Local Search: Hear from local customers who are ready to buy
90% of your potential customers call right after an online search. Local search results now dominate the rankings for most services. If you’re not there, you’re losing business.
Your local search ranking depends on:
- Listings in services that ‘feed’ Google Maps, Bing Local and Yahoo! Local Search;
- Citations on other sites that serve local search and regional interests;
- Reviews on local search and review sites;
- ‘Chatter’ around your business on social services like FourSquare;
- Site and page structure on your own web site;
- Other cues that tell search engines where your business ‘lives’.
Taking care of all of these factors is a huge time commitment: You have to go to dozens of local listing sites, submit your business listing to the major search engines, get your customers to review your business online and optimize your site. Chances are, you’ve got enough to do already.
Let Portent help you. Portent’s local search optimization package will put you in front of great prospects, right when they’re ready to buy. It costs $1000, one-time, and includes a review shortcut page, submission to critical listings services and onsite optimization recommendations by Portent experts. Already sold? Click below to get started:
What Is local search?
When we think of Internet search it is easy to think of Google, Bing and Yahoo. Type a local business into Google Search and you will see local search results along with a map that displays the location of each.
Today, the local results are displayed above the non-local results. Their prominence is why you definitely want your business to compete for local search engine results.
However, there is more to local search than Google, Bing and Yahoo. Every popular website with an index of local businesses and a search box is a potential source for visitors. For example, Yelp is well known as a review site, but it is also a local search engine. People search for local businesses on Yelp because they want recommendations through reviews.
Facebook, is becoming important to local search with its:
- Business profiles
- Like buttons
- Facebook Places application
Each one of these tools can add your business into Facebook’s search results and let Facebook members recommend or share your business with their friends.
This is only a sampling of local search. As mentioned, local search offerings and websites are rapidly changing.
What you get: How our local search program works
Your business is unique, so we don’t run a ‘one size fits all’ service. Portent’s local search program focuses on four facets of local optimization:
Local Search Listings
We check that you already ‘own’ your local search listings on Google Maps, Bing Local and Yahoo! Local. If you don’t, we help you get each listing set up.
This step is critical to protecting your brand and reputation, as well as getting a higher ranking. If you don’t control your local business center listings, someone else can! We make sure your listing is secured.
Initial Citations
We submit your business to the many listing services that are ‘scraped’ by Google Maps, Bing Local and Yahoo! Local. We make sure you’re listed and have correct information in each one.
This gets you the initial citations needed for a solid local search ranking.
Onsite Optimization
Portent’s SEO team reviews your site, helping you add critical cues that tell local search engines where you’re located.
We’ll provide recommendations with easy to implement instructions.
Ongoing Citations: The Review Page
To improve and maintain your local search ranking, you need a steady flow of reviews. We can’t get those for you, but we can make it easier. Portent will create a review page on your site that links to your local listing on the most popular review sites, like Google Maps, Yelp and Foursquare. It gives your customers a single, easy place to go to tell the public how much they love you.
And, it makes it easier for you to request reviews. Instead of saying “Go to Google Maps… Oh, you don’t have a Google account? How about Yelp? No? How about Foursquare?…” you can say “I’d love it if you did an online review of our company. Go to the reviews page on our site and you’ll see a list of places where you can review us.”
This page is on your site. It’s not on our servers, and you don’t have to pay a subscription fee to have it.
Link Building Strategy
Link building is a foundation of SEO and is often glazed over in local SEO. Portent wants to help you be the exception to the rule. We’ll explain the process and give you some tips to get started.
We’ll provide you with an introduction to how link building affects search ranking, why link building is important, and where to start looking for links so that you can build up your local listings across all search engines.
Using Social Media
We help you own your own Social Media listings on sites like Facebook and Twitter to help build your business through social networks. We’ll even give you 6 simple strategies to use these sites to your advantage, giving you an edge on your competition.
Don’t Treat Your Website Like a Flyer!
People glance at flyers, throw them away and promptly forget what they read. Like a flyer, most people won’t buy the first time they come to your website; unlike a flyer, your website gives you unlimited space and opportunity to capture their interest and give them a reason to bookmark your site or return.
We’ll give you a 3 point plan on how to better use your content and layout your site to make it more attractive to visitors. Don’t let them toss aside your site again!
The ultimate rankings shortcut
Search engine optimization (SEO) is hard, and it takes a long time. But local search optimization is a whole different animal.
First, there’s far less competition – very few businesses know about it, or have done the necessary work. That means you’re competing with far fewer businesses, and have a better chance of rising to the top, faster.
Second, the local search tools on Google, Bing and Yahoo! all rely on third-party services for much of their local listings data. Get your site submitted to those services, and you have a head-start.
Third, customer response to local search listings is driven, in part, by your location on a map. Unless you have more than 9 competitors within a few miles of you, local search is a huge opportunity.
Local search results often show up at the top of the page, above the standard results. That gives you the ultimate rankings shortcut!
One fee, one time
Portent charges you a one-time fee of $1000 for this service.
*Note: Some directories charge annual fees. You will receive renewal notifications from them. The average annual fees for a small business, total, are under $75. Don’t worry- we won’t sign you up for any paid directories without your permission first.
Get started
Getting started is easy. Click the button below to submit payment. We’ll contact you within a few minutes during business hours, or in the next business day.
