You’ve heard the statement “there’s gold in dem hills”, and it’s true when it relates to the local Google search neighbourhood. Google has now radically changed it’s search results. On any given search query you can see the national results, the local results and the content network results. Content being videos, press releases and podcasts. Depending on the search term Google will display local results, national results or a combination of both based on the physical address of the computer the browser is using.
Sometimes the Google Place pages (formely Google maps can domianate the local listings, but they are also limited to 7 spots. It’s easier for local companies to domiante the local Google results using a combination of organic results, Place results and even PPC. If you can dominate enough local keywords you can have a lot of traffic flowing to your website. The good thing about local search queries is that these tend to convert at high rates as people look for products or business services.
The upshot of dominating Google for local terms is that it will not take as long to rank for these terms than more generic national terms. 98% of all local searches never go further than page one to find a company. So while your website is taking months or maybe years to break into the top listings for national keywords, ignore the local search results at your peril. If you haven’t previosly been tartgeting them, add them to your short term roster whilst waiting for the more competitive national keyword phrases to show results.
What’s the point in spending hundreds or thousands of pounds and waiting around until you crack the major keyword terms you are chasing? You may be bringing in a lot of refferal offline business or repeat customers but you are missing out on loads of potential new clients by not optimizing for the local search markets.
