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March 25, 2008

7 Ways to Get More Local Website Traffic

The challenge that local small businesses face is how to bring targeted local traffic to their website. Here are seven cost effective ways for a local restaurant or dry cleaner to use to reach local prospects.

  1. Organic SEO: Optimize your website with your primary keywords mixed in with city, neighborhood, community and local names. Include phone numbers with area codes. These are all ways that people search for local businesses.
  2. Google Local Search: These listings appear along with a map at the top of Google’s search results when people search for local businesses or services. You can add your business listing for free by going to the Google Local Business Center.
  3. Facebook: Create a Facebook page for your small business. Encourage customers to join your Facebook presence by offering a free glass of wine or free service. You can then reach them offer specials to your fans. Encourage customers to leave reviews on your Facebook page. Forbes did a nice story on a local restaurant using Facebook.
  4. Online Radio Ads: Place online radio ads with a service like TargetSpot. You can geo-target your ad down to the zip code and they advertise that you can start with as little as $50.
  5. CitySearch: Citysearch is a local guide with the information on local businesses. These range from restaurants and spas, to hotels and retail. Local guides like CitySearch allow you to advertise with a web ad for a reasonable monthly fee.
  6. Blog: Create a blog that deals with local services, issues, history or events. The key here is to create local content that is interesting to your targeted customer and that uses local town and community names to draw in local visitors.
  7. Google Adwords: Set-up two campaigns. One that uses general keyword phrases that are manually geo-targeted. The second uses the same keywords with city and/or state added to the beginning or end. Use the state or city terms prominently in the ad to get a higher click thru rate.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 6:35 am and is filed under Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 Comment »

  1. 1. Write unique content. Do this daily and add pages daily. Traffic will follow organically.

    2. Create a signature link in forums. This will direct traffic to your site. Choose forums that are relevant to your niche.

    3. Leave comments on other people’s blogs that link back to your site. Check out any Blog. You will see the place to leave a comment. Make sure you write something worthwhile - so that there is more chance of the owner approving your comment.

    4. Write a controversial topic in a forum. This will create many varied opinions and therefore - much traffic.

    5. Answer questions on Yahoo Answers - be careful how much you do this as you are likely to get kicked out.

    Just a few ideas about traffic.

    Comment by Bob from http://www.weekendeasycash.com/Pages/GettingTraffic.htm — March 29, 2008 @ 3:23 am

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