You have a website offering services to ‘anyone anywhere’ so why would you need to bother with marketing locally? Go for the big fish and have a chance of getting them and that means being noticed nationally… doesn’t it?

Over recent months, Google’s local search has improved so much that it is a useful marketing tool on a much bigger scale. It doesn’t matter if you’re a web designer in Colchester wanting to take on the national graphic design agencies – by marketing locally you improve your overall online reputation. It’s this online presence that will get you noticed by businesses all over the UK and worldwide thanks to the power of Google.

So how does it Work?

The more you use Google tools and services to promote your website the more frequently those helpful Google search spiders will take a look at your website. Then they will report back to the computer at head office that determines where you land on the search results. Most users of Google will search locally – they will add a location to the end of their search phrase ‘graphic design Essex’, for example. As a result, Google has drastically improved the way companies and businesses can get themselves listed as a local business online. It doesn’t matter whether you work from home or hire an office; getting yourself subscribed to and using all of Google’s tools will help with your seo efforts and overall marketing strategy.

Google My Business, which used to be known as Google Places, is the local directory for Google. Have you ever noticed when you search for a business in your area, a list of results sometimes appear next to a map with red dots on it? These are all businesses indexed with Google and using ‘My Business’ will allow your business to appear on that map too! Handy, eh? You don’t have to list your address either, submitting a postcode is enough for your business to appear in search results and alert your presence to potential clients.

Those businesses that appear on a Google map will always appear high on local search listings next to the paid adverts and you don’t even need to pay for it! Yet very few businesses are taking advantage of this. Getting to the top of Google is a key element of getting your business noticed which is what we all strive for. This is why a Google+ page for your business is another key tool in your digital marketing arsenal. What’s more, the Google My Business links back to your Google+ page meaning all those people who did a local search for your business can click on your page to find out more about you. Most internet users will do this before they decide to visit your actual website or make contact so it’s extremely worthwhile to have a Google+ page with the key information on there. For a graphic designer, sharing locally based web content from other businesses or general information about the area on the page will add valuable content and alert Google to the fact that they’re an active business.

One last tool that is often under used by businesses is YouTube. Google has owned YouTube since 2006 and many people do use it as a search engine – something that Google has been quick to take advantage of. Any websites with video get indexed higher in the search results than traditional text based sites but link the video back to a YouTube channel and ensuring the videos uploaded are tagged properly will help your business appear in the video search results on Google too. A graphic designer could upload videos introducing people to himself, his business, how he works, ‘how to’ videos on certain aspects of his work and by tagging them all ‘Web Design Essex’ as well as the key phrases for the content will take the website to newly optimised levels.

Having your website search engine optimised for your locality will improve your rankings within Google’s complicated search engine indexing algorithms and as a result, get you higher up the more generic search results too. Who knew that keeping.