What In The Heck Is Local Search?

Well local search can be defined as anything that is searched online with a intent to find or buy something locally… or a better way to put it.

What + Where = Local Search

Which basically means it’s anything with the goal to find something in a local place. So visitors are seeking information online, but buying offline. This typically is in the form of a search with a geo qualifier, that’s fancy talk for city, state, county, or zip code. But here’s where the plot thickens.

According to comScore, 66% of Americans use online search engines to locate offline businesses and 90% of all online commercial searches result in offline brick & mortar purchase. Hmmm interesting.

Plus, way back in 2007 Google stated that 73% of activity online is in one way or another “related to local content”. (That was 5 years ago!)

Since then Google has introduced it’s places, maps, and more and more local offerings to businesses. Obviously they know the numbers, and the numbers don’t lie. Those little streams of local traffic add up to big numbers.

And not only that, local small businesses are catching on fast. Take a look at this. Small businesses are slowly shifting their ad spend to online media.

But there is good reason for it, and a good reason you are reading this blog. Online marketing works, plain and simple.

But here’s the warning. The time to act is now, because the window of opportunity is quickly closing. Take a look at the numbers of businesses already online.



And just recently Yelp! announced it’s 100 million dollar IPO. So what does all this mean? Simple. There is money in local search and businesses are wanting to have a bigger presence online. Anyway you can help them achieve that goal you create a true WIN – WIN.

How you do this is simple. You help them dominate “local” search terms that bring in leads and sales. But here’s where it gets a little tricky. Local keywords are deceiving.

At first glance at the handy dandy Google Keyword Tool, you would think. “Crap! There is hardly any traffic.” Well this is where everyone’s thinking has been flawed.

It doesn’t take 10,000 monthly searches for a local business to make a lot of money.

In fact, a trickle of good targeted leads can make a company extremely profitable all year long. (I’m talking only 1-3 leads per month, sometimes less)

This means having 30 local searches is NOT a small number. If 10% call, this is a big winner for the local business.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I want to hook you up with some research and tips that’s going to jump start your chances of dominating local search in 2012. First I’m going to share with you…

Top 23 Local Search Terms

1. Hotels
2. Restaurants
3. Bars
4. Taxis
5. Limousine
6. Dentist
7. Injury Attorney
8. Real Estate
9. Criminal Lawyer
10. Plumber
11. Accident Lawyer
12. Nightclubs
13. Remodeling Contractors
14. Electrician
15. HVAC
16. Roofer
17. Flooring
18. Car rental
19. Painter
20. Heating
21. Locks
22. Furniture
23. Web Design

Now I find this list a little funny. First of all I see a lot of keywords related to bars or night life, and then a lot for attorney and lawyers. Wonder if those are related. Lol

So here’s how we compiled this list. Using a keyword tool I will not disclose publicly my team went and researched the top 5 cities in the United States for common keywords using the city modifier. So for example “Attorney in Chicago”. This is the list we came up with. Use this list as a jumping off point for local niches. But this is not exhaustive, this is just the most searched. Typically there are two types of local keywords.

High Traffic / Low Customer Value or Low Traffic / High Customer Value. I prefer the lower traffic, low competition keywords.

Hint: See #33 is Web Design. Businesses need your help!

Here’s How To Build A Local Keyword List

1) Use “Non-Local” Keywords – Start out in the keyword tool with general broad terms that people would search first. This is going to reveal how people would really be looking for a business online.

2) Search The Big Cities – Use the nearest big city to get more ideas. Then modify those terms with your local area. Remember a trickle of traffic is still valuable with local search.

3) Use that old Yellow Book for ideas – Yup it’s still useful. Wipe the cobwebs off it, and take a look at what categories they use, and what language businesses use in their ads.

4) Use GEO Modifiers – Once you have your list of keywords, modify them with city, state, county, and zip code. Get surrounding areas as well. Here is a free tool to help you out.

But here is something I found really interesting. It is estimated that 35-50% of people looking to buy offline are searching by business name. Of course there is still a big opportunity for the keywords and categories searches, but an often forget opportunity is the business names themselves.

That is why I recently developed a new piece of software to help me take advantage of those 35-50% of people. After doing some test, I was shocked how easy it was to rank for these terms.

1. Appbistro (www.appbistro.com) is an app for finding apps. It’s an easy-to-use marketplace (just search or browse) of Facebook business applications – some free; some fee – that can help you create a more engaging Facebook page for your local business.
2. The ASBDC Loan Center is a new service that aims to connect small business owners with willing lenders. It’s a partnership between the Association of Small Business Development Centers and BoeFly. Visit: (www.boefly.com).
3. JitterJam (www.jitterjam.com) is a web-based social marketing app that combines social media, email and mobile engagement with a contact database and tools to turn social interaction into new revenue opportunities. It helps your business realize measurable return on your social engagement by providing you with a social marketing and customer development system.
4. Sign Up is a simple (yet flexible) app from North Social (www.northsocial.com) that lets you create contact forms and online surveys directly on your Facebook page so you can easily collect helpful marketing data. You can customize the appearance of the app by uploading a header image and choose whether people must “like” the page in order to view it.
5. Work for Us (www.work4labs.com) lets you post job openings and even take applications right from your Facebook Page, for free. If your business isn’t yet posting jobs online, this is a great way to get into the game. It also lets you leverage the power of social networking to create awareness of your job openings.
6. Vimeo PRO (www.vimeo.com/pro) is a new service that makes it easy and affordable for small businesses to host their own high quality videos. This can help restaurants better showcase their food and atmosphere. Real estate agents will find it helpful to show higher quality home previews.
7. BetterWorks (www.betterworks.com) is a new kind of web-based employee perks program and management system that helps small businesses provide a range of benefits and product or service discounts to employees.
8. Nefsis (www.nefsis.com) offers business-grade video conferencing, including Nefsis Basic, a free, cloud-based video service for small business.
9. Buckaroo (www.buckaroo.com) has a new web-based tool that lets small businesses run custom email and social media promotions. Merchants can upload an email list and company logo, and send sharable promotions to customers.
10. Schedulicity (www.schedulicity.com) has a new app called Deal Manager that helps appointment-dependant businesses control the flow of discounted services generated from a daily deal promotion.
11. Batchbook (www.batchbook.com) is a handy contact management app lets you easily keep track of your business, personal, and social networking contacts and share them with others. Create a flexible contact database from scratch, or import contacts from another system.
12. Picnik (www.picnik.com) is a terrific – and free – online tool for any small business that needs to edit, crop, resize and share photos and other images, but can’t afford the time and money buy and learn Photoshop software. Offers an easy to use yet powerful editing tool. Get creative with choices of effects, fonts, shapes and frames.
13. Dlvr.it (www.dlvr.it) is a nifty social syndication tool that can help you manage and distribute content to your blog, Facebook page, Twitter account and other social networking locations.
14. Updater (www.updater.com) is a helpful online tool to manage your offline mail. This tool arms you with the ability to control who can access and use your postal mailing address, and gives you a way to stop unwanted paper mail. Also simplifies change of address.
15. Carbonite (www.carbonite.com), a leader in online backup solutions, launched a Carbonite Business solution specially made to get small business into online backup, with anywhere-anytime access to stored files.

1. Perk up your Profiles: Local businesses with the most detailed online business profiles – including their products and services – get better results. Trouble is, your business probably has profiles in more places than you know. Make sure your online listings are complete – including not just your location and hours, but as much detail as you can get in about what your business offers, and what sets you apart from others.  If you have a business video, include that too, along with your social media connections. A great way to monitor how your business appears online is to use a reputation management service such as Dex Reputation Management (www.dexone.com).
2. Narrow your net:  A common mistake that local businesses make online is spending money on ads that appear outside their service area. By using local or regional sites or internet yellow pages you will get more bang for your advertising bucks.
3. Avoid the “first is best” myth: Many online advertisers have been conditioned to believe that first position in a search ad results page is best. But that’s not necessarily true. Slightly lower positions can actually produce better, most cost effective results. The best approach is to test.
4. Sync SEO with paid search: Use SEO techniques to make your business website rich with keywords and phrases that customers might search for online. At the same time, you can also use pay-per-click (PPC) ads to lure customers. Then use the most successful keywords from your paid campaign in your SEO efforts.
5. Geo-target your website and ads: Geo-Targeting – short for geographic targeting – means customizing your pitch to a specific city, state, region or even neighborhood.  One technique is to simply make sure your complete business address appears on every page of your website. The content on your site and in your ads and directory listings should also mention your city, as well as neighboring cities and areas. Location keywords are especially important to people searching for you on a mobile device.
6. Use the right tools: Using the right tools for the job is always important, and it’s no different for finding keywords.  Wordtracker.com and the keyword tool available at Google Adwords are two of the best free tools used by business owners.
7. Get your social media act in order: Having an active presence in social media is vitally important for today’s local businesses to connect with customers. At a minimum, make sure you have a Facebook business page, and consider other networking sites such as LinkedIn, Biznik and MeetUp.
8. Check out “check-in” services:  With location-based or “check-in” services and applications, customers create a profile and sync up with friends by “checking in” when they visit a specific local business. Participating not only helps you get found, it’s a great way to reward customer loyalty. Look into Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places.
9. Get a free product search listing on Google: Google Product Search helps buyers find and buy products of almost any kind online. As a local business, you can submit product-specific information to Google Product Search and be listed. It’s like a parallel Google search universe dedicated solely to products. There’s no charge for uploading your information, and no charge for any additional traffic you receive to your website.  Your ticket to this party is via the Google Merchant Center. Visit www.google.com/merchants.

1. Know your own value: While you can’t know everything the other party might want from you, be sure to understand what your offer or position can do for them. This means researching all the potential benefits and ways that your idea, product and/or service could help the other party, whether it is solve a problem, boost profits or simply make their life or business more convenient and enjoyable.
2. Pursue personal relations: Don’t be afraid to show the other party who you are as an individual – what you can do, where your values is and how the deal at hand will benefit everyone. You learn about them; they learn about you. Both parties must feel a synergy; only then can you forge a mutually beneficial relationship. When deals close quickly and easily it’s often because people have come to know and trust each other.
3. Get buy-in on your vision: Getting others on board with your plan can be challenging, especially when there are many people involved and/or there is much at stake. A critical step in artful deal making is to articulate your vision of the outcome so the other side desires the very same outcome. Make the “what’s in it for me” factor crystal clear to the other party as you present your position.
4. Be humble, fair and honest: You have to be humble, but firm, to effectively broker a deal. There’s a fine line between the two, particularly when you’re dealing with people who’ve already achieved success. Always respect the positions of the other people involved in your negotiations, no matter how badly, or not, you want the deal. It’s critical to be fair and honest about the negotiation and to keep your intentions pure. You need to let people know you have the ability and desire to deliver what you say you will. You also need to showcase with quantifiable examples that you put 100% effort behind everything. In short, your goal is humility with backbone. It’s a tricky but essential combination.
5. Apply a little finesse: Blunt force doesn’t work in any negotiation. No matter how large or small, almost every deal takes finesse, which is where skill and natural ability meet. This is where you get to have fun and allow your personality to shine. It means being able to explore different angles. It’s problem solving with a twist. It’s poise and diplomacy. In the end, when finesse comes into play, the parties tend to genuinely like each other and all sides look for ways to make sure the deal goes through. For the best deal makers in business, finesse often comes naturally. If it doesn’t for you, try to develop it, let it flow and have fun trying it.
6. Show confidence: It helps to add a dash of swagger as long as you are careful not to appear arrogant (remember humble from above). If finesse is about problem solving and outside-the-box thinking, then swagger is about having a commanding and authoritative disposition and demeanor but without being pretentious or arrogant. It’s about knowing how good you are and hinting at what your business is capable of without bragging. In a deal-making situation, try to exude confidence, success and fearlessness.

Master these six essentials and you’ll be ready to successfully negotiate just about anything for yourself, or your business. Remember, though, that the best negotiating skills are developed over time and with practice, so don’t despair if things don’t all go your way. You may have to stumble a few times, but just get back up and go at it again.

• Use your Web site to build solid, trusting relationships with customers. Trust helps bring customers back.

• Enhance communication with customers. Some small business CEOs put their email address on the company Web site so customers can contact them directly.

• Don’t forget the basics: Post your company’s address and phone number on everything.

• Remember that the Internet is educating your customers and making them smarter buyers. Keep up with their knowledge.

• Respond to customers promptly.