Dynamic Business

3. Profile Pages

At the very least you need to ensure you have profile pages on the local and social networks.

Hopefully you’ve already claimed your digital real estate on Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Local pages, and you’ve optimised the content with lots of links, photos and descriptions.

You should build similar profiles on the major social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as business portals and community niche sites. Go for anchor text links where you can, and use local keyword phrases for the link rather than just the URL.

4. Citations

Citations are defined as ‘mentions’ of your business name and address on other webpages, even if there is no link to your website.

An example of a citation might be an online yellow pages directory where your business is listed, but not linked to. It can also be a local chamber of commerce, or a local business association.

This factor is probably the least talked about but is considered very important for local search results.

5. Location Backlinks

Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website (also known as Inbound Links or IBLs). The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website, and search engines give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks.

When you’re trying to rank highly for local search terms, quality links from other sites should contain ‘local’ anchor text where at all possible.

You should take advantage of any associations, chambers or networking groups as a potential home for your content and links. Also consider producing ‘guest columns’ for local publications, as well as work with your existing partners to develop local links back to your site.

So, what do you think?

Would you rather pay someone to generate leads for you each month, or would you prefer to spend some time optimising your own site?