Almost 72% of all local searches on the Internet result in a on-line or off-line purchase. Think about that statistic for a moment…. These are staggering numbers! When a potential customer searches the Internet for a keyword term, for example “dentist”, Google will return local business results specific to the geographic location of the user. The user is presented with both local business results (Google Places) and organic results as well. I will get into organic results later, but for now let’s keep focused on the local results. In most cases the local listings will be presented above the organic results thus making these listings very prominent to the user. In all cases the Google map will be shown at the top of the page, thus getting the users attention. This is a huge opportunity for local businesses to capture an interested (targeted) potential customer.

Google Search Results

If your Google Places listing is on the first page of the search results (and it can be with the right optimization) you will get traffic to your website and phone calls. It is a proven fact that people searching the Internet will very rarely surf to the second or third page of the search results. So it is imperative that your listing be on the first page. Google generally displays only 7 listings (there are some exceptions) on the first page of the listings. Your listing must be in the top 7 listings to get any attention.

I hope you can see the importance of having a “claimed” and “optimized” Google Places listing for your business. These mini sites are a magnet for customers searching for your services or products!

Now let’s spend a few minutes on the organic results of the search results page. If your website is optimized for your city name and your profession (ie: San Francisco Dentist) the likelihood of a searcher finding your site is greatly improved. In fact, having a locally optimized website and a strong Google Places listing, you may be displayed twice on the first page of Google! Now that is what you should be shooting for. This situation is ideal for attracting customers as you get two chances to get their attention.

Many web-masters are great at building beautiful web sites yet they lack the understanding of ranking (SEO). Without proper optimization techniques applied to your web site no one will find it, thus it is nothing more than an electronic business card!

This is where we can help, Elite Web Services specializes in optimizing both web sites and your local listings.

So how does the search engine determine what websites to display for a particular keyword phrase? Websites are ranked according to a couple factors. There are on-page factors which includes the title, description, domain name and header tags used on a website along with off-page factors that are primarily backlinks to a site. Backlinks are pointers to a particular website from another website. These pointers are further optimized based on the text used for the link. I know, you are saying this is getting confusing but allow me to break it down some for you.

On-page factors for website optimization:

• The title of a website is one of the factors search engines consider when indexing a site. The title is what shows at the top of your browser window when visiting a website.
• The next tag that is taken into account is the description of a website. This is the text that is displayed when a website is displayed in the search engine results page (SERP).
• The domain name of a website can be an important factor for the search engines (more on this later).
• And finally, the header tags on a website are looked at with some weight when indexing a site.

These are all factors a good web designer / webmaster should take into consideration when building a website. All too often these easy to incorporate tags (with the exception of domain name) are overlooked thus the website will have a difficult time ranking high in search results.

Off-page factors to consider are backlinks pointed to a particular website or page on a website. Backlinks are essentially hyper-links on a website pointing to another website which can be either a domain name (www.example.com) or text links (BestPlumbing). Backlinks are a very important piece of the website ranking puzzle. Search engines look at backlinks as votes for a particular website. The more backlinks a website has, the higher the authority of the website.

Having both on-page and off-page factors optimized for a particular keyword phrase(s) is SEO. The more optimized these are, the higher the ranking of a website for a particular keyword phrase. And a higher ranking means more traffic a website will get, thus creating more customers or visitors.

This is a simplified description of SEO but I hope you get the idea. Creating a website these days is a good thing, creating a website that gets lots of targeted traffic is MUCH better!

For more information on what is Google Places and why you should care, click here.

Our goal is to get your company properly advertised and ready to the face any opposing competition.

Our services to help you do that include search engine optimization, local business listings, email campaigns, website design and much more.

This section of my website is dedicated to providing informative articles covering topics such as SEO (search engine optimization), SEM (search engine marketing) and local SEO.

These articles are not intended to provide step by step instructions but rather an overview designed to educate a business owner or manager on the techniques used to promote your brand, products or services using the massive power of the internet.

I promise to not use these articles as a platform for selling although I may be tempted at times to throw a plug in occasionally! Hopefully you will enjoy, learn and share these educational articles with your peers and friends!