Consumers are more likely to buy when they search locally. This locally focused traffic is generally better qualified, and results in much higher conversions and purchases.

For example, someone in Orlando, Florida is looking for mexican food. Instead of directing them to the main page of your Web site, they’re provided with the specific landing page containing your business address, phone number, and other information specific to that location. Land a consumer on relevant local information and your conversion to sale increases ten-fold!

Keyword research for local SEO is slightly different than for local SEM. To get the most benefit out of the keyword research, each location should be analyzed individually. While this can be tedious, you’ll usually find that there are noticeable differences between how people from different regions search for products or services in their area.

For instance, you may find that in Orlando the most popular query is “mexican restaurants in Orlando,” while in California the most common search phrase is “California Mexican Restaurants.” This is especially true if you’re optimizing for a specific area or district within a city.

Through keyword research you may find that instead of searching for the city name, the locals search by neighborhood. The variance between the most popular search phrases might be small, but that slight difference in keyword targeting could open the doors for significantly more traffic.

Local business listings have made their way to the top of the first page in SERPs due to the pervasiveness of universal search. As such, local business listings have become an extremely important aspect of local SEO.

To create a strategic presence within these listings, each location should feature a title and description that is reflective of the localized keyword targets. Listings should also contain a link to the corresponding location page on your Web site. Don’t forget to include videos and images relevant to each location. These draw attention and help drive traffic.

How you go about creating and maintaining visibility within search engine results for localized search terms will vary based on the strategy selected. Whether you go with a test program or full implementation, you’ll need to focus your tactics around on-page elements, off-page elements, and local business listings.

On-page tactics for local SEO are generally the same as traditional SEO, but with a focus on the location being targeted. This means traditional SEO elements (e.g., page titles, page names, meta tags, keyword density) still factor in getting a page to rank. The difference here is the local focus of the keyword targets.

For example, with local SEO you’ll tend to focus the previously mentioned elements on a keyword target made up of the location and keyword. This would be something like “Orlando Mexican Restaurants.”

There are other local tactics that should be employed to round out your content. These include a geo meta tag, local address, phone, ZIP, and map within each page’s content. If you have several location pages, it’s important the copy is unique on each page to reduce any potential duplicate content penalties.

Finally, there should be a link to each location page in the sitemap. Careful though, Google suggests less than 100 links per sitemap. If you have a large number of location pages, consider creating a flat HTML directory of locations by hierarchy. In this scenario, start by linking the sitemap page to region pages (e.g., Northeast) continued with a listing of state pages that link to a complete listing of individual location pages.

As with traditional SEO, off-page tactics are important for local SEO as well. Inbound links should be created between your site and several relevant local sites. The link anchor text on these sites should be reflective of your localized keyword theme and the links should point to individual location pages and not simply to your home page.

Don’t forget to leverage social media. There are several local opportunities in the social space that should be considered. Take a look at items like blogs, images, videos, Wikis, and local groups. These areas provide an opportunity for increasing awareness of your local presence and they can provide another outlet for driving traffic.

Local SEO is an often overlooked aspect of Internet marketing that contains an increasing amount of opportunity for most companies. With a little research a strategy can be developed, tactics can be defined, and implementation can begin on what will likely turn out to be a highly beneficial endeavor.

How does viral video marketing work? By using one of the most trafficked video sites around: Youtube.com.

If you don’t already have an account, it’s free to set up. If you already have one, but haven’t setup a profile – this is a crucial step because it allows you to post your website URL; give a brief bio of yourself or introduce your company.

The best part about viral video marketing is that it can be twice as effective as writing content, because half the time, people don’t read it – most people like things presented to them visually.

Most people are visual learners and need to “see” how things are done. Try using your website content as the script for your videos and see how much more you can accomplish.
If this idea wasn’t true, television would never have made it. This is your chance to make your own commercial without paying a cent in airtime costs.

The great thing about Youtube: they make it really easy for others to post your video to their websites, even further spreading the word about your site. This is viral video marketing at its best.

So get started on that video, but be sure to keep it short – no more than 2 – 3 minutes to avoid boring your viewers.

Make sure that your website address clearly appears at least at the beginning and end of each video, but don’t try to keep it displayed throughout the entire video, this can be annoying and will discourage some people from posting your video to their website.

Youtube can get you the exposure you need, but you’ll have to help the process along at first, though.

Don’t just post your video and leave it to Youtube to bring in views. Initially, you’ll want to get as many people viewing your video as possible.

Here’s some quick and easy ways to do this:

Link to other videos

Link your video to other videos that are related to your topic. You’ll have to take some time to do some research for this, but it’s well worth it. Find high-quality videos with lots of viewer activity.

Link to social networking sites

Post a link to your video on all social networking/bookmarking sites that you belong to and encourage them to write a brief comment about your video

Email video link

Email a link to your video to everyone… and I mean everyone… that you have an email address for. Note: If you don’t know the people personally, you’ll need to introduce the video in a way that gently convinces them that they should view the video (and write a comment).

Briefly outline the benefits of watching the video. For example, if your company sells hand soap and you’d like to promote a new product you could say, “If you’ve been wanting to know how to avoid catching the swine flu, this video can show you how…”

Don’t worry about whether or not these two groups of people actually go on to your website or purchase anything. The point here is to create a flood of viewers and get some buzz going about your video.

When the webmasters at Youtube see that something is stirring in your area, they are more likely to link your video to other relevant videos.

To fully understand the importance of this, consider your own Youtube viewing experience. How many times have you search for one video and ended up watching tons of others solely because their links popped at the end of one video?

Next thing you knew, you stumbled upon something so great that you were compelled to post it to your site or, even better, you decided to click the link to their website. Well, that’s what I’m talking about here.

Youtube can expose your website to millions of viewers from all over the world. The sheer volume of visitors that surf Youtube is the viral component that makes it possible to increase your website traffic.

Your video is transmitted from one viewer to the next where it multiplies as they distribute it to other viewers that they come in contact with, and then they go on to transmit it even further – but the great thing about viral video marketing is that even though it can spread like a virus, it carries none of the health risks!

There are alot of other viral video sites that produce alot of quality traffic and inbound links. Contact Snapt for more information on producing and marketing your viral video.