Local Search in B2B Marketing

As of last year, almost ten percent of all US web traffic came via mobile devices.  With the booming popularity of smart phones and tablets, most people do not see this number dipping below the double digits any time soon.  I recently discussed some issues B2B marketers should consider prior to rolling out a mobile strategy.  One area that I failed to address was local search marketing.

Most everyday individuals perceive local search as the domain of restaurants and generic storefronts.  However, optimizing your website and content for location-based web search can have benefits for businesses of all types, including B2Bs. Let’s look at a few reasons why local search optimization can help your B2B bring high-quality prospects to your site.

By registering your business with sites such as Foursquare and Yelp, you will experience benefits with both conventional search as well as location-based.  Of course, you are not normally hoping for walk-in customers to start appearing, but the short amount of time it takes to set up a profile cannot hurt.  If nothing else, your local mind share should benefit greatly.

Foursquare, in particular, will also have a dual-benefit when you are marketing at trade shows and conferences. Emagine suggests you, “have people check in at your conference booth, upload a picture, leave a tip reminding them about your session …and when they do all those actions, give them a special giveaway or prize.”  This, again, is a low-investment tool that could potentially have great impact on your trade show conversions.

Optimizing for local search will also help you better reach targeted customers in different regions of your market.  Certain search terms may have much heavier competition in New York than, say, North Dakota or Norway.  By spending some time on Google AdWords targeting different localities, you can find queries that are being criminally underemphasized by your competition.

For instance, SEO Entrepreneur highlights the difference in keyword density between “SEO” and “SEO Optimization.”  When one searches simply “SEO,” India and Southeast Asia are found to generate the majority of traffic, while “SEO Optimization” proves to be heavily focused in the US.  It is important to address local dialects, terminologies, etc. to make sure you are getting the most out of your search efforts.  As the article later notes, not only will this help with your natural SEO, it will also help your content feel more local and relatable to your new market.

What do you think? Is local SEO going to grow in importance for B2B online marketers? Has your business already begun to address local/mobile search?