Search Engine Advice:
Location, Location, Location!
Shoppers are often looking for a place to purchase their product locally. In that case they will put in some location data into their search request. This is a good focus to have on your search term targets.
I built my first website in 1999. It was a website with it's own little search engine. I got several local businesses to "buy a page" on the site. I would put text and pictures on their pages. The search engine would pick up on the content of the pages and would crank out results when users typed in their requests. Someone would type in "Diamonds" and the local jewelry store would be listed first. It was the only jewelry store on the website. So that was easy.
Within a year of my first Internet project, my jewelry store customer asked me to build a website for his business. I thought, this could be fun. So I did. Then he told me he wanted to be first in the search engines when someone typed in "diamonds." I told him right quick, "I can't do that."
What is the top spot worth in your search engine rankings?
As years went by I thought how valuable it would be if I could get that top spot for my jewelry customer. But, since I have been learning about the web and search engines, I have determined that the top spot in "diamonds" was pretty worthless to him unless he wanted to refocus his business.
He could seek investors, build stores, and build a national distribution system. He could even go global! But, I know he is not that kind of person. His focus is on his local market and he has a "hands on" attitude concerning his customers. He knows them all. And he takes care of all of them.
So what would that top spot have done for him? It would have gotten him an enormous number of phone calls from day one. His email would have been saturated also. And the focus of the inquiries would be on quantity and price. In other words, he would need to totally refocus his business.
The location factor
In most cases, even today, when a young gentleman is out to purchase the diamond ring, he is going to shop locally. Sure, he'll get on Google and type in "diamonds". But, what will he come up with. Well as I do that the day I write this article, the first site is diamonds.com. And I go a few pages into the site and I am able to find out that their corporate office is in Las Vegas. So I go back to the Google page and I go through the first 20 results and cannot get a physical location where I can find a store to shop for a diamond. So what happens next?
The next step is that the shopper starts to localize his search. He types in a word set that includes the name of his home town and the word "diamond". And then he finds out where he can shop today for the jewel.
Again, I go to Google as I write this article, and this time I type in "Albemarle Diamonds". The superpages.com website comes up first. But, there in the number 2 spot is www.starnesjewelers.com.
Thanks Gene! Your got me started.
Huck Huckabee
Small Business Websites & Find Searchers |
