How To Optimize Your Local Directories Using Longtail Keywords

How To Optimize Your Local Directories Using Longtail Keywords

Gone are the days when people from a locality used to roam around and find out different shops and businesses present in their location. Now people around the globe can access the business listing from any location by simply browsing through various local directories present over the World Wide Web.

Thus creating a local business directory or business listing, will help people residing in your neighborhood. You can also earn a decent income from the traffic your website would generate. But to make this venture possible and enhance your directory’s reach, you need to take care of local directories SEO and implement long tail keyword research.

So let’s dive in and find out the secrets of local business directory optimization.

Why local business directories are important?

Before we start unveiling the secrets to optimizing your local directories, first let’s find out the need of these directories.  These local directories are somewhat similar to the yellow pages but are far more advanced and are immensely helpful.

These directories consist of the exact location, contact information, reviews of all the business listed in these directories. Thus they can be fruitful in the following ways:

Providing insight & information about local businesses – Local business directories are generally categorized on the basis of location, businesses and service. They are a one stop destination to gather information and know about the different shops and businesses present in your neighborhood.

Using these information local residents can view all the services available in their locality. They can choose from the different services and select the one that suits their needs and requirements.

Increasing the reach for local business – With globalization, confining to a brick and mortar business is not the best practice. So by using local directories, businesses can advertise their products and also let the word out about their presence in the marketplace. Listing a business in directories helps increases visibility for the shop owner or business and ensures customer inflow.

Steady income – As local directories cater to the needs of many people, they attract a lot of traffic. Even directory owners get sponsorship from some business, thus ensuring a steady source of income.

How to optimize the local business directories

Now that you are well aware of the true potential of local business listings, you should strive to make it better and effective for the users. Also, you need to optimize your listing to make it search engine friendly and thus easily discoverable by the netizens.

Below mentioned are some of the basic ways to ensure local business directory optimization and implement local directories SEO.

1. Your listings and details should focus on appropriate keywords for SEO. It would make your listing easily discoverable by the search engine thus can be accessed by a lot of readers easily.
2. You should include proper description, reviews, ratings, contact information and other details to make your listing appealing and helpful. If the information is authentic and updated, people will revert back to your directory again and again.
3. Create good quality backlinks to improve page rank.
4. Integrate social media into your directory so that content and information is easily shareable over a number of different social media websites.

What are the long tail keywords and how they can help in optimizing the local business directories?

Generally long tail keywords are keywords that consist of three or four phrases. They are considered to be extremely cost-effective and high-performing for both paid and organic searches.

Standard keywords are short and are relatively generic while long tail keywords are specific to a certain topic. Thus more likely to be discovered by the search engine. Long tail keywords set the theme of your directory as well as target the specific niche and service it caters to.

Long tail keyword research using keyword research tool

Generally we invest a lot of time in researching keywords for the listing content, but often neglect to look out for potent long tail keywords. In fact, long tail keywords are the ones that are the most relevant and has the most success rate. So you need to research and put a lot of emphases while choosing the long tail keyword for local directory SEO.

There are a number of tools available for long tail keyword research. Among those
KeywordXP is one of the best tool to find the profitable long tail keywords. By using KeywordXP, you will be able to expand any keyword into over 5000 long tail expressions direct from Google, Bing, Ask, Amazon or Ebay.

It also provides a detailed analysis of the popularity, volume search and relevance of each and every long tail keyword, thus helping you choose, optimize and plan your content properly.

Which keyword research tool you use? Share your experience in the comments about using KeywordXP and long tail keywords.