Local SEO - how it can help your business's bottom line

What is Local SEO? It's combining your business's keywords with your locality. 'San Francisco organic bakery' for example.

Local SEO for companies that rely on generating leads and sales locally is an important SEO tactic to consider because of the results it produces. Restaurants for example, could benefit by Local SEO. Service providers with a physical location could also generate more sales leads and ultimately sales.

Local SEO involves a focus on three key areas:

1. Citations
2. Online reviews
3. A presence on Google Places and Google+ Local

One of the main reasons for starting a local SEO campaign is the fact that local searchers are ready to make a purchase. Meaning they've often done their research, and are in 'buy now' mode. They are looking for you. Making sure you are visible when they do can lead directly to sales.

Citations

This strange sounding word (in relation to SEO) refers to websites that display your company's contact information. Some of these are Google Places, Yahoo!, Bing, Foursquare, Yelp, Localeze, and Superpages.

The key is to make sure all your citations are the same information that appear on your Google Places and Google+ Business pages. And yes, if you don't have either of these pages you know where your next website visit should be.

If you have a website, check your site's citations by going to www.moz.com/local and entering the company name and zip code. You're looking for sites that have different contact information. Correct these variations to help optimize your website.

Setting up citations on sites like these are usually free. They can take some lead time to validate you are the owner of the domain. This can take weeks sometimes, so plan accordingly.

Online Reviews

More and more buying decisions are pushed one way or the other by online reviews. When's the last time you wanted to try a new restaurant? Or you needed to find a mechanic in your local area perhaps? When presented with two businesses, often times a higher rating can make the difference.

Make asking your clients for reviews part of your post project strategy. Make it as easy as you can for your customers to create reviews. A successful strategy we use is to make our customers aware that we appreciate their feedback and include links to our social sites in emails.

We'd like to hear your thoughts on Local SEO in the comments below. Have you found an effective way to get reviews from clients?