Local SEO is becoming the in-thing nowadays, especially considering the fact that marketing based on location is quickly bringing up the rear. In the following article we shall be looking into 3 effective local SEO tips that will help you rank your business high in the search engines for your chosen keywords.

Putting yourself into the shoes of your customer and starting to think like them is the most effective local SEO tip you will ever learn. You need to understand the way your customer thinks to be able to determine how they would search online. Therefore, you need to be try and determine how someone would go about finding the products you provide or your site. We shall assume you sell all sorts of furniture including beds, cupboards, beds etc. However, will the searcher be able to find you if they enter “bed” into the search bar when you specialize in office furniture?

Will your site and products match up to that search? Most definitely not. However, if they search for “office computer table” then that will be a suitable match. You need to stay away from broad keywords as the conversions are pretty low, even if they are popular and bring in a lot of traffic. You should, instead, opt for keywords that are not quite as popular but are more targeted and offer a greater chance of bringing in a customer.

If you want everyone on a local level to know about your site then you need to be open about asking for people to post reviews. If you shy away from this strategy, you will be missing out on a lot of great strategies. Most local sites have absolutely nothing against you asking for reviews and interacting with your customers. So, why shouldn’t you enjoy all the advantages of this technique?

Just take the time to request a review from your customers but do it personally. This doesn’t mean you should be going out and asking people individually. You could put up a simple message like “If you could take the time to post a quick review of our company on Yahoo local/Google/Bing, we would greatly appreciate it.” You can post this request either in your emails, on your website or on your thank you page, which people see after signing up for a newsletter or getting in touch with you. These reviews will increase the credibility of your business, which will bring you more customers in the future, regardless of whether they are good, bad or ugly.

Additionally, you should make sure to add to your website a local telephone number. Since the search engines won’t be able to read it, you want to make sure you write out your number in text. 800 numbers are out because you should have a real number proving you are a real company.

What’s the reason? They are nice and professional but they don’t really indicate your location on their own. You need to do everything possible to have a real phone number. Local SEO has many components, and it is more specialized than general SEO work. Anytime is a great time to take your offline business onto the net, so there’s no reason for waiting.