Over the years, various digital service providers have introduced various tricks and shortcuts for local web marketing. As with any questionable or “black hat” tactics, many of these have yielded good results in terms of client positioning on search engine results pages, but have yielded diminishing returns over time.

The fall-off is usually because of two main factors. Firstly, other providers of local web marketing services end up employing the same tricks, which ironically has the effect of leveling the playing field while everyone is trying to tip it in their own favor. Secondly, search engines inevitably become savvy to the tips and trick and change their own algorithms to once again provide more organic results.

A recent article at Search Engine Journal provided a reminder of some famous trends in local web marketing all across the United States. It mentioned that even today, more than 800 million monthly searches including some variation of the phrase “near me”.

In light of that statistic, there’s a good chance that you’ve personally used that search term when attempting to find a local business. Many people simply type a phrase like “Chinese restaurant near me” or “hardware store near me” when they’re looking for a business in the relevant category. They do this even though as far as Google is concerned, the “near me” modifier is extraneous. If locations services are enabled on your, the search results will prioritize whatever is closest to you, anyway.

At one time, awareness of this situation allowed some self-described experts in local web marketing to offer fairly lazy but fairly amusing advice to some of their clients: simply add “near me” to the name of your business.

As a result of recurring efforts to game the system in this way, there was a widespread surge in the number of businesses whose names were literally the exact phrase people would be most likely to search when looking for a storefront in their category. For a handful of these businesses, the ploy worked, but for many, it soon became a scarlet letter marking them for the lack of effort they were willing to put into local web marketing.

And even for those for whom it worked, it didn’t work long. Search engines recognized the subterfuge, and soon enough the phrase “near me” was not only treated as extraneous, it was effectively removed from searches where it seemed intended to play the same role as location services. Presumably, the resulting decline in search engine rankings for some local businesses corresponded with a rise for those whose digital service providers had taken the right approach to their local web marketing campaigns.

The right approach is one that targets a diverse range of relevant search terms, instead of just trying to trick the algorithm into boosting your ranking for the one that is most obvious. It also relies upon cultivating genuine knowledge of, and connections to, the local community one is trying to reach, because the best long-term results don’t come from simple tips and tricks but from a comprehensive marketing strategy that maintains customer engagement from end to end.