I don’t know if you’ve been online for long or not. If so you probably remember online marketers turned their backs on local customers in the 80’s. The belief was the internet would bring the whole world to their door as customers. Finally the little guy could compete on a global scale.
“Think Big!” became the mantra of the day. Local SEO was abandoned. Business owners no longer wanted to be ‘bothered’ with local customers.
Basically an attitude of “Pooh pooh local clients, I want the whole world!” permeated net commerce.
Well, like mini-skirts, VW bugs, and bell bottoms…pursuing online relationships with local customers has become hot again. It’s making a comeback. In a big way.
A few small business owners and especially technology marketers have come to their senses.
After reviewing search marketing data it is now obvious that most (if not all) communities here in the
Both Microsoft and Google are fighting for control of local search marketing by providing integrated mapping services. Their respective products are Microsoft Virtual Earth and Google Earth
Both companies know that the winner of this battle will gain a major foothold in local search engine marketing arenas. They aren’t after one or two communities, they want them all.
Ok, here’s why you as a business owner should care about local SEO…
70% of local queries (v. portals) are provided by search engines. That’s huge. Are you getting your share of local search queries? Are you buried deep down in the search engines? Or worst, do you still have no web presence at all?
When trends make a come back they tend to be short lived. The miniskirt is out of style (I will miss that one), VWs are still ‘cute’ but likely to drift away into oblivion soon as the glass-topped newness is no longer exciting, and interest in retro bell bottom pants has died (I’m so glad for that because I hated being a kid forced to wear ugly bell bottom jeans when they were hot back in the 70’s disco era).
I predict local SEO won’t die off though. Only the opportunity for small businesses will die.Two things will cause this. The first is big businesses will push SMBs aside. And the second is internet spammers will flood the search engines with fake websites designed to grab local search attention.
The independent small business owners will become casualties in the local SEO web marketing wars, the same as in the global SEO markets now.
One way to avoid this is to get well positioned in the search engines now. That way when spam sites and big business began entering your domain, you will have already established yourself as a valuable local resource for the web’s billions of surfers.
Just kidding. That’s so 90’s.
You will have established yourself as a valuable resource for local web surfers.
If you need help establishing yourself in local search markets feel free to check out my list of services. Scroll through the sidebar Blogroll on the right. The list of services is in the link that says Hire Andre. Perhaps there’s something there that can help you get to the top of local searches while this area of online marketing still has little competition online.