Targeting Local Market through SEO and PPC

If your business provides products or services targeted for local consumers and customers, the best way to increase the reach of your business online is by implementing search engine optimization and paid advertising like pay per click which are geared towards the local market. Local SEO and PPC are two effective ways a business can target the local customers.

In majority cases, increased sales is always guaranteed if your site garnered a higher page ranking in search engine results for local products and services. Therefore, your website should be optimized such that the local market is targeted effectively and efficiently. Website owners should make sure that their websites contain the essential elements that would direct local consumers and customers to your site with their search queries. Following are some local SEO tips which reinforce your local marketing efforts:

• Register with Local Directories. Local consumers look up for businesses in the local directories or commercial directories that cater to local markets. You may take advantage of free local listings like Google+ Local or Yahoo! Local. Most of the customers use the more popular local online search engines when they look up for products and services.
• Create a Sub-Domain to Build Trust. It takes a while to generate trust with the major search engines. You may opt to capitalize on the domain trust of established businesses by creating a subdomain with them to gain exposure. Linking your main site in the external domains, you can increase traffic to the site which will eventually help it gain trust with major search engines.
• Make Your Address Visible. By listing your business address prominently on your main home page or landing page, and all the other pages of your site for customers to see and remember easily.  
• Multiple Markets. If your business caters to multiple local markets, make sure you have a landing page for each of the towns you are marketing. A local customer would not be interested in reading through information about other towns on the same page his town is displayed. A more localized landing page is preferred.

Like local SEO, PPC relies on the principle that targeting a specific geographical area in a marketing campaign will bring in more positive results for a local business. Pay per click (PPC) ad campaigns are inexpensive and do significantly increase traffic even for a specified timeframe only. Learning how to make local PPC work will get your site ahead of the competitors. It all boils down to the effective research of proper and relevant keywords and put them to work.

There are three ways to target a local audience through PPC:

• Local Keyword Campaign. By using a combination of local geographical modifier and core keywords, a local product or service is advertised within the specified geographic location.
• Geographic Targeted Campaign. This is the most frequently used campaign to target local market. The search marketer shall simply select the local audience for which the ads need to be displayed – state, city or customer defined area.
• Ads on local business listings and maps. This option requires setting up an account at the Google+ Local or the Google Local Business Center, and text ads may appear on a Google area map after a local search is made.

These are the benefits of local search engine optimization and local pay per click advertising campaign. These two online marketing strategies will help your business grow and get local presence if properly done. SEO companies in the Philippines can help you obtain local presence and brand recognition.

Is Paid Advertising Advantageous for a Small Business?

By definition, advertising is anything that gets a product or business name into the mind of potential customers or clients. It may take many forms, from carefully planned campaigns, to media exposure, or printed materials distributed by hand to random people, etc.

For small businesses, it is quite common to go for paid advertising rather than push efforts on search engine optimization. This is primarily due to the determined time and speed of implementation, and control over the content of the advertisement. Compared to SEO, which takes a longer time to see results, paid advertising is preferred by small business owners for some notable and significant advantages over other advertising forms. Some of the advantages include:

• Qualified Traffic. There are studies that showed that about 60% of searchers are likely to click on organic search results than pay per click advertising, leaving 40% to be those who are likely to click on paid advertising. Definitely lower than organic advertising, but it’s still 40% which is a significant chunk of your target market.  
• Speed. This is important for small businesses. With paid search advertising, business gets to run fast. It will not take long to be able to see measurable results. And these results can be used as guideline for the necessary changes on the next marketing strategy or campaign. If your business runs on seasonal promotions, it will be more cost-effective to employ PPC (pay per click) advertising than organic SEO.
• Low Upfront Cost. Paid online advertising may be the most inexpensive advertising option there is. The low startup costs are a great boost for small businesses with limited resources. And depending on your business’ long-term goals, PPC may be started small and gradually increase according to the demands of the business. One needs to work with an expert on search marketing in order to avoid any costly mistake or error.  
• Highly Targeted Promotions. While SEO focuses efforts on capturing all sorts of searchers, paid search targets customers who are looking for your product or service. The searchers who still click on the ad knowing that it is paid are likely to be real customers looking for your product or service.  
• Having control on keywords. Paid search programs allow businesses to target unlimited number of keywords. This means massive opportunity into hitting the words customers use in their search.
• Flexibility. Paid advertising allows you to see results immediately. The power of paid search is on the speed of implementation and its flexibility. You can test too many variables to determine which are the effective and useful among the keywords, for instance. This is not possible in organic search.  
• Greater control of marketing message. Small businesses can have control on what the advertisements say and how they look on the page. The downside is having limited  number of words you can use but this is compensated fully by the control you have on the content of your ad. Pay per click advertising, for example can allow you to create a landing page for every promotion with the sole purpose of greeting the visitors and push them gently to the right direction.

For most small businesses trying to acquire new clients or customers, or gather leads for conversion, or making a sale on the page, paid search is definitely the way to go. Paid advertising is most certainly advantageous for a small business like yours. To cut on costs and get optimal results, you can outsource online marketing and be on top of your game.