Using Local Riding

Including your Equestrian Centre, Business or Service on localriding.com

The best way for a business or equestrian facility to use localriding is to add your own page about your equine business.

Creating your own business page and using the built-in comment feature is really easy.

• You navigate to the relevant section
• Use the submission form to add your details (click image to enlarge)
• Add up to four photos of you, your business or your service
• Accept the terms and submit your page

Once your page has been created you can add comments or notifications ...

eg; special offers, seasonal notices, show schedules, competition results, contact updates and other items you wish our equestrian readers and your clients to know about. All by using the comments function.

And; of course, your clients, customers, friends and family can also support your business by adding their own comments.

All this activity will bring your business to the attention of our other equestrian readers.

And, the more positive comments you have ;

• the more rosettes you are awarded;
• the more rosettes you have, the higher your listing appears in your section
• this encourages visitors to read your page and hopefully, to choose your service

In addition your page will also feature in our RSS feed (What is RSS) and in our Equestrian Blog.

PLEASE BE AWARE: All submissions are checked by a member of our team. One liners that don't even provide basic information that will allow potential customers to contact you, rarely make it through.

Using Local Riding - A Business Listing Example ...

Let's walk you through a simple business listing.

Say you are a livery yard called New Farm and you serve the Yorkshire equestrian community. The logical place to promote your business is in our Yorkshire Livery Yards section.

• So, simply navigate to that section and use the submission form ... Yorkshire Livery Yards
• Add your title ...
  which is important as it will become the name of your page ... eg; New Farm Livery will create a web address (URL) called www.localriding.com/new-farm-livery.html
• You then add details of your livery services, your location and how potential clients can contact you. Include any accreditations or specific equestrian qualifications
• Then include up to four photos of your livery yard, or you, your clients, your horse shows or facilities.
  It's up to you how many but we do optimise these for you in order that search engines will place them in relevant image search results. so, the more the better.
• Add your Author details ...,
  (always best to be your name rather than your business name as that is already in your title).
• Add your location ...,
  We suggest using the format of ... town, state or county, and country (eg; Chelmsford, Essex, England). That way your listing will be found if visitors search for specific locations.
• Finally, accept the T&C's, enter the security code, (which helps prevent spam), and click the submit button.

You will then be given the opportunity to view, check and amend your details, as well as the option to receive notifications by email when other equestrians comment on your listing.

NOTE: It's up to you whether you want to be notified or not, but obviously, the quicker you know about comments and enquiries the faster you can respond. If you choose not to be notified, don't worry we will never send you any other communications, nor will you be notified of comments or enquiries.

Now let's say New Farm Livery also hosts horse shows and equine demonstrations ...

The best place for New Farm to promote these is in our Equestrian Events Calendar

Adding horse shows and events is quite simple ... see the Adding Events tab for help with this.

Once they have included their horse show or other event in the events diary, New Farm would then increase the events exposure by posting notices, class schedules and/or competition results using their business page comments function.

This ensures readers that are following New Farms updates are notified immediately of this new activity and that New Farm are pro-active and keen to encourage new clients

Adding Your Equestrian Events ...

Adding your own horse shows and events is easy. And; it's also easy to include links to your event schedules.

NOTE: The Horse Shows & Equestrian Events Calendar is being updated and rebuilt. We should be accepting event submissions again shortly.

• Browse to the Equestrian Events Calendar home page
• Choose the relevant country from the central drop-down menu
• Scroll to the event year and month using the calendars at the top right and left
• Once at the correct month - click the small plus-sign '+' in the top right-hand corner of the event date
• This will open up an event submission form and all you need to do is complete the details and submit your event.

Help: Adding Event Calendar Entries

The add equestrian events form includes the following fields. This explains what you should enter in each field.

• Brief Description: Provide a short description (about 20 characters) of the event. This will represent the event when viewing the calendar.
• Full Description: Complete details of the equestrian event. This information will be seen when a user views the event or they mouse-over the brief description.
• Category: Click Edit (a small window will open) click on your country in the left side. Click the middle arrows and your selection will move across. Now click 'OK' to finalise your selection
• Location: Enter brief event location details. eg; town, county/state post or zip code. Full address should be in the full description
• URL: Enter the internet address for the event schedule.
• Date: Specifies the date of the event. This defaults to the date selected if you use the Add Equestrian Event instructions.
• Time: Specifies the time of the event. Selecting an option will provide other options. Selecting a timed event will present you with a start and end time: The end time specifies the time the event is expected to end
  • "Untimed event" (for an event that does not have a limited time (like an event that lasts more than one day)
  • "Timed event" (for an event that is scheduled during a specific time on that day)
  • "All day event" (for an event that takes all day)

Using the Local Riding Site Navigation

in a large complex website such as localriding.com, which contains more than a thousand individual pages covering subjects from dressage riding to horse boarding in Florida; finding your way around and the information you are looking for requires a little bit of forethought.

1. General Navigation Principles

Every webpage on localriding.com contains a variety of navigation options and you can use these to find the information you want quickly or to get back to a section you have already visited. (click image to enlarge)

• Site Navigation ... is located at the top of every page and will take you to the start of each section
• Site Search Function ... located at the top left below the page heading. Use this to search for specific content or all pages containing a subject or term.
• Social Bookmarks ... located at the top right below the local riding horse image. Use the icons to bookmark the current page using your preferred social media site
• Section Navigation ..., located in the right margin. Options available will change depending on the section visited
• In Page Navigation ..., located in the top section of the page content if the section has mutliple pages relating to the subject matter. Not all pages will have this, but for those that do this function helps the reader navigate through all parts of the subject.
• Breadcrumb Navigation ..., located at the bottom of the main content in that page. useful if you wish to move backwards through the logical steps to that subject or re-trace your steps.
• Site Information Navigation ..., located at the bottom of every page and includes links to important site information such as our privacy policy, the sitemap, the latest updates, our contact page, etc;

2. Finding Local Equestrian Services ...

LocalRiding is organised in a way that makes this relatively simple. so, as an example let's say we want to find a farrier in California.

• From the home page select 'Horse Riding in the USA'
• Click California on the USA Map to open the California section
• Click on the 'California Farriers' link in the right margin

Follow a similar path to find local information and equestrian facilities. Be it livery yards in Essex, England, Riding Schools in Perthshire, Scotland or Trail Rides in Kentucky, USA.

3. Finding Horse Health Advice or Horse and Rider Training Tips

Localriding contains a wealth of horse health advice and horse riding and training information. Some of this is specific to ridden disciplines such as dressage, showjumping and equestrian eventing and other sections cover conformation, the horse hoof, horse teeth, worms, etc;

There are various ways to locate this information ...,

• Navigate Through Sections ..., eg; if looking for information on dressage arena's click on the Dressage section and browse the section navigation in the right margin. If looking for worming information click on the horse health section and scroll throught the horse health sections.
• Browse Section Home Pages ..., eg; have a look at the main Horse Health page and you will see that it contains links to almost all subjects in that section. Other sections have similar pages.
• Use the Site Search Function ..., simply enter the phrase or term that covers what you are looking for and click 'Site Search'. You will be provided with a page listing all localriding pages that contain that phrase or search term and you can simply select the most relevant.
• Use the Sitemap ..., The localriding sitemap is an index of all pages within all sections and is very easy to use. Most sections have their own icon, which makes them easy to locate and simply clicking on the subject you are interested in will take you straight to that page or section

Using a combination of Sitemap and Site Search is probably the simplest way to find specific information, however it does mean you could miss other interesting information you may not know or have thought existed.