by Claudia Bruemmer

While many people think local search optimization is only for B2C sites, recent research suggests it should also be a part of B2B marketers’ search efforts. Marketing Sherpa found only 35 percent of B2B marketers claimed a local business listing, and only 23 percent optimized for local search terms in organic SEO efforts. On the other hand, 43 percent of B2C marketers claimed local listings, and 36 percent optimized for local search. This article will explain how B2B marketers can benefit from local search optimization.

There are many reasons for B2B sites to take advantage of local search. For instance, consider the goal of dominating the search engine results pages. The SERPs have limited real estate, and when you get more visibility by combining SEO, PPC and local search optimization tactics, you’ll be able to maximize your SERP exposure.

If you doubt that B2B sites need to optimize for local search, just take a look at the first four listings in the Google Places category list, which are: Business to Business, Business to Business – Machine Shops, Business to Business – Manufacturers, and Business to Business – Wholesalers.

Yes, B2B sites can gain advantage by claiming a local search presence. In fact, many local search tactics apply to any business whether the customer is a business or a consumer. Here’s what you need to do to claim your local listing.

• Provide a local phone number in your listing
• Include a local address
• Use strategic keywords in your listing description
• Enhance your listing with custom details such as hours of operation, coupons, etc.
• List your business in a range of business categories
• Add area(s) served outside your immediate area or your zip code
• Add videos to your listing
• Add photos to your listing
• Add offers to your listing (B2B companies can run promotions)
• Use Google AdWords to raise the visibility of your Google Places listing

Be sure to complete every section in the local business listings rather than just the bare minimum. You can also claim your local business listing in multiple locations, including Google Places, Bing Business Portal, Yahoo Local, Yelp and more.
Optimize Your B2B Site for Local Search

Claiming your business on local search engines is an important first step, but you must also optimize your B2B site for local search. That means putting your address on the footer of your website template, which tells the search engines that you are in that area. It also adds trust when people can see you have a physical address. Another thing you can do is create dedicated pages for each company location that includes information like directions, hours of operation and phone numbers, etc.

Create Location-Specific Landing Pages. It’s smart to create state or city level landing pages to correspond with your overall keyword strategy to get customers from those places when your physical location is elsewhere. For instance, a company that does a lot of business in California, but doesn’t actually have a facility there, can create a landing page based on its California business. The landing page would focus on clients based in California, listing the location of these clients. You could also include testimonials from those clients and add a video to support your page content. That way, even though your physical location is not in California, your location-specific landing page shows customers and tells search engines that you have business in that area.

Use Microformats for Location Tagging on Your Website. Microformats are website code in semantic markup that can provide information such as contact details, events, location, etc., with tags that make it easier for search engines associate that information with relevant searches. Structured markup tagging can also give you SEO benefits and is a powerful way to get location information noticed by the search engines.

In conclusion, local search optimization is important for helping B2B marketers get ahead of their competitors. This article offered some tips to help B2B merchants claim their local listings and start optimizing their site for local search.