Local search engine optimization is a great way to get your business some extra publicity, but it certainly doesn´t happen overnight. If you want instant results, you need something that costs a lot more, like pay per click advertising. However, nothing beats free, organic local search engine optimization for low cost marketing.

While you do need to be patient, there´s no reason not to continue tweaking and improving your local search engine optimization. Add more content to your website. If you have a blog, be sure to post to it on a regular basis. Work hard to get backlinks while you´re waiting for all your work to pay off. Once you get picked up by the search engines, you will move up through the ranks faster because you´ve already done so much to help your blog grow.

A huge part of local search engine optimization is the waiting. Waiting for your website to move up in the ranks, waiting for Page Rank or for your website to get noticed . . . but you should never sit still. Keep working at building those links and adding more value to your website. Search engines help with traffic, but people are the ones who make actual purchases, so make sure your website is built to keep the visitors that come to you via your local search engine optimization efforts.

With Google local maps starting to show up to ten results at a time, you have a better chance of getting your business into the first result for local searches now. Even if there is quite a bit of competition, it is still far easier than before.

Part of the reason that Google went to the higher number of business results is because most searchers didn´t realize they could view more results by clicking on the link below the top result. Before, getting your business into that top result meant you would basically get all the traffic, so if you were in the first place for Google local maps, you´re now going to have more competition, but for anyone who was appearing in the “more” results, this new format is great news.

With Google growing at an exponential rate, it would be daft to not consider getting your business on this mega search engine. Google local maps are already appearing on i-Phones and is the fifth most visited Google property. Though it only makes up 1.56% of all Google´s traffic in general, that still means a lot of people are looking at those maps in the search results and it can only grow from here. Now there are more options for using Google local maps and you need to get your business on it.  It will only better your local advertising efforts. 

Imagine that you´ve had your business listed on local live search for ages. It´s brought you a bit of local advertising traffic, but then it suddenly stopped. What could cause the abrupt halt in the flow of traffic?

There are several reasons your local live search listing would stop bringing in business, one of which is that it is no longer listing the right information. This could be because you changed things around at your business, got a new phone number or any other change in information. It is very important to update all your information if you want local live search to be able to give people a method to communicate with you.

Whenever a change is made to your email, website address or phone number, or even physical location, you need to make sure that your business information is updated everywhere. This means your business directory listings, local live search, website and anywhere else that your business is online. This is vital if you want to continue bringing in new clients that find you online.

After all, a business where no customer can find you is pretty useless!

Local advertising is often underrated by small business owners, but it can be an extremely valuable method of promotion. Though local online advertising is usually cheaper than offline promotion, that doesn´t mean it should receive any less attention. Each word still needs to be chosen to get your point across. Here are a few more tips to make your local online advertising campaign a successful one.

• Successful local online advertising solves a problem. Whether you can fix someone´s broken bike or offer them a solution to a cleaning problem, helping people solve a problem is the best way to interest them in your business. Your product or service needs to be something that people will see a benefit from.

• Don´t be too glitzy. Local online advertising can easily be turned into something flashy, with glitter banners and flashing text. While fun effects may capture people´s attention, that doesn´t mean people are actually paying attention to what you are offering. Sometimes, simple text ads are the best way to go.

• Write clearly. Don´t beat around the bush or use metaphores without stating what you are offering clearly. There´s no point in confusing potential customers, so tell them right out what they will get from you.

Local online advertising is an excellent way to promote your business if done right. You will want to create an ad campaign that will allow you to communicate the benefit of your service or product to your potential clients.

Local search engine optimization is something that every small business should learn to do. With Google bumping local listings up to 10 per search result, your local search engine optimization is far more important these days. There is getting to be a lot more competition, too, as more small businesses realize how powerful the internet is.

1. Use your keywords in your business name. This can be a rather extreme option if you have already named your business. Consider adding a word or two to the end. For example, if you have a salon called “Belle´s Beauty” consider adding “Salon” to the end of it, since many people will be looking for “beauty salon” and not beauty.
2. Have several listings. If you are listing your business in directories online, make sure you list under each town or area where you offer services. People usually look for local businesses that are nearest where they live, which means they could be searching in areas near you, but won´t find you because you are only under one location.
3. Include nicknames in your SEO. Local search engine optimization can be more effective if you use the local nicknames for your area. Let´s say you´re on the West Side, you would want to include that on your website, along with any other keywords. This helps when locals are searching for businesses.

These are ways to boost your local search engine optimization and local advertising that many people won´t even think of. That means you get a headstart on everyone else!

While it is free to list your business on the online Yellow Pages, there are several Premium options that will cost you a yearly fee. Many business owners look at the price tag and wonder if it is really necessary it is to add premium features to their Yellow Pages listing.

If you go into the online Yellow Pages to look for a business, you will end up seeing a list of business names with their basic info below, phone number and address. It works well for anyone who knows what they want and who already has an idea as to which local business they would like to use. For everyone else, it will pretty much be a random selection!

Having something to set your Yellow Pages ad apart from the rest can really help people decide to go with you. There are several options and you certainly don´t have to choose video if you don´t want to, but having an image of your product or even your logo will help those searching the Yellow Pages online make their decision.

Studies have shown that for the majority of people, 65% of the time spent looking at ads is used to examine the image or photo. The remaining 35% is spent reading the text . . . making images far more important. A picture or even a small graphic can set you apart from everyone else doing local advertising on the Yellow Pages and bring you more business over a long period of time.

Local pay per click, if not done well, can end up costing you huge money. You need your ads to be tightly written and specifically targeted at people who are interested in your product. There´s no use in having 500 people click on your ad and go to your website if you don´t convert a single one because they thought you were selling something else.

One way to ensure that your traffic that comes in via local pay per click is very targeted is to use negative keywords. What are negative keywords? They are keywords that you don´t want your ads to show up for.

Let´s say you sell hope chests. You don´t want your ad coming up when someone types in something like “bodybuilding techniques for a big chest”, so you would need to select keywords that would show up in that phrase but wouldn´t be applicable to your business. These would be entered as negative keywords.

To find which keywords should be used, it´s useful to use a service like Wordtracker or Google´s Adwords tool to find similar or related phrases that come up with your keywords. This will let you know what people are searching for with your keywords in it. Take any irrelevant keywords and use them as your negative keywords in the local pay per click campaign. This will help ensure that your ads don´t even appear for non-relevant local advertising searches.

Negative keywords are a great way to avoid paying too much for your local pay per click campaigns. Research carefully and choose the words that are most likely to send you poor traffic and make sure you don´t end up paying for too many of those types of clicks!

Could your local advertising be too passive? If your local online ads just aren´t making a big impact, you might want to revise the wording. These days, it´s very common for advertisers to forget about telling people to do something and just focusing on creating a really pretty ad.

It may seem cliché, but you do need to tell the people who see your local  advertising what to do, directly or indirectly. Having a nice looking ad, be it text or video or images, is important, but what you say is also vital. It can have a major influence on what happens when someone looks at your advertising.

Ads that actually tell the reader exactly what to do have been proven to be more effective. Telling someone to click HERE for their free report or to find out more is far more likely to get results than just a descriptive ad. Local advertising is soon going to be even more competitive, so getting your ad campaigns right at this point is a good idea . . . you´ll be far ahead of the competition in no time.

Will those viewing your local ads think “What a nice looking ad” or “I need to get one of those”? Think about that the next time you´re planning out the copy on your ads.