Local Search

There are two main aspects to Local Search – appearing in search engines such as Google Local (also known as Google Maps) and making sure your website is visible in the normal search results when customer searches for a keyword related to your business with a local modifier (for example “lawyers in Manchester”).

Optimising for Google Local isn’t the same as optimising for the natural search results. As a result we carry out a lot of R&D in an attempt to reverse-engineer the algorithms. We know that location is important, but having evolved over the last few years, the system is far more advanced than a straightforward “find my nearest” application.

Local Search

Appearing in the natural search results for keywords with a local modifier is one of our favourite strategies at Branded3 – we’ve been creating localised databases since 2002 and some of our clients attract over a million visitors every year from natural search using this method.

It’s particularly suited to large chains of stores with hundreds of locations across a particular country, but can also be good for a business trying to target a particular group of customers. A good example is a caravan insurance provider who might try to rank highly for “caravan park south wales” to reach caravan owners. It’s important to remember that high quality informative content needs to be created for every landing page, which makes the construction of large databases across hundreds of locations quite time consuming.