Search engines seem to be rapidly expanding the amount of local content that is shown when users initiate a search with implicit local information in that search. Taking this knowledge you'll realise that there is a huge opportunity for small local businesses to get their services noticed. What is a local search? A local search is where a user implicitly refers to their location in the search criteria. This could be something like "Darlington Web Design", "Website Design Darlington", "North East Website Design" or any combination of words that include what the user is looking for along with the location that they want results from. This may not just be limited to the actual town/city name either, you may find people searching via the postcode or even down to street address level (e.g. "Website Design DL1" or "Largo Gardens Web Design") although this will be less common and this would imply that the user is specifically looking to find your company. Bearing in mind that these types of searches are expanded to any market (i.e. how often have you gone online to look for information for a local plumber, joiner, electrician etc) it's easy to realise that local search is gaining leverage and when it comes to SEO it's potentially one of the easier markets to dominate (mainly due to the reduced amount of competition, but also as it can be more targeted). When you perform a local search on Google, you'll notice that there are a number of Business Listings injected at the top of the page and this can be a great way of getting targeted business: Why are local searches different to standard searches? One of the main reasons I can think of is that the user is more likely to become a customer, or at least be in the position that if you sell your services well they are more likely to become a customer quicker. If you are looking for a web designer in Darlington, it's probably because you want a website built and you are probably fairly close to making a decision on who to use and I'd also presume you would like to start the process fairly quickly. This may not necessarily the case for non-local searches. The user is more likely in this scenario to be looking for information and perhaps just pricing the market up for a purchase they make further down the line (although this obviously wont be be the case all the time, but it's my guess that the percentages are higher). How do I target local searchers? In the example above, I used the Google Local Business Centre to add my business details, but there are other sites that can work just as well such as Yell and Thompson Local. Placing your business details in these directories can not only help with your search engine rankings, but it can also increase your brand awareness and help get you some traffic that you may have otherwise missed.

If you decide you want or need to change your domain name, there are lots of things to consider to help you retain your site ranking in the various search engine results page (also known as SERP). Here's a few tips on what to check before you start the process of moving your website to another domain. What to avoid The whole process of moving a domain should be designed to make sure your visitors, and search engines are included in this, don't receive a 404 (File Not Found) error. Some simple tips for this process are highlighted in the Moving Your Site article in the Google Help pages and include:

Usually, when we are looking to promote our keywords and phrases, we choose them based on what we think the user will be searching for. With the Google Suggest tool (edit: now known as Autocomplete), searches are starting to appear differently to how they used to. What is Google Suggest? Google Suggest is a method that helps users by suggesting words and phrases that they may be looking for as they type. For example, if I start to type "Web" into my Google homepage, the search box responds with the following helpful suggestions of what I may be looking for: This can be very helpful in certain situations, but this does perhaps alter what phrases actually get searched for. If I expand my earlier search to look for "Web Design Introduction", as soon as I get to the point of typing the "in" from "introduction", I get presented with a list that includes the phrase "web design in a nutshell": That's not a phrase I would have initially chose to search for, but it's certainly a phrase that could describe what a user was looking so they may just click that suggestion and perform that search. What implications do these searches have? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is "have I optimised my site for this type of search"? Probably not, I guess but it might just be one of those phrases that doesn't have as much competition so may be easier to rank for. I'd suggest that you try doing the type of searches you have optimised for and simply having a look through the list of suggestions to see what else you should look at incorporating into your website text. Secondly, as it's quite easy to just click on a suggestion, you'll find that that users actually end up searching using phrases that are perhaps longer and contain more words then they may necessarily have searched for without the suggestions. This is another tool that you can use to your advantage as if you match on an exact longer phrase, you'll have more chance of appearing higher in the rankings. Longer search phrases are also becoming more popular, so this could be a very useful way of getting better results for your site(s).

Microsoft have launched a free, IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit that allows you to check your websites for any potential errors and problems that may hinder your search engine rankings. Here's a brief look at this application and how you can use it to help you. What is the IIS SEO Toolkit? The toolkit is an IIS add-in that allows you to check for SEO issues and offers guidance on how to fix them to help make your website more search engine friendly.

When monitoring your own site and the sites you build for clients, it's important to make sure you receive automated reports to help highlight how your sites are responding to various keywords. Exact Factor is a free web based service that will help you do this and here's a brief overview of what you can use them for.

One of the great things about an analytics tool is that it allows you to track how your visitors use your website. Robot Replay goes one step further in actually recording their time on your site and allowing you to replay their actions via a video. Where Are Your Visitors Going? When you entice users into visiting your website, you don't know exactly what they will make of it or how easy they will find it to navigate around. By using a script from Robot Replay you can record their mouse movements and even watch them fill out forms on your site! Firstly, you'll need to sign up and provide an email address to activate your account. Once you've done this, you'll be asked to add a line of javascript to the <head> section on all of the pages that you want to track: Add the name of your domain that you want to track and click save. You'll then need to create a text file in the root of your website (they will give you a unique name for the filename) just to verify that you have access to track data from that domain. Once you've done this you are good to go! Viewing your users actions Once the javascript file has captured some actions, you'll be presented with a list of sessions to view: You can then watch any of these videos by clicking the "Play" type button on the right hand side of each entry. Here's an example of what you can expect from the captures videos: