SEO is a huge subject and it is an integral part of any business that has a website, whether it is a purely online business or a company with a bricks and mortar store that has a website. The Internet means that any business can have global exposure for the products and services they offer the consumer. What does this all mean for the regional and local businesses that do not want or need global exposure?

It means optimisation has to be done just as if for a potential client base that spans the globe. This said, it also has factors that should make optimising for local customers easy. Having a well-designed and optimised website, plus going that extra mile is how to get the best results for regional, local and small businesses.

Build it well

For local and regional businesses, the trick is to build and optimised website from scratch. The search engines work by pushing out the most relevant answers to any search criteria. For example, if you are an electrician and your business is in Sydney, Australia, typing the word ‘electrician’ into the search bar will throw out nearly 5 million results. As a local electrician, you do not want that. Now change the search criteria to ‘electrician Wembley, UK’ and the search results will be a fraction of the previous results.

Perfect keywords

Now that is what a local business needs, the exact keyword or keyword phrase that will pinpoint your business in a search. This example is the basics for local and regional businesses. You cannot only rely on that, you have to go a few steps beyond.  Your other keywords and phrases will come from the entire geographical area that your business serves. They will stem from variations on your keywords, colloquial speech and misspellings. With these basics, you design and optimise your website for the search engines and your visitors.

Smart selection

When you build or are fixing the problems with your existing website, you must select products and services you most want your business to be found for. Look at your business critically. Select your top products or services or the factors of your business that give you any advantage over those companies competing with you. Draw on whatever factor or factors make your business unique.

People tend to remember such factors when doing local search. When selection your keywords and keyword phrases be very specific. You need to add everything geographical that can identify your business. These are things  such as the town or city, the county and your postal codes. When you have roughly 400 combinations that all point to your website, your business and location you have an excellent list to work with.

Search engines don’t care if you have a stunning website, they don’t even see that, they want identifying text that make the searches relevant.  Your reward will be high visibility in the SERPS and getting your target audience to come to your website.