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Home Local SEO – How to get up the listings for free

SEO – or Search Engine Optimisation, is key to the visibility of your website on the internet. Without it you will rank low in the searches and may never be found by potential customers.

I have written a free report on local SEO and how to get your website up the rankings. The material is taken from the Results Marketing Workbook which I have developed with CR4L. This report is short and to the point. If you follow the steps in here you will boost your visibility to the public and search engines. People search online ahead of a purchase. Often people will find a product at one business and then search online to see if they can get a better deal or offer.

At that point of searching the prospect is ready to buy; the perfect time to attract them to your offer. If you are not on the front page of Google searches it is unlikely that you will be found and considered. 

The front page of Google may seem a lofty target given the number of businesses out there but for any local independent business there is hope.

Results Marketing is a system of marketing systems that is guaranteed to work and get results. This report is about one part of one of those systems: Local SEO. This is a powerful tool on its own so we suggest implementing right away…

Read this report; take the steps that are suggested to move up the rankings. If you want guaranteed success in marketing get CR4L’s Results Marketing System for your business – see http://www.cr4l.com for details of how to get it on a free trial.

How to Get Ahead of the Competition Independent businesses in general can play a smart game of marketing against big brands. No more so than local companies catering to a local audience. SEO for big business is expensive, time consuming, difficult to track results and can take a long time to have an effect. Most SEO companies will tell clients that they have to work for 6 months before any discernible results will appear. For a small business this is not a viable option.

However there are ways to get fantastic results with little investment or time. AND you will see the effects in a lot less time. In 2010 Microsoft did a study that showed smartphone users are much more likely to convert from searches. This year a Nielsen study shows that 64% of Smartphone searches for restaurants converted inside of one hour. That is an amazing statistic.

In the 80’s we had no mobile phones. Now there are 4 billion smartphones in the world and current estimates say that by 2016 there will be 8 billion smartphones in use globally. If we have a question we ask our smartphone. Everything from a pub quiz conundrum to where to stay, eat, shop or buy industrial cabling. 

How do you get your business to the top of the list in your area? Well one thing to consider is that chains mostly market the brand nationally and not so much the individual locations. So be sure and make your business known as the place to go in your town and your street. 

For example: people looking for Italian restaurants may get Jamie’s as top of the list. However if they search for Italian Restaurants in Bristol (or BS1) you have a great chance to beat Jamie’s to the top (if you are in Bristol).

So be sure and use your location in your website. Post your address in the top margin and make sure it is easily found in the text of the site. Next make sure that your Meta Tags in each page have some location information… “Widgets in Birmingham” or “discount widgets in south Birmingham”

Be Specific If you are in a niche market be sure and play that ace card. If you are in a large market then look for a niche that you can fit and market to that. It is far easier to market an Italian Restaurant than a Restaurant of no particular description.

Pick 2 search terms that you want to lead to you. DO NOT go for more than 2 because that will dilute your efforts: Far better to be front page for 2 searches than on page 2 of 10.

Once you pick them use them in the website SEO, in the body of text and the Meta Tags. If you don’t know how to do that ask us at CR4L, we will often help people via live Skype chats with live screen shots to help walk you through the process.

If you have a webmaster that does all the web changes for you share this document with them. Get them to change the Meta Tags to include your 2 main targeted search terms.

Do the first 2 steps in the report and considerably boost you website’s visibility. Use these together to move up the rankings and get your business seen by hot prospects. Add in bonus steps 3 and 4 to get way up the rankings.

Note:  You can pay for listings on these sites and the sites listed below. This will mean you will get back links to your website and thus boost your rating more then a standard link. However for most businesses this may not be a good idea. It costs around £20 a month per site and is not well targeted.

When deciding if you should pay look at the traffic you are likely to get and monitor to make sure you get the results sites promise. I just paid to be on Yahoo and City.Visitor with premium listings (top of the page featured) in 2 geographical areas at a cost of £20 a month for both.

If I get 100 clicks from each listing I will be paying 10p per visitor to my website. Anymore than 10p a click and I think I can do better elsewhere. However it does have the bonus of live links on very powerful websites so that makes it worthwhile.

Step 1… Get Free Listings Citation sites play a huge part in your search engine visibility. To get a list of the top 11 free sites to get your business listed follow the link below and download a complete free report on Local SEO for small business. This is the first step. These 11 are not in order of importance so be sure and get a listing on all of the 11.

It is easy to do but before you start use a Word document to write out your chosen search terms (2 only), some key words, a short description of your business and a longer description of your business. 

When you come to each site you will have to fill in similar forms to complete your listing. Just copy and paste from your prepared document and you will speed the process up considerably.

In addition to the list of the top 11 free sites to get listed on, the free report also has a list of the top 50 citation sites in the UK. And it shows how to use these and other techniques to move your website and business up the search listings.

If you want new customers you need to be seen when people are searching for an offer like yours. To be seen you need great visability. The first step is to get this free report and get your 11 free listings.

Go to the home page of this website and fill in the form to get your Local SEO report with a list of free s