Starfall Graphics’ local-search listing

The big search engines know this, and in their competition to provide the highest-quality search results, they’ve created systems to provide highly relevant results to people searching with local intent. They’ve set up localized directories and made their own sites location-aware. That means that when you visit search engines, they check your IP address to get an idea where you are in order to tailor search results to you.

If your business offers a service that’s limited by geographical range, or if you’d prefer working with clients in your area, you need to get yourself found in local searches. One way to rank high in local searches is to include some geographical terms among the keywords and keyphrases encoded in your web site. Refer to yourself frequently in your content and meta tags as a “Houston web designer” or a “Texas writer.”

Another way to make your way up the search engine rankings is to register yourself with local-search directories. At the July 23 Community & Conversation workshop, we introduced two good resources for local search: Local.com and Getlisted.org.

Are you using local search resources to promote your business? How it is working? Let us know in the comments area.

You can register with Getlisted.org to get a user account (called a “LocalDashboard™”) that will track your local-directory listings. The site also provides a “Resource Center” page with a handful of articles on topics related to local search and a page called “Enhance Your Listing,” which provides links to even more free and paid directories.

You could go nuts trying to cover all the bases in local-search listings. My advice is to start with Google, Yahoo, and Bing if your business is primarily providing business or personal services in clients’ homes or offices. If your business is anchored in a specific location—that is, if you sell a product or service from a storefront or an office with regular foot traffic—then you should also make sure to get yourself listed with Yelp.

If you’ve used Getlisted.org, I’d appreciate hearing about your experiences in the comment area below, or send me e‑mail.

YouTube permits registered users to post an unlimited number of videos and to share, rate, and comment on other users’ videos. Unregistered users can watch and share videos. The ease of sharing has turned some YouTube offerings into “viral” videos—clips that spread around the Internet like wildfire (see Evolution of Dance, for example)—and has made some obscure producers into Internet celebrities.

As a registered user, you can also set up a “channel,” a user page that organizes your own videos and others that you’d like to feature. If you’re producing video content, YouTube can be a great way to find an audience and to lead them to other elements of your online presence. Google also offers the option of designating your content as a Promoted Video. Promoted Videos are a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising system for driving viewers to your channel.

Your channel can contain a photo or logo image, information about your business or organization, and a link to your web site, blog, or Facebook fan page. The channel can be customized to coordinate with other branding efforts. For example, we’ve configured the font and color scheme of The Clutter Fairy’s YouTube channel to match the client’s web site:

YouTube channel
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Web site
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