Has your SEO marketing lost its way? Did you work on your SEO for your site to drive in new business, but now you are getting clicks from all over the world when you’re just a small business centered in one city?  The latest trend in SEO is to increase the focus on the local market. While getting clicks is important, what is more important is driving actual business to you and if you are looking for local customers, tweaking your SEO marketing in a few powerful ways will help increase your business without breaking the bank.

Social networking sites really help you focus your market. By adding a social networking site to your methods of generating business you are doing yourself a SEO favor in a number of ways. First of all, it is a great place to simply advertise. While social networking sites are international, it is very easy to nail down where any individual person lives, including you and your corner of the social networking site. Focused, local SEO content on your social networking site will be viewed by many and seen as useful content by Google’s automated ranking system. The added benefit is you can put links to your web site in your social networking site. The ranking systems like seeing links to your site and give it more relevance when it sees these outside links.

As the trends to increase SEO for local markets show, picking proper keywords is getting better but still needs improvement. The easiest way to tweak your keywords is to add some part of your local market to the keywords. Rather than using “widgets” as the keyword, focus on the location. “Los Angeles widgets” or “California widgets” are more powerful and focused SEO terms. If you are paying for traffic, these keywords likely cost less too!

The automated ranking systems absolutely love blogs as you are most likely aware. If you do not have a blog, add one! They are easy to setup and update and are one of the most powerful SEO tools available. If you do have one, keep the content local. Rather than just writing about your new widgets, add content to your blog about local businesses and other locale focused content. Even if it is a personal blog, you will generate more local traffic that will then know about your site.

Adding video content is one of the latest ways to get extra SEO hits. If you have a fun and focused 15 second advertisement, adding it to video hosting sites such as YouTube builds your web presence. By having focused search terms in your web video, as well as a link to your web site either embedded in the video or as part of the description, you will be setting up another place where people can see you as well as the automated ranking systems.

If you have a web presence and want to increase exposure to your site in your local markets there are several ways you can accomplish this.  Local patrons will have the security of knowing they are dealing with a local business.  In addition, they will be confident in knowing that they are helping contribute to the local economy.  There is a tendency for local loyalty when doing business so it is very important to maintain marketing efforts in your city and state as well as world wide.  One of the best ways to do this is to increase your search engine optimization efforts to target your state, city or neighborhood.

Use of relevant keywords within your site is a great way to increase SEO.  There are several free tools available on the Internet to give you ideas on what key terms to use.  However, when using these terms add your location to them as well so it is more targeted to your local market.  For example, if you sell custom baby items on your site you may want to use terms such as “baby blankets”, “personalized baby items” or “custom baby toys”.  But to add a local target add your city, state or neighborhood to the key terms.  Instead of “baby blankets” use “baby blankets in California” or Los Angeles custom baby toys” instead of “custom baby toys”.

Using keywords that target your local market will increase exposure in those areas.  While keywords are important, it is equally important how you deliver those keywords.  Using blogs, relevant text and image tags in your site is a great way to accomplish this.  You can have your site littered with relevant keywords in multiple places as well as adding to the content of your site regularly.

In addition, you will also have the opportunity to send out press releases and post newsworthy items to social networking sites that will increase the number of incoming links to your site.  MySpace, Twitter and FaceBook are perfect places to post new items.  You will increase exposure to those in your local area as well as increase the number of incoming links to your site.  Using all of these techniques will help increase your search engine rankings within your local market.

Most web site owners are aware of the importance of increasing their search engine rankings by increasing their search engine optimization.  However, a lot of sites use very general keywords in their marketing efforts and forget about the local market that can be an essential component of their business.  Although the Internet gives you the unique opportunity to increase your customer base world wide, there are still many people who choose to purchase from local businesses.  There is a sense of local loyalty, assisting with the local economy and the security in knowing you are catering to a business that is locally owned.

So, it is very important to increase awareness of your website within your local market as well as the global one.  In order to do this, you can use all of the same Internet marketing techniques used for global exposure but change it slightly to target your local area.  Consider the use of keywords you use within your site.  While you should keep general search terms, you should also add some targeted terms such as your state, city or neighborhood in which you are located.  For example, if you own a California based mattress company in Los Angeles you may have some keywords such as “mattress sales”, buying a mattress” and others.  However, if you target it by using additional words such as “California”, “Los Angeles” and “Southern California” you can increase the SEO in your local market.

Blogging about local trends and the economy will give some personalization to your site.  It allows you the opportunity to add keywords and increase the content to your site regularly.  Search engines put weight on sites that have regular, new content.  In addition, there is a psychological effect for local patrons who wish to cater to the local businesses in the area.  It shows potential customers that you are aware of and cater to the local economy.  While you will still get traffic and Internet sales from around the world, you will also have an increased exposure in your local market.  This will translate to increased web activity as well as additional customers to your store front.

For businesses catering to local markets it is important to enable people who are searching for your particular product or service to easily find your website.  This means that your search engine rankings should be high when people search for particular terms targeted to your market area.  For example, a California business that sells auto parts should be ranked on or near the top of the first page when a potential customer searches for something like “California auto parts”.  People searching for such terms have a tendency to click on and subsequently purchase from the sites that are listed in the top few results.

There are some basic techniques that can be used to increase your search engine optimization in local markets.  The first part is to ensure your website has plenty of relevant key words scattered throughout your site.  This can be done by using search terms in your text and image tags throughout your website. The trick is to do your homework; to research and  find “longtail” keywords. These are words that real users employ to find your product or service. They may not be what you think.

Another very useful tool is to use blogs to add relevant, useful content to your site.  This does two things.  First, it adds new content regularly to your site and allows you an opportunity to add manykeywords to your site.  Both techniques will help naturally increase your search engine optimization.

Offpage SEO is about increasing the number of incoming links to your website.  The more incoming links you have, the more importance the Search Engines place on your Site. One of the most popular and easiest ways to do this is to use social networking sites.  Linking new posts or newsworthy items to places such as FaceBook, MySpace and Twitter increases awareness to your site and you will get additional incoming links as well as traffic.

Social bookmarking is another strategies. These are user generated bookmarks, which the Search Engines highly value.

Video is probably your most effective tool. The search engines love video almost as much as viewers do. An effective video campaign will get you to the top of Google faster than any other method.

Your search engine ranking will increase naturally without any money and very little time and effort on your part.

However, if you have a bit of advertising budget you may want to invest in some targeted paid advertising.  Using tools such as Google AdWords is a great way to increase your search rankings in local markets.  You can control how much you spend and get a jump start on increasing your SEO with very little investment – if you do it right.  Using free and paid tools together will give you maximum benefit for optimizing your site for search engines in the local market.