In search engines eyes, the more reviews you have the more relevant you are.

If your business doesn’t already have a listing, you can add a Google Places listing. It’s free.

While Yahoo and Bing are not widely used in Ireland (less than 5% of search engine market share), and you can’t add local Irish listings at the moment.

However, if you have a UK presence then you can add local listings to Yahoo Local Listings and Bing Local Listings.

Also, take a look at Facebook Places and adding your place here. For more info see  Facebook Places Business.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Search Engine Market Share

Local Directories

A number of local online directories are available to place listings, mostly free. Some of these also have review features and therefore get more attention from Google. The business can place listings with these. It’s important to keep the details, in particular the website URL consistent across these entries.

A good tip on choosing directories is to do a Google search for a similar product or service and see which ones  Google is returning. Also, you could check to see which ones your competitors are listed with.

Some of these directories include:

• hotfrog.ie
• whoseview.ie
• yourlocal.ie
• browseireland.ie
• yelp.ie
• qype.ie
• niceone.ie

There are many more. See also whether there are sector specific ones. For example the An Post managed site Iloveshopping.ie is for ecommerce sites or childcare.ie for children-related businesses.

Of course, the site itself needs to be optimised for the key terms of the business. For example, the business  in our case study also designs and builds bedroom and home office furniture. So the relevant pages should be optimised.

And there’s more. But that’s for another day.

No related posts.