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Are you still using that yellow book?

People say that old habits never die, but I tend to differ. As an example, can you remember the last time you've open a yellow pages book?

Ok, perhaps that other night when you were searching for a local pizza delivery number.

Although with the growing number of small business advertising their services online, this medium's popularity is in straight decline.

It's much easier asking Google to find information on a local service than skimming through hundreds of yellow pages advertisements. Type your question and geographic location on the search engine and you will be presented with the closest match to your query.

So with the future of Internet resting on local searches, your small business needs not only to reveal your site to your local prospect, but understand the online behavior of your local audience.

Today's newsletter features the key elements behind local search optimization, to ensure the guy across the street finds your web site when searching for your products and services.

Quick history of local search

Local optimization is not an entirely new idea, as we have to go back to the Internet's first years to see small businesses focusing their optimization efforts on reaching out to their local market.

Now in 2006, geographically targeted searches are in vogue more than ever. Take theses numbers from a study done by the Kelsey's Group in 2005:

' Online small businesses reported that about 75% of all their customers originate from within a 50-mile radius of their location.

' 44% are making more local product/service searches than a year previous.

' 25% of all users of search engines who are looking products are looking for businesses close to home and/or work.

Your prospect not only uses the search engines to compare prices on specific items, they are also looking to reward businesses physically close to their daily commuting.

Are you seeing the potential in local search optimization? Putting your website right in front of your local customer as quickly as possible will reap huge benefits for your small business.

And even if your competitors are already on the field, it's not too late to enter the game.

Key ingredients in local search optimization

There is not much of a difference between traditional search engine optimization and local optimization.

There are three specific areas to cover in a successful local search optimization strategy:

' Your website: You are already optimizing your tags for specific keywords. Adding your city in your title and address at the bottom of every page is a simple adjustment.

Another trick is to create a geosensitive META tag with your postal or zip code and city's location, and inserting the tag in your HTML body. It would look something like this:

meta name="Postal Code" content="H3C 6S3"
meta name="city" content="Montreal, New York, Toronto"

' Local Directories: Your website is already referred to relevant directories. Now in addition to your efforts, you must submit your site to local directories.

Even if your yellow pages rep says otherwise, the most trusted source of web sites data picked up by the search engines are Google Local and Yahoo Local.

You can also perform a search on the search engines for '+ +directory ' and see if you can include your website on theses listings.

' Focus on your market: How does your local prospect uses the web? Is he searching Google or other directories?

Personally, I place a strong value on consumer's reviews when I am about to buy something. You can find them on a company's web site (per ex. Amazon), or other unbiased directories such as a local newspaper's classifieds.

Not only will a cleanly written review will build the credibility of your site, it will also boost its traffic. You can also gain precious customer data by reading the reviews, and looking for reoccurring issues.

Zeroing on your local market is an e-marketing strategy which you simply can't ignore.

Sliding your company's name when your prospect is looking for a local solution is almost like fishing with dynamite. Just imagine how much extra business this low-cost e-marketing strategy could represent for your small business.