Search engine marketing can lead to your company being the top dog in your community. More than 60% of all internet searches are for local products and services. According to Glenn Livingston, one of the founders of Rocket Clicks – an online search agency that delivers ‘Done for You, Online Marketing Solutions’ – very few people have mastered local search. “We continue to find many accounts that are not set up correctly.”
There are two key questions that you must ask when setting up a campaign for local search:
1. Where are the people who are searching?
2. What keywords are they searching on?
On our first point, a moving company is a really good example. Someone in metro Atlanta is looking to move across town, online marketing agency Atlanta so they type in “moving company”. However, someone who lives in Atlanta but is on a business trip may be searching those same keywords from out of town. As the owner of the moving company, you want your ad to be seen by the resident who is in the city, as well as the person who is searching while out of town. Google can show your ad in both places if your campaign is set up properly.
In the first case, Google uses IP addresses among other things to identify the physical location of people searching. So when they type in “moving company”, Google shows them regionally targeted ads. However, if the person sitting in their New York City hotel room types “moving company” they will typically get local and national options in their search results. The local ads will typically have the city, or city and state listed just under the ad.
Secondly, you’ll want to identify what keywords your prospects are searching on. Your local prospects are obviously searching with words like “moving company”. However, those who are out of the area might be typing in “Atlanta moving company”, or “Fayetteville GA moving company”. In order to get both groups, you must set up two ad campaigns.
The first campaign is for those physically located in your area using general keywords like “moving company”. The other campaign is for those who are located outside of your area, but they’re searching with geo-targeted keywords, i.e. “Duluth GA moving company”. That way, you have the best opportunity to cover your bases.
If you are already using pay per click marketing for local search or thinking about getting started, I would like to give you a cheat sheet that will show you how to cut your bid prices by 95% on Google AdWords. I invite you to come to [http://www.JustAskRamon.com] and tell me your single biggest question relative to developing a profitable online marketing strategy. You will get the cheat sheet for completing that one-question survey.