I’ve seen a lot of websites for businesses that serve local or regional markets that aren’t taking enough advantage of their location when promoting themselves online. If you’re a local business, make sure customers in your area know it – they’re much more likely to get in touch with a business they know is nearby, rather than one with a vague, generic web presence featuring text and images that look like they came straight from a template.

In practical terms, what does this mean when you’re developing your local website’s content?

• Feature photos of your locale…the town, the landscape, the people…and your storefront, if you have one and it’s reasonably photogenic. If it’s a complete wreck, either fix it up or focus on that local landscape.
• Identify the local markets you serve. Provide a list of cities or towns in your service area. Describe a local client job you’re proud of.
• Provide testimonials from local customers, and be sure to include their location:
  “They polished my widgets better than anyone on the Quad-County Area!”
  ~ Edwina J., Bent Fork Falls
• List your address, phone number and hours of business prominently, and mention if you welcome drop-in customers to your brick-and-mortar location.
• If you do welcome walk-in business, why not offer an online coupon specifically for customers who are coming to your physical location rather than doing business online?
• Include directions to your location and embed a Google or MapQuest map in your directions web page.
• If your business has a long, or at least varied, history in your area, include a History web page or at least a paragraph on your About Us page describing how the business got its start, the different places it’s been located, and the story behind its current location.

In addition to attracting the interest and loyalty of local customers, all this local information provides a treasure trove of relevant, highly-targeted keywords for search engines to use when indexing and ranking your website. You’ll appear for more local searches, you’ll get linked to by more local websites, and your web traffic should increase significantly as a result. There are plenty of advantages to being local – so make sure you’re taking advantage of them!