Archive for the ‘Local SEO’ Category

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What exactly is local SEO?

Saturday, March 5th, 2011

Local SEO is search engine optimization aimed at getting clients to get out of the house and get down to your place of business!

Awhile back, before Google map search results changed the way we looked at search, a local doctor was effectually locked out of Google as a technique to bag new clients. Old school SEO was just too costly and formidable to do when the only results that counted were customers that live within 5 mile distance of the doctor’s office. Doing classical search engine optimization for a local enterprise would have been like of buying an ad in the Wall Street Journal, simply not effective for a local company looking for local clients.

Google identified the problem and modernized. Come forward to a year ago. Google reported that thirty-five percent of all searches had included city, state, or zip-code. Google reacted by originating Google Places, which made around 50,000,000 novel world wide web pages for US companies. The information on these pages was gathered from open sources such as online yellow pages. The other search engines, not to be left out, jumped onboard. That’s right, Google, Yahoo and Bing have each made your company a web page. Now all you need to do is claim the page and fill it out, correct?

Well, almost correct. Claiming your pages is the start. These Place Pages have changed SEO, and made a new business for it Local SEO pros like me.

Go to Google, and search the term “dentist”. The first thing you will notice is that Google knows where you are located. If they have it right, the search results will show you a map, with your location in the middle, and burgundy dots and pins all around you representing local dentists. Several of these pins will be large, and marked with the first 7 letters of the alphabet. Now on the left side of the page, under the paid placements, but ahead of results you will find 7 enriched organic search results, with letters, matching to the pins on the map. These results are at times “7-Pack”.

How do you get your organization included on the first page of search results?

Searches function by algorithm, which is another way of saying that Google will assign a numeric value to one’s web page. That value when correlated and compared with the scores of other businesses in your sphere of influence. It is this juxtaposition that translates into the rank that companies will be displayed in return for search results. This is the art of local search engine optimization; accepting the evolving ways that search formulas classify and order establishments, and optimizing the things that Google and the other search engines evaluate, in order to get the best possible rank.

But beware! If Google believes that they are being gamed, that you are doing bogus things to modify the organic results, you could be the unfortunate receiver of the heinous “Google Slap”. No one needs to get slapped.

Who needs organic Local SEO?  Everyone that is looking to grow their local business!

Posted in Local SEO | 2 Comments »

What should your keyword density be these days?

Friday, February 25th, 2011

After you have chosen the keywords and keyphrases that describe your site and are of interest to your potential customers, the next step is to make your site keyword-rich and to have good keyword density for your target keywords. Keyword density is a common measure of how relevant a page is.

Generally, the idea is to find a keyword density that makes your page relevant to the search string you are trying to rank for, but to avoid simply stuffing your page with your keywords (as Google and other search engines will penalize you for that anyway). The recommended density is approximately 3 for the major 2 or 3 keywords and 1% or less for minor keywords.

Although there are no strict rules, try optimizing for a reasonable number of keyword phrases. Six to ten is about right. If you attempt to optimize for a list of 300 keywords, you will soon see that it is just not possible to have a good keyword density for more than a few keywords without making the text sound artificial and stuffed with keywords.

There are severe penalties (including search engine bans) for keyword stuffing because this is considered an unethical ‘black hat’ practice that tries to manipulate search results. It won’t work well today anyway, not when compared with strong local SEO tactics and an overall SEM strategy.

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Posted in Local SEO | No Comments »

Essential local SEO tips

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

Local search engine optimization can be just as time consuming and competitive as “regular” SEO. The same rules apply — you need to have good content and quality links. However, the tactics are slightly different in specific areas. As always there are some tactics that you can use easily and some that require a dedicated local seo expert who can provide a daily punch to your local ranking efforts.

Local search is essential to small businesses. In 2010, Google revealed that the proportion of Google result pages that show a map is one in 13. A few months later, Google changed from its Local Business Center (LBC) to Google Places, which enables businesses to communicate with customers as well as supplement their Google profile information to include hours of operation, photos, videos, coupons and product offerings. We assume Google is serving maps more than 1 billion times a month.

With all of this in mind, here’s the beginnings of what you need to know to successfully tap into local markets.

Where to Begin

List your business in Google Places — it’s free. Watch a number of training videos and explore the features, including tools like tracking of actions (meaning how many times users showed interest in your business listing), clicks for more information on maps, driving directions or direct clicks, as well as impressions (how many times users saw your business listing as a local search result). As you’ll see, it will be important to get ratings and references, too.

While much focus is placed on Google Places, don’t forget to also register at:

  • Yahoo! Local
  • Bing Local

Verify Your Business

One easy way to find out if your business is listed anyplace online is to search for your brand name. Include the city or locale you are supposed to be listed in.

If you are not listed, take action. For instance, if I’m a tax attorney in Beverly Hills, California, I would search for “tax attorney Beverly Hills.” I’d see the top local results (just below Google’s paid search results) as well as a local map on the right, hovering over more paid listings.

When I click on one particular local result, I notice that it has not been verified, meaning it does not include a “verified business owner” link. An arrow points to “Business owner,” indicating it needs verification.

Google pulls the data on this result (address, phone number) from some of the larger business aggregators like infoUSA, and attempts to match it up correctly. However, that data could be wrong. If that’s the case, it would be important for this particular owner to take corrective measures. This is why it’s important to verify your business information in local search results.

Select Your Categories

When registering, make sure to assign your business to the listed categories that best describe it. You can add up to five categories. Once you start typing, Google Places will display related categories.

Continue to add as much information as possible, including hours, payment types, e-mail address, phone number, URL/web address, photos, videos and coupons. Fill out each field, if appropriate.

When you’re done, make videos, upload them to YouTube and link them back into your local profile on Google Places. If you install and use tools like JingProject.com, it’ll be free and easy to make an informational, useful video. Screen cam your PowerPoint presentations. You can include up to 10 pictures and five videos.

Get Listed in Local Directories

Obtaining citations from local business directories like Yelp and Merchant Circle can be a powerful tool to get exposure and drive traffic. (See the list of directories in the Local SEO resources sections below.) Make sure that all your information is correct, and keep the same formatting across all locations.

Ask for Reviews

Don’t be afraid to ask customers for reviews. Offer special incentives and discounts for return visits to your office. You can also add a postcard or business card into your office invoice mailings asking your customers to review the visit and talk about the experience.

However, don’t unwittingly spam this system by asking all your friends to review you in a week. You should also get references from the Better Business Bureau, your local chamber of commerce and the top local directories.

These tips should start you out. A local seo expert can help you enlarge your campaign and show you many more local seo techniques to bring you Page Rank and customers.

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Posted in Google Places, Local SEO | No Comments »

My Favorite SEO Tools

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

Here’s a short, sweet list of some of my favorite SEO tools:

Yahoo Clues Yahoo clues is sort of insights for search’ish and Alexa clicksteam’ish but a bit sexier because of the size of their index and depth of intel offered. Open up the tool, run a search, scroll down. The Money is in the little section waaay down titled as ‘search flow’ This section gives you the most likely, according to yahoo’s internal search data, previous and next search terms.

Why it’s hot:
It is based on yahoo’s index which makes it cooler then Alexa and you can search phrase combination and rerun the thing to give you previous/next data for those phrases.

How I use it:
I’d never recommend using just one tool for anything, so I call Google Insights for Search, Alexa Clickstream, and Yahoo Clues search flow my ‘unholy tripariate of new keyword opportunities. Whenever I’m doing any kind of reporting or just analysis generally, I always look for new words that are gaining speed that the competition hasn’t caught on to yet. This is easy because many sites do real keyword research once and call it a day. I exploit that fact in client competitors and get at all the words they’re missing using these three little tools ::maniacal laugh::

Search Engine Reports Rank Checker this is my ‘sweeter then the rest‘ bulk rank checker

Why it’s hot:
Not only does it give you ranking data for phrases in bulk for Google and Bing but it gives you the title tag meta description, url, and cache data.

How to use it:
Take your keyword research, find a competitor, pop the list in, run it!…now how is your competitor comparing to you for that huge list for phrases??

ez-seo on page tool : Crazy amounts of on page data in one place

Why it’s hot:
This tool really breaks the onpage down. You have no idea how many times I’ve seen people paying all this money to get their pages ranked for this or that phrase and their title tag is aweful. Scan for those kinds of simple issues easily with this tool and give your client lots of nifty number to look at. Just like SEO’s love graphs, managers <3 numbers.

How I use it:
I stick it into reports for the ooohh ahhh effect.

Web Design Tools

instant eyedropper Basically you download this free tool and it will identify and pate into clipboard the html color code of and pixil on the screen with one click.

Why it’s hot:
Awesome when you’re trying to replicate a certain webpage or style this is the super lazy mans way.

How I Use it:
This is really handy when I”m trying to replicate stuff or do design wireframes or any kind of templating really.

Lorem Ipsum is dummy text used by the printing and typesetting industry since about the 1500′s brought to the web age. Basically when you’re designing wireframes or planning a site design, this dummy text ‘fills’ in the layout. (By the way, thank you to colleague who showed me this, it’s awesome!)

Why it’s hot:
This tool is hot because you can choose the amount of words, paragraphs, bytes, or list based on the number you want and Ipsum spits it out exactly as such.

How I use it:
This is handy in several ways. You can use it to fill in layouts like you’re supposed to. You can also use it to plan the ‘look’ of content you want to out source or have your writer look on. After all, when it comes to content writing stuff seeing really puts content needs into context.

Affiliate Tools

With these, I’m not gonna go into why they’re hot or how I use them but they’re definitely neat. If you’re a for real affiliate, once you see them, you’ll know ;)

domain crawler basically replace the numbers in the url with someones adsense publish code and find out what other domain names are associated with that publisher code.

sitonomy run a URL through here and this tool will give you the title tag, meta description, stat tools (google analytics, omniture etc), server software, server IP, and it will give you info on THEIR affiliate tracking code (adsense, commission junction, click bank etc.)

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Posted in Local SEO | 1 Comment »

Where you can go with local SEO

Friday, January 21st, 2011

Local search marketing has recently become a part of an overall or complete SEO strategy. It helps ensure that your website dominates the search engines for the particular keywords or keyphrases for your industry in your local market.

Global marketing is also very important to many business, however there are several businesses that offer their services or products on a local level and do not necessarily need as much global exposure. We have created specific local marketing methods that focus on getting top placement for your business and website within local search results.

At SEO Pro Asheville we realized that not every business or situation is the same or requires the same marketing goals. That is why we develop unique marketing plans to help you website show up higher in the search engines and local business listings and for keyword terms specific to your city or metro area. Not all local SEO firms offer this type of service and our expertise in this field can help your business and website excel in these areas.

Currently the good old-fashioned phone book is still the top resource used when people need to find local products, services, or professionals, but local search is close on its tail. Every day more and more people are turning toward search engines to help find these same businesses that they once discovered only in the yellow pages.

We all previously relied on phone books, but with the evolution of local search we feel that phone books will be slowly phased out of existence. While the use of the yellow pages may not completely disappear, within the next 5 to 10 years a higher rate of people will be using search engines to locate local businesses than the phone book.

Getting ahead of your competition in the search engines now is key to dominating your local market. While everyone currently has the same opportunity to create and enhance their local business listings, those who do so sooner will benefit more. Getting high rankings in the search results within your local market will enable you to out-market your competition. Especially when it comes to impulse buying, being listed ahead of competing businesses can make the difference between making a sale or not.

Each particular market and area is different and may require a slightly different strategy or approach. However, even though the markets vary there are certain factors that remain constant in order to reach top search engine placement.

We specialize in SEO and attaining first page results for your business whether your reach is local or global. Contact us and we can tailor a specific SEO marketing action plan for your website inside the state of NC. It’s 2011 and it’s about time your business gained high exposure in the major search engines. SEO Pro Asheville can put you on that path.

Posted in Local SEO | 1 Comment »

Local SEO: How many links is too many?

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

There’s a long-standing debate in local SEO about the maximum number of links that you should place on any given page. If you use the SEOmoz PRO Campaign Manager, you may have seen a warning that looks something like this:

Too Many On-page Links Warning

Digging deeper into the “Too Many On-Page Links” warning, you’ll see the message:

You should avoid having too many (roughly defined as more than 100) hyperlinks on any given page.

A number of people have asked where they came up with 100 as the magic number and whether this is a hard limit or just a suggestion. I’m going to talk a bit about the history, whether that history still applies, and what the potential consequences are of breaking the 100-link barrier.

Where Did They Get 100?

The 100-link limit actually came from sources within Google and has been restated for years, as recently as a March 2009 post by Matt Cutts, in which he quotes the Google guidelines as saying:

Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

The early crawlers capped the amount of data they would process for any given page, due to bandwidth limitations. Ultimately, 100 links was mostly a good rule of thumb for what would fit in a page that met those processing limits.

Could You Be Penalized?

Before we dig in too deep, I want to make it clear that the 100-link limit has never been a penalty situation. In an August 2007 interview, Rand quotes Matt Cutts as saying:

The “keep the number of links to under 100” is in the technical guideline section, not the quality guidelines section. That means we’re not going to remove a page if you have 101 or 102 links on the page. Think of this more as a rule of thumb.

At the time, it’s likely that Google started ignoring links after a certain point, but at worst this kept those post-100 links from passing PageRank. The page itself wasn’t going to be de-indexed or penalized.

Is 100 Still The Limit?

Since Matt’s 2009 comment, the Google guidelines page he quotes seems to have dropped the phrase “fewer than 100.” Observations from across the SEO community and multiple Google Webmaster Help threads confirm this change. In April 2010, Google engineer John Mu endorsed the following answer:

100 links to a page is a just a suggestion … There are pages out there with more than 100 links, and it isn’t an issue. If your page is sufficiently authoritative, Google is going to be interested in the pages that are being recommended by that page.

Like many Google “limits,” this is probably not a concrete number, and most likely varies with site authority. It’s also likely that the number has increased over time, as Google overcomes processing limitations (especially post-Caffeine).

So, Does It Still Matter?

The short answer is “yes.” There’s an inescapable reality in SEO that the more links a page has, the less internal PageRank each of those links passes. To quote Matt again from his interview with Rand:

At any rate, you’re dividing the PageRank of that page between hundreds of links, so each link is only going to pass along a minuscule amount of PageRank anyway.

To put it simply, more links equals less PR for each link. The actual math of internal PageRank flow gets complicated fast, but let’s look at a couple of very simple examples.

Example 1: 3 Level-2 Pages

Let’s say we have a very basic site with a home-page and three 2nd-tier pages linked from it. I’m going to grossly oversimplify the PR model, but let’s say those 3 pages each inherit 1/3 of the PR of the home-page. Let’s also assume that Google doesn’t allow a page to pass 100% of its own PR – we’ll cap the amount at 85% of the original page’s PR (we’re talking about actual PR in this case, not Toolbar PR). The result would look something like this:

3-page Link Example

Here, each of the pages inherits roughly 28% (0.85/3) of the original PR of the home-page. Again, I’m oversimplifying a much more complex reality to make a point.

Example 2: 150 Level-2 Pages

Now, let’s expand those 2nd-tier pages and say that the home-page links to 150 internal pages. The diagram and PR values would look something like this:

150-page Link Example

Split 150 ways, the original 85% of the PR the home-page can pass ends up being less than 0.6% (0.85/150) per page. My graphic may have gotten a little carried away, but it’s easy to see how quickly internal PR can become diluted in these situations.

What’s The Right Number?

As with so many complex SEO and local SEO issues there’s no one answer. There’s a balance between building a site structure that’s too deep, creating pages that are many links removed from high-authority pages, and one that’s too “flat,” creating a situation like the one above. While many local SEOs argue in favor of flat architecture, the basic problem is that it treats every link as being equal. Do you really have 150 (or more) pages that all deserve equal treatment from the home-page and that should all carry equal PR? Probably not, and so we try to take a balanced, hierarchical approach, focusing internal PR on the most important pages first. Ultimately, while it may be outdated, the 100-link guideline is still probably a decent rule of thumb for most sites.

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Posted in Local SEO | 2 Comments »

Local SEO Tactics: Seven Tips for Effective Web Page Design

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

Practicing local SEO is not going to be effective if your customers aren’t led to a web site worth reading through or buying from. If you want your local business web site to reach the maximum amount of potential customers then you need strong, effective web design. You must be sure that your business web site is developing successfully. In this article I will give you seven simple tips for effective business web page design.

1.     Don’t use welcome pages

Welcome pages are pages that you sometimes see when you try to view a web site. They are usually bright and have a big picture and an invitation to visit the site such as: “Welcome” or “Enter” on them. Avoid such pages. In reality they often annoy users and so you can loose some potential clients. The users should see the content of your web site from the first sight. Remember, welcome pages are never used in effective web design.

2.     Don’t use annoying ads

Too many glaring ads can clutter up a website and really disrupt your visual appeal. Take a look at this screenshot example:


Most of the users ignore such advertisements on web sites. Try to use quality materials with some advertisement inside instead of annoying banners. As a result users will click on the links more often. Only professionally designed ads don’t annoy and are successful at the same time.

3.     Navigation must be easy and understandable

You must create such navigation that even a child could easily orientate on your web site. Avoid dropdown menus based on scripts or flash. If the users won’t immediately understand, how to orientate on your web site, they would leave. Remember, that an easy and convenient navigation is one of the first signs of good web design.

4.     A user should always understand in what part of your site she is in now.

Firstly, your navigation should be seen from each page of your web site. When the user makes a few clicks on your site, he should still understand in what part of your site he is now and how he can get to any other par he wants. This will make the search of information on your web site easier and a good web design is always convenient for users.

5. Text must be easy to read

Separate your text into small paragraphs. If there is a lot of text on the page, divide it into small blocks. Remember, good web design is always user-friendly.

6. Don’t use sounds on your site

If the user is going to stay on your web site to read some interesting material, don’t use sounds or music because it can annoy some users. If you still want to use sound effects, use them so that the viewers of your site could control the volume or turn them off.

7. Be sure your web site corresponds to modern web standards

While creating your web site you should pay attention that it must correspond to web standards and be correctly displayed in all main browsers. If your site looks great in Internet Explorer, but can’t be viewed or is displayed incorrectly in Firefox or Opera you will loose a lot of clients. Your site should work in all browsers.

It really does pay to have an attractive, quality website first and foremost. When you have a solid and effective website it makes local SEO tactics that much more rewarding and successful.

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Posted in Local SEO | No Comments »

Mastering Local SEO

Saturday, December 18th, 2010

Part of what I do is provide recommendations to site owners about how they should optimize their web sites for search engines and local search. Often this list of recommendations is quite long and made up of items some of which are relatively easy to implement and some of which will require quite a bit of work. As you can imagine, there is sometimes push back from the site owner regarding the high effort items. Usually this resistance is phrased like, “Do I really need to do item #43?”

In the past I’ve taken the approach of explaining each recommendation to make sure it is understood (some can be quite technical) along with the reason for it when it comes to search engine rankings. Obviously the person paying for my services has the final say and so once I’ve provided my explanation I leave it to them to give the thumbs up or thumbs down. Sometimes so many items are rejected that I’m fairly certain the client has guaranteed failure with their local SEO efforts.

What I believe I’ve failed to emphasize is that the only way to win the local SEO game is to be better than all of the other competing sites. This is obvious to me and probably to everyone doing SEO work, but I’m now convinced that people outside of the search industry don’t get this idea. I believe they think that the game is just with the search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

So if a web site happens to have very little competition because it focuses on a very niche area, then the amount of local SEO required is going to be small. In such cases it makes sense to look at a list of recommendations and reject the time consuming and expensive items. However, for web sites where competition is present, perhaps from web-savvy affiliate marketers that build their web sites from scratch with local SEO in mind, it simply doesn’t make sense to not do everything possible to improve rankings in the search engines.

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Posted in Local SEO | 4 Comments »

Essential Ingredients of Article Marketing for Local SEO

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

Article Marketing is a great platform on which to build your online business.

“But wait Chuck, I thought Article Marketing was good just for back links and traffic”

Well, Article Marketing is great for back links and traffic, and so much more. This is because Article Marketing provides the 5 main ingredients that you need to build a local business online and optimize it for Local SEO. These 5 main ingredients are Content Creation, Online Visibility, Traffic Generation, List Building and Product Creation.

So let’s take a closer look at each of these 5 essential ingredients:

Content Creation – No matter your niche, you need to be able to create fresh, unique and usable content for your prospects. From time to time you will online that content is dead. Wrong. Content is not only alive and well, content is king online. And relationship connection is queen, and you can have both with Article Marketing.

Every time you create an article you are creating content that you can use over and over.

Online Visibility – The Golden Rule of the New Internet is “whoever has the greatest reach wins.” And online visibility is the fast path to a greater reach. You don’t have to be found all over the internet but you do want to be found all over your niche. And you can do this quickly when you repurpose parts of your article on your blog and Social Media sites, as well as Article Directories.

When you are found all over your niche you are naturally seen as the “go-to” expert in your niche.

Traffic Generation – Traffic is the lifeblood of your business. You can have a great web site with great products but if no one ever sees them you are sunk. You want to have 3 kinds of traffic: immediate, consistent, and long term. Article Marketing is still the best free way to get immediate, consistent and long term traffic.

And once you submit an article online it can send you traffic forever.

List Building – You want a list community that is highly qualified and hyper-responsive. When someone reads your article and then clicks on your links for what you offer, they have qualified themselves as someone very interested in what you have to offer.

And when you take good care of your list community, they will take good care of you by being hyper-responsive to your offers.

Product Creation – When you are creating your content you are creating your information products. You can expand your content into info products or you can compile your article content into info products. You can also repurpose your content into audio and video as well.

With the regular content creation of Article Marketing, you have set the stage for being a prolific product creation machine and developing your Local SEO.

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Posted in Article Marketing, Local SEO | 1 Comment »

2011 Local SEO Search Predictions

Friday, December 10th, 2010

The predictions season is here . . . Telmetrics is one of the first out of the gate with its “Top Local Search Trends for 2011.” Here they are for you pleasure and consumption with comments by me:

1) SEM Churn Levels Off: We expect churn to decrease in 2011 as SEM agencies have aggressively adopted key measurement tools to help prove the value of their services. Transparent performance and positive customer/advertiser satisfaction go hand in hand.

2) Quality of Leads Trumps Volume: Advertisers have realized that call or click volume doesn’t necessarily translate to a quality body of leads. Local advertisers have become more savvy and will demand tangible lead quality measurement in 2011.

3) Call Tracking Gets Social: In 2011, we expect more advertisers to monetize their social media initiatives and with that, demand performance reporting on social media campaigns. Call tracking within social campaigns will help validate the model as consumers are still picking up the phone for the last leg of a transaction. Additionally, reputation management platforms that embed call measurement will bridge the gap between online and offline customer feedback.

4) Speech-to-Text Adoption Takes Hold: Caller intelligence from consumer- advertiser dialogue—available through speech-to-text technologies—will be widely adopted and advertisers will be able to more effectively optimize ad spend and creative to drive more leads. Lead quality details such as customer sentiment and keywords spoken will quickly become must-haves.

5) Value of Traffic from Online Sources Revealed: As the ROI of online platforms becomes more transparent, traditional ad channels that generate quality call volume will have an opportunity to recoup lost ground by demonstrating their value on a level playing field.

At a general level I agree with all of these.

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Posted in Local SEM, Local SEO | 2 Comments »
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