Tips to Get Website Traffic From Local Searches
First of all, make sure the content on your website is good quality. Why do you want to optimize your site with the search engines? You want to bring quality visitors to your site. Therefore, you need quality content on your site so that visitors will come and possibly buy something from you. Most website visitors don't have the time or patience to read everything on a site, but do casual browsing, and stop only when something catches their eye. By using bold text, bullets or highlighting, you can make sure people notice the most important points on your site. A picture can also be used as a way to make a certain section stand out. One practice to avoid is using your main keywords too often on your site, something the search engines frown upon. Many local websites, like Yelp, are fine with the idea of business owners asking customers or clients to post reviews for them. Since this is allowed and it could help you a big deal with your local SEO efforts, why not just go ahead and do it? Be sure to mention these things in your e-mail signatures, on your invoices, your contact forms and any place else you can. All you have to do is include a line that says "we'd be very grateful if you could put a review for us on LocalWebsiteWhatever.Whatever." Obviously you cannot control these reviews' content but, whether they are good or bad, the reviews can add credibility and reliability to your company's profile (which is nice for the new customers). This is one tip that you should try out no matter what because it has a lot of potential and can help you big time with your rankings.
Aim at diversifying your anchor text. All SEO marketers understand that long tail keywords are valuable and that they can help raise your business's rank in the search engines and if you are working with local SEO, those are the keywords you are using. Long tail keywords allow you to play around with the anchor texts of your links, the diversification of your anchor texts and you are better able to expand your efforts. Using "New York Chocolate Store" is just one option available to you if you are selling chocolate in New York (to use one example). Other options you can try include "Chocolate Stores in Manhattan, New York" and "Chocolate Store in New York." No matter what, always remember that search engines give a lot of weight to anchor texts so you need to implement as many variations as you can so that you will be able to increase your rankings.
All in all, these SEO tips can take you far as long as you use them.