WebProNews

It can be especially difficult for business-to-business companies and brick-and-mortar stores to stand out in search results, especially if their relying on local results or paid listings. The answer to that, of course, is good (old fashioned?) SEO.

Galen De Young, managing director of Francis SEO, says research suggests b2b customers overwhelmingly ignore PPC ads in favor of organic listings. That and local search often fails to present businesses that serve a larger area than just their home base, or also nearby cities.

The second issue, where lists of service areas are often incomplete or inadequately promoted, is not properly addressed by alternative geocentric search concepts based on mapping. Listings still appear for the home office area only, even though business is done outside of it.

De Young gives a nice tutorial about ways to optimize your local business' website for better visibility in organic search results. Some of the advice will seem standard to professional SEOers, like making sure there is a landing page for every market or location served, and that each page has unique content rather than template-generated pages with location information substituted in.

There are also some finer points made, like making sure URLs are not just static, but each URL, URL title tag, and meta description are geo-specific. Anchor text for links should also reflect that, and information shouldn't be hidden from search bots via drop-down menus.