When you're looking for a certain product or service, you generally type in exactly what you need ? i.e. web hosting. Once you get a list of the web hosting providers in the results, you tend to choose the first few results, right?



Well when you want your local business to be found on the first page of Google, you need to know what the search engines are looking for. Your site not only needs to be optimized for your trade, but it must also be optimized for your local town, city, or county.

Here is a quick list of the things that will make you more popular on local internet searches:

- Related keywords and keyword phrases (including your town or county)

- Relevant website content

- Popularity of your website (your traffic count)

- How well connected you are to other websites on the web via linking

While this list isn't exhaustive, it does help to create some new ways of looking at your business website and places where you can make improvements.

Talking about the content first, you need to make sure that the words that your customers are searching for (keywords) are located on your site. While it used to be easy to just add as many of these keywords as possible and get a higher ranking, the search engines caught onto this keyword stuffing and started to change the way that they look at websites.

While keyword based content is still important, you'll want to limit your keyword density to no more than 5%. This allows you to then create relevant content that will get your website noticed. Just keep in mind that you want to be optimized for your local town and your industry.

Try to include articles and information that your customers would want to find when they are looking up your product or service. This will show that your website is geared toward your customers and not just the search engine. Be real. Give excellent and informative information for your visitor.

Of course, the more people you have coming to your website, the better your ranking. This popularity shows that people that were searching for certain information more often than not went to your site over others ? leading the search engine to believe that your site might be the right choice for their first page of results.

Adding relevant links to your website will also show your site's relevance and get you more noticed in local internet searches. The engines want to know that your site links out to other important and similar sites. It also wants to know that other industry sites link to yours.

The more websites that link to you? the better. This shows the search engines that your business website is an authority. Imagine being a fitness professional and having 3000 other fitness websites linking to your site. Google will take notice!

Your website is the key to your business' survival. In order to get to the customers that you want to reach, you'll need to learn these ?rules' of the internet game.

Look at your website as a business. It is a powerful marketing machine that generates loads of free, targeted traffic. Learning to position your business at the top of local Internet searches can take some time to master. Either invest the time and learn the process yourself, or hire a webmaster with a proven track record of local business success.