Earlier, I explained how to GeoTag your site to reach local clients and customers.  Another way to reach your local market is through the hCard Microformat.

At its simplest, the hCard is a 1:1 XHTML representation of the vCard, which has long been the standard in electronic business cards.  The hCard takes electronic business card contact information and formats it for any HTML, Atom, RSS, or XML file.  Your hCard can be formatted so that it is invisible to your site's visitors, but the contact information is collected by search engine spiders.

A simple hCard format, providing just your name and URL, would look something like this:

[ code ]

<div class="vcard">
   <a class="url fn" href="http://www.travislangley.com/">
      Travis Langley
   </a>
</div>

Of course, by adding classes, you can add detail to your contact information, as in the following example:

[ code ]

<div class="vcard">
   <span class="n">
      <span class="given-name">Travis</span>
      <span class="family-name">Langley</span>
   </span>
   <div class="org">Travis Langley & Associates</div>
   <a href="mailto:travis@travislangley.com">
      travis@travislangley.com
   </a>
   <div class="adr">
      <span class="locality">Edmond</span>
      <abbr class="region" title="Oklahoma">OK</abbr>
      <span class="country-name">United States</span>
   </div>
   <div>+1.405.923.5810</div>
</div>

For help creating an hCard for your site, you can use the hCard generator from Microformats.org.  You can learn how to hide your hCard in your website in the article "Everything About the hCard Microformat" at Qreative Zone.

The hCard is only one of the many microformats that add information to your site and make that data available for searching.  Microformats can also help you perform tasks quickly and easily:

• Use XFN to link to friends and contacts.
• hCalendar allows you to add events to your site.
• With hReview, you can review books, movies, and products.

Microformats.org has tools and creators for all of the above microformats to help you with coding microformats for your site

The web is global and has really expanded the reach of many businesses, and search engines are a great tool to give them exposure in the world marketplace.  However, a lot of folks don't realize that these same engines are an excellent way to reach those customers and clients that are just around the corner.  It's also a lot easier to achieve visibility locally than to compete for good search engine placement against business worldwide.  Even if you provide your products and services worldwide, don't forget to reach out to those a little more close to home.  Here's some tips to help you succeed with local search.

• Get Listed
  
  The big search engines all provide tools to allow you to submit your business details to be included in their local search indexes with plenty of detail.  In addition to your just your website and business name, you can include your address and phone (obviously) as well as business category, hours of operation, accepted forms of payment, an image of your business, if free or paid parking is available and other relevant information.  After providing your business details, you will generally be required to verify that you are the owner (or a representative of the business).  This may be done by mail, email or phone, and varies depending on the search engine.  You should start by submitting your site to the following local search services:
  
  www.google.com/local/add
  listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit
  ssl.bing.com/listings/BusinessSearch.aspx
  biz.yelp.com/signup
  
  Also, google shows listings from other local search services (like yahoo, yelp and others as shown below), so if you want to try to increase your market share, it helps to list your business in a variety of sources.




• GeoTag Your Site
  
  In your HTML, you can place some tags in the header to help the search engines know where your site is located.  This is done by setting up Geotags, and it's a pretty simple process.  GeoTags look something like this:
  
  
  [ code ]

  <meta name="geo.position" content="35.644707, -97.545419">
  <meta name="geo.placename" content="Travis Langley & Associates, Edmond, Oklahoma, United States">
  <meta name="geo.region" content="US-OK">
  
  
  If you need to convert and address to lattitude and longitude for the geo.position tag, try mygeoposition.com.

Up Next - hCards and Microformats.
Check back soon for part 2 of this article.  It's late -  I'm off to bed...