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The closure of my favourite curry shop practically overnight has confirmed why it's crucial for small businesses to get the most from all the free local business marketing options. The sad fact was that, whenever we looked for his establishment on the internet, we could not find it. Not only was he not on Google's first page, he wasn't on any of the subsequent pages either. And it was just as difficult when we used our mobile phones. His competitors were all there, none of whom provided such great food, but not the curry shop that we wanted. Because my own area of expertise is local business marketing, I asked him what his strategy was for promoting the restaurant both on the web and off but he reassured me that he had everything in place. Three months after this conversation, our telephone call to book a table received a 'this number is no longer in service' message. Driving down to find out the problem, the restaurant was quite clearly no longer serving. The external banner was gone and the place was deserted. So exactly what could he have put in place to avoid this result? I have never understood why consumers will spend several hundred pounds on an entry in a directory that is not even showing on Google's first page for the keywords that relate to their market. Free entries in local listing directories are generally the most suitable option because you can maximise on their domain authority to boost your own listing.. Come up with a list of words that you think your potential customers will be typing into the search engines and then use the Google Keyword checker to see if there are sufficient numbers of people searching for that term - how many times each month they are searched for. They will even suggest some other options that might be more in demand than the key phrases you have suggested. After you have your list of 'keywords', these should be integrated into the infrastructure of your website to maximize any Local SEO (the abbreviation for search engine optimisation) possibilities. If you tell Yahoo and google that your website is about keywords and phrases that people are actually looking for and provide relevant information about those keywords, the search engines are more likely to match up any queries with a web site that it knows will respond to them Get on Google First Page - Places listings In 2011, Google updated the algorithm that controls who goes where on their front page and began giving local businesses an edge. They had noticed that most shoppers buy from a business that is within five miles of their own location and, due to the fact their mission is to furnish the most valuable and pertinent information to answer any search query, the machine needed to keep pace with what humans wished for. This was also a marketing possibility not to be ignored and they started offering businesses their own local listing called Google Places. However, where they felt anything was incorrect or missing, they would get their facts from the free entries in the other local listing directories making it extremely important to be sure that these are also complete. The act of adding the new seven pack of Google Places entries on the first page of their SERPs (search engine results pages), Google had reduced the amount of room that was available for the other organic entries. The result of this is that local business owners now have three shots to get seen on the first page of Google - in the organics with their own internet site or as a free directory listing or as one of the seven Google Places Pages, as long as they have made the effort to fill out all the details correctly in all the places that they can do it for no cost. I just wish my local curry house had known.
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