SEO for local business

Whatever line of business you're in, you've probably had someone call you up in the past month offering you search engine optimisation (SEO). They promise to get you to the top of Google. That all sounds pretty good, but what are they getting you to the top of Google for?

I've met a lot of very confused business people recently who have bought SEO but have very little idea what they are paying for. I thought I'd write a few posts to demystify this art, and hopefully get across that SEO is not one-size-fits-all. You need to start with a strategy.

If you are a local business, your strategy should be very different from that of a global or national brand. Think about it: if you are a physio, for example, you're going to be competing with every physio in the world for the search word "physio". If your specialism is in sports massage, you're still competing with everyone else in the world for the obvious search term combinations.

So, you should still optimise for those words, but don't expect to get anywhere near page one. You need to treat search like you would any other marketing strategy - by looking at your target market. And if you are a local service industry, your target market is people who live near you. It's that simple, but you wouldn't believe the number of local business owners I meet who are paying SEO "experts" to compete for the attention of people who live on the other side of the planet.

So, in order to drive the right sort of traffic to your site via search simply think what search terms your customers would use to find you. In the physio example it's pretty straightforward: "physio bristol"; "sports massage bristol". These terms won't be nearly as competitive as they would without the "bristol". I don't know how competitive your key words are where you live, but by narrowing it down to your locale you give yourself a very good chance of registering on the first page.

This is the basis of your keyword strategy. In the next post I'll do a checklist of the basic things every local business needs to do to start competing.

shootme moves to Spike Island

We're excited to be moving from our Clifton home into "Bristol's Bauhaus". Spike's a really good place to be as there's so much going on here: gallery, events, workshops. And the cafe does brilliant salads for 4 quid.
It's just little chance encounters (there are scores of artists, designers and creative companies here) that make the difference. There are new people moving in all the time so it just keeps getting better. I think this kind of development is the only way to prevent London sucking the life out of the rest of the country.
Here's the website.