You’ll be probably aware of the fact that all the major search engines are making it increasingly easier for small tourism business owners to take a proactive approach toward online marketing.

In the last few years, the growing importance of local search and the integration into search results (in Google especially) has created an increasingly fundamental avenue for small tourism businesses to promote awareness about their businesses and gain additional traffic to their website.  However, many business owners simply aren’t aware of the impact that their local listings can have on their site’s traffic.

We would like to introduce you to the concept and importance of local search and provide you with some tips in order to get your tourism business listed inside the major search engines local results with no fluff and no stress!

Why is Local Search Important?

1) Because of vastly different algorithms, local search provides opportunities for small businesses to compete in the listings within larger brands.
2) It provides great brand exposure to highly-focused, location-specific searches.
3) Local search listings are generally presented at the top of the search engine results, making them more likely to get clicks compared to results listed below.

See this example related to a search for “golf tour Edinburgh”:

Wouldn’t you rather be up there at the TOP?

How tourists search…

When dealing with customers that are locally based or are looking for location-specific information, the importance of concentrating on the “local search optimization” of your web site and local directory listings gets more and more important.

As the adoption of smart phones and other mobile technologies increases, the contextual search is supposed to become a phenomenon that will is affecting the way tourists gather information and interact with local tourism businesses.  As more people search for information in the exact moment they need it and relevant to where they happen to be, your listing on the most important search engines maps services is a MUST!

Let’s thus have a look at how you can list your business in either Google, Yahoo or Bing Maps and get the most out of your presence there.

Google Maps Local Business Center

Google quietly upped the local search game by inserting the Google Maps local 10 (listing of 10 local businesses) into search results for local products and services regardless of whether the searcher used a geographic term in the search. It used to be that if you wanted to get local results for a good golf tour operator in Edinburgh, you typed in “Edinburgh Golf Tour” Now, by detecting the location of your IP address Google will add the local result to the search results for the much more generic phrase “golf.”  This makes it more important than ever that your local business is showing up in those Google Maps results!

How do you set up your Google Maps listing?

Google provides very clear instructions on its Maps support page as well as an introductory video that we suggest you to check out:

Breaking news: Google Favourite Place

Google has recently identified over 100 000 businesses in the U.S. as “Favorite Places” based on user reviews on Google Maps and it has rewarded them with QR Stickers – Window Decals like the following:

When snapped with a smart phone camera the two dimensional bar code hyperlinks to the business Google Listing which shows the user reviews and Google Map listing for the business.
This sticker will increasingly represent for tourists a positive signal, since it links a specific business to such a well renowned company as Google is. It will represent a sign of quality which can be compared as a Michelin star, or other awards. Google uses the sticker campaign to ask: “Want to become a Favorite Place on Google?“, reminding business owners to make that their listing on is accurate in the Google Local Business Centre and to work on building reviews.  This makes the problem of everyone is a reviewer even more acute.

Bing and Yahoo Local listing Center

You can easily and quickly register your business in Bing Local Center.

Yahoo provides different options for you to submit your business listing: Basic, Enhanced and Featured.  To find out more and decide what better suits your needs, visit the official yahoo maps page.

Ok…now I’m in… But how do I get the highest ranking in the Maps Listings?

This is a great question! Some important things to keep in mind when setting up your listing:

• Be sure that your local listing has a specific address, associated to a city, including the postal code.
• Add your entry to any appropriate categories available
• Include your product or service keyword in your listing title. For example, you entry could be ‘Edinburgh Golf Tours by Kristen’s Golf Outfitters’
• Monitor reviews and react
• Add photos or videos where possible

And last but not least:

• Optimize your web site for local search with local terms, links, mentions, suburb names, and your business address and phone on every single page.
• Work on getting links back to your website including local phrases in the anchor text e.g.: ”Best Golf Tour in Edinburgh”

What if my business doesn’t have a physical presence?

Well, if we are talking about tourism businesses is very likely that they have a physical location. The company must have been registered under a physical address in any case.  However, if this is not the case (e.g. a business providing snorkelling tours that operates directly from the dock) I would recommend two possible strategies:

1) to just optimize the website for local searches, without adding a listing, making sure that each page is optimized for relevant and location-related keywords.

or,

2) consider partnering with another operator who has a shop presence in the city centre in order to get a map listing: you might think this is an awfully drastic business decision just for a search ranking. However, think about it: if it has other benefits as well, what’s the harm?

To Learn More…

Take advantage of everything you need to know about the world of search in our popular do-it-yourself guide, DIY SEO – Do It Yourself Search Optimization.  It’s an ethical, practical guide to all-things-search.

If you prefer some one-on-one support for your search engine marketing needs, our Search Engine Jumpstart package might be just the thing to increase your base of paying customers in 2010.