Local Website SEO: How to Get More Traffic to Your Local Business Site

So, you want to get your local business site up to the first page of Google? Here's your first tip - just having a great, slick site won't do it. Even having a great product or service that you offer is not enough. You need to understand the basic mechanics of SEO and social media marketing - these are the rules of the road on the internet that determine who gets massive streams of traffic, and who gets left out.

The first step to all this of course is to build a great website that effectively promotes your products and services and that is search-engine friendly. Once you've done that, the next step is to create a smart SEO and social media marketing plan.

Three tips for SEO newbies:

1. The key to ranking well in search engines is inbound links. The more links that point to your site, the more Google will think your site is important and the higher you will rank.
2. For local businesses, ranking well in local search engines is even more important than ranking well in the normal search engines. Sites like Yelp and CitySearch are hugely popular and are targeted at people looking for something local in their area. These sites have effectively replaced the Yellow Pages as the primary source of local business listings.
3. In today's internet, having a lot of buzz on social networks is also important. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube can have a massive impact on your traffic. If people on those sites like your business, or they are in some way a "fan" of your business, its likely that their friends will hear about you, and their friends will hear about you, and so on.

Get listed in Google. Submit your site to the Google index. You should also use Google Analytics to track your traffic statistics and know where your visitors are coming from. You should also submit your site to Google Maps. Another tip is to submit your business site to the DMOZ open directory project. This is a good way to get your site noticed by Google, but it takes a few months to get approved and in the index.

Get listed on CitySearch. CitySearch is the most popular local search engine, and will be a primary source of your site's traffic. You may find that your business is already listed on CitySearch, since they maintain local business listings from the yellow pages. If you want more control over your business listing on CitySearch, however, you should sign up for their business-facing dashboard, called CityGridMedia. Using CityGridMedia, you can get more exposure for your site on CitySearch, as well as gain access to more prominent customer communication features such as click-to-call. Learn more about advertising on CitySearch. 

Get listed on Yelp. Yelp is another top local search engine, and is popular among younger and tech savvy users. Yelp is very popular for its reviews, and has an active user base that actively reviews businesses. Get listed on Yelp.

Create a Facebook Page. Facebook has a service for businesses called "Pages." You as a business can create a site on Facebook which is similar to a user profile, but is designed for businesses to promote their services, gain "fans," and communicate with their customers. Its a great way to make announcements and keep people updated with your business. Best yet, whenever someone becomes a Fan of your page, that person's friend will know about it, and so on, creating a viral growth effect, which can lead to substantial traffic back to your site.

Create a Twitter feed. Twitter can have a similar effect to Facebook in terms of viral growth - although for businesses, we've seen better results with Facebook. However, Twitter users and super-active, and if your business makes a lot of announcements, or if you have someone who can blog for your business regularly, Twitter can drive a ton of traffic and new users to your site.

Submit your site to social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking sites are popular places where people share news items and interesting websites, and vote up the best ones. If your business offers something interesting or novel, or if you have an upcoming event or a big sale, these sites can give you short bursts of massive traffic. The most popular ones are StumbleUpon, Digg, and Delicious.

Tricks for getting free backlinks. Since backlinks are key to getting ranked in Google, the more you can get other sites to point to you, the better. Here are two little-known secrets for getting high-value backlinks. First, create a Google Profile for yourself (this like Google's equivalent to a Facebook profile. In your profile, you can add favorite URLs. These URLs count as backlinks, and are high power from an SEO perspective. Second, create a Feedburner feed for your website. Feedburner is an RSS management tool. The secret is, when you create a Feedburner account, your profile page contains a link to your website. This is a free backlink which carries a good amount of weight to improve your SEO. 

Issue press releases. If you have something to announce, such as a grand opening, the launch of your new website, or the launch of a new product or service, you should take advantage of the SEO boost that you can get from issuing a press release. Press releases are followed by thousands of important news sites, and there's a chance that your release might get picked up and you'll get lots of exposure this way. PRNewsWire and PRWeb are two popular wire services. 24/7 Press Release is a new PR wire service that is popular with SEOs since they give you prominent links within their releases. You can grab a 24/7 Press Release coupon here too.

Get more fans and followers. This one raises some controversy, but there's a new trend towards outsourcing some of the initial promotion and word-of-mouth marketing that happens when you kick off a new social media marketing campaign. In prior years, companies would hire someone to do this, but there are new services like Buy a Follower which do the heavy lifting of promoting your Facebook and Twitter pages. It costs a few hundred bucks but might be well worth the time you save (more detailed review here, and grab a coupon here).

Worried about bad reviews of your business around the web? On the wild west of the internet, you never know what people are saying about you. Irrate customers or even unethical competitors can post reviews and blog posts which bash your company's image. This has become a major problem for many businesses, so a new crop of services designed to help you track your reputation around the web have cropped up. Two well known services are ReputationDefender and ChatMeter.

Other local search engines can help. Smaller local search can add up to significant traffic, so its worth investing some time to submit your website to these. These include SuperPages, InfoUSA, and Local.com.

Don't underestimate the power of newsletters. Don't let customers drop in and out of your site without giving you a way to keep in touch with them. Use newsletters as a great way of keeping customers engaged. Some people think of newsletters as outdated technology, but the truth is that businesses are quietly using them as one of their most effective means of keeping in touch with their customers and driving more sales. Good tools exist such as iContact, StreamSend, InfusionSoft and VerticalResponse, which help you manage large databases of emails, and most importantly, make sure you don't get caught behind email spam filters. Check out a more detailed review of iContact and a coupon.

Related: Thesis theme for Wordpress