Local search domination is one of the latest buzzwords in the ever-evolving field of search engine optimization (SEO). The recent changes in listing priorities of major search engines have catalyzed more activities and debates on this issue.

For those who may not have much understanding about SEO and the importance of local search optimization, here are a few basic concepts.

Search Engine Optimization

In simple words, it is the process of making the websites appears in top ranking of search results of major search engines for a set of keywords. Studies have shown that a majority of people only check the websites in the first page of the search results. Some studies even say the first few entries get the most priority.

It means if a website is buried inside the search results of search engines, it may not get the desired traffic ““ even if that website provides the best service and comprehensive information. Therefore, getting the top ranking in search engine is as important as, if not more important than, creating a great design or writing engaging content.

SEO is a vast topic. Almost all commercial websites spent a lot of money for maintaining their search domination. In this article, the focus is on what is known as local search domination.

How It Emerged

People behind search engines, be it Google, Yahoo, Ask, Bing, or any other, strive to produce the most relevant results to the users. They periodically change the search engine algorithms to make search engines more useful and relevant for the user. One of the recent changes in the algorithms paved way for the emergence of local search domination.

Details

Conventionally, when you searched for a particular keyword ““ for example, using the keyword “hotels“, the search engines used to show a universal result. The page contained same results irrespective of the location from which you searched. That is, there was no difference whether you searched from New York or Moscow.

However, the recent changes in the search engine algorithms have triggered changes in the search engine results ““ and forced commercial websites to take steps for local search domination. Theoretically speaking, if you search from Moscow you will get results of hotels in Moscow and if you search from New York you will get results of hotels in New York. In practice, this may not be very visible and true in the case of all the cities.

A visible change has occurred when people search for “New York hotels“. Now, search engines ““ take for example Google ““ show a map of New York with exact location of hotels. The conventional top-ranked websites appear below this geography-specific list.

Advantages

The SEO experts have found out methods to get into the geography-specific list of search engines. They call it local search domination tactics. In short, it means a website now has to be optimized both for a given set of keywords and a combination of keyword plus names in which it operates or in which it has a good customer base.

The new concept is good for the webmasters of websites that do not have to search engine rankings at present. This offers them a great opportunity to propel their websites into the first page of search results.

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