This is an excerpt from an email I wrote to a friend of mine last year who was wondering about local search marketing. He runs a dentist office in Minneapolis and they have been in business for many years so I figured that I could possibly help him out. I know he has a website but has not had any SEO done on it at all. I also know that he spends many thousands of dollars doing local mailers.

He like many people who contact me have virtually no clue what local search marketing is and dread getting bogged down with SEO techno talk so this is what I will call local search marketing for techno newbies.

The email:

So one thing that my company does is we rank other company websites in Google for local searches.

I can see that when I search for your business’ name, your website comes up but if I search for things like “dentists in Minneapolis” or “best dentists Minneapolis”, your website is not even in the first 5 pages. And these are just terms I’m using off the top of my head. What I would do normally is see exactly which relative terms are searched for the most for Minneaplis dentists and optimize your website for those terms.

I know your business has won some local awards over the years which you mention on your website. That’s awesome but if no one knows about them, then their nothing more than trophies on your shelf.

Now let’s just say the term “best dentists Minneapolis” gets 2000 searches a month. The people that are searching for this term are probably either new to the area, visiting Minneapolis or looking to upgrade from their current dentist for whatever reason.

Ok so now imagine how many more potential customers you could have if your website showed up when they searched for “best dentists Minneapolis” and all those people saw your awards. Or how many potential customers your business is LOSING by not having a good ranking.

If even 1% of those 2000 searchers became customers, that’s 20 new customers a month. I think you once told me that you make around $1000 net from the average visit. That’s $20,000 more in your pocket per month and that’s just from 1 keyword.

That doesn’t even include the lifetime value of that new customer. What if they come back for more appointments? Or better yet, what if they bring their family? That’s pretty big money and again, that’s a real modest estimate. 1% from 1 keyword.

So that in a nutshell is what local search marketing can do. The best part is it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in or where you’re located, same rules apply.

I hope this clears things up for some of you reading this and if local search marketing sounds like something that could benefit you, contact me today.