Posts Tagged ‘local search engine optimization’

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Google Previews tweaks search engine marketing again

Saturday, November 13th, 2010

Last week Google launched its newest innovation on their search engine page: Instant Previews. The idea of a search engine website preview has been around for a while and with this launch, all Google Instant users will be able to view previews of search results pages without a plugin. This gives search engine marketing strategists call to look at their clients’ webpages and check for optimization, especially for companies using Flash websites

Google Instant Previews allows users to see Google’s cached version of a website without leaving the search results page. The look and feel of a webpage is more important than ever at enticing users to click. When a user clicks on the magnifying glass icon  next to a search result, an overlay will appear with preview of the page.  Once the magnifying glass is clicked, the user can hover over the other search results to scroll between previews.

So how will Instant Previews impact businesses?

Instant Previews will increase the importance of web design and usability and should decrease the number of clicks going to lower quality sites, doorway pages and sites praying on misspellings. As a company that optimizes both HTML and Flash websites, we believe Instant Previews has raised the importance of optimizing Flash websites yet again. Here is an example of Google Instant Preview:

I continue to stress to my clients in interactive marketing the importance of focusing on SEO in combination with page design and usability in order to create clean, useful and appealing sites that rank high in search engines and entice users to click. According to Google, people using Instant Previews are 5% more likely to be satisfied with the results on which they clicked.

The concept of previewing websites is far from new, but when the world’s largest search engine decides to add a visual representation of a page to the search results page, businesses must stay ahead of the curve. Google continues to lead the way in search engine innovation. From the June Caffeine update to the introduction of Google Instant in September to last weeks’ newest addition of Instant Previews, Google has made 2010 a remarkable year in search engine marketing.

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Using Google Places to rank in local searches

Wednesday, November 10th, 2010

Google Places is by far the strongest free marketing tool out there for local businesses. Originally introduced in March 2004 as Google Local, it displays local business info at the top of Goggle’s organic search returns accompanied by a map. Most searches turn out 7 businesses, which means ranking in the top 7 of Goggle Places can be a huge lift to a local company.

Breaking into the top 7 of Goggle Places takes expert knowledge and time and staying there takes continued effort. It begins with claiming and optimizing your Google Places local business listing. Once done you can examine your ranking and then decide if you want to bring a local SEO expert in to make sure you are up in the top 7 returned results.

Check out the screen shot below to see the way Google Places displays its 7 results, and also the position of sponsored ads.

To begin the process visit Google and search for Google Places. Register for an account. Follow the bouncing ball until you can click on the button that says “Add a Business”. The first page of the submission form is mostly fill in the blank, but there are several important opportunities to optimize the listing.

Business Name

You must choose your business name wisely. While no one audits the listings to verify that the company name matches your incorporation documents, you must still be wary. If your company’s legal name is “Joe’s Computer Repair” you need to tweak it for the purposes of Google Places optimization. One easy way to do this is to add a keyword descriptor or your primary city. For example: “Joe’s Quick Computer Repair” or “Joe’s Computer Repair of Miami”.

Goggle Places Description

Carefully craft a 200 character description of your business focusing almost exclusively on your key products and services. Don’t waste space here for marketing speak such as “Proudly serving the Miami area since 1976”. Also, do not waste space here by including geographic references. The geography is almost entirely controlled by the city you list for your address. Inclusion of additional cities does virtually nothing when it comes to optimizing your Google Places listing.

For our hypothetical painting company, “Joe’s Computer Repair”, an optimized description would go something like:

Computer repair shop specializing in PC repair and speed enhancement for PCs. Services include hard drive repair and backup, data recovery, speed optimization and general computer repairs.

It is important to remember that the description is designed to reach a broader search audience – not win awards on Madison Avenue. Keep it simple and include your top keywords. 200 characters is not a lot of room, so make sure not to waste space.

Category

Google Places requires the use of at least one standard category. Begin by typing your top keywords and choose the most relevant category. Google Places provides the ability to include 5 categories. Use them. If your top keywords are not standard categories, then use one or two closely related standard categories and use the remaining three slots for specific keywords.

For our hypothetical company, the categories might look something like:

Computer (Standard)
Computer Repair (Top keyword search / Custom Category)
PC Repair (Top keyword search / Custom Category)
Data Recovery (Top keyword search / Custom Category)
PC Shop (Standard, but an extremely popular related search term)

Service Areas and Location Settings

The Service Areas and Location Settings options are designed to allow a business to establish a service area if the company does not have a storefront of some sort. If in doubt, complete the option accurately for your business.

Business hours and payment options are purely optional and serve little if any value to the optimization process. Potential customers certainly will find the information useful.

Google Places provides the ability to add up to 10 photos and 5 videos (from YouTube.com). Make sure you always use keywords to name your photos and take advantage of the “tag” functions provided by YouTube.com. The impact on Google Places traffic is limited, but any impact is good.

Additional Details

To optimize your listing, create a table of your key products and services using as many keywords as possible. Each detail consists of two fields with a maximum space of 200 characters each. Include as many additional details about your company, your products and your services as possible.

The new Google Places local business listing will not be active until verified. Usually, verification can be completed by triggering a phone call from Google’s computers to the phone number of record for the listing.

Sponsored Ads?

Once verified you will be included in Goggle Places. If you find you are not listing among the top 7 in Google Places you should think about bringing in a local SEO expert to fine tune and continuously monitor your Google Places status. That is likely a better option for you than paying Google for ad sponsorship and placement, as an actual SEO expert working for you not only will have you ranking in the top 7 but will otherwise optimize your information and site so that you rank effectively and keep customers on your listing.

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Yahoo Interview on Local SEO Marketing

Monday, November 8th, 2010

Here’s an interview I did with Yahoo about the importance of a fully realized SEO campaign:

Local SEO Expert Talks About Search Engine Marketing

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How does a local SEO expert help YOUR business?

Monday, November 8th, 2010

What is local SEO and how can it help your business flourish?

Well, do you find yourself a local business with a nice website that just isn’t bringing in customers like you had anticipated? If so this article, and local SEO, are for you.

Perhaps you’ve heard about local search engine optimization but don’t know precisely what is and how it can help your business flourish through being quickly discovered by customers in your own local area and surrounding communities who are already looking to purchase your product.

Creating a smartly designed website is the only the first step in increasing your profile and your profits if you are a local business. The crucial step two in the process is smart, local website promotion. If you have a great-looking website but only a few people are looking at it then the efforts at creation and design are wasted. Instead, a proper promotion method convinces many eyes to be instantly trained on your website seeking what they are already looking for. That is the key to “optimizing” cyberspace and the idea behind local SEO.

An ideally realized website uses search engine optimization to tell search engines like Google and Yahoo exactly what your business is all about and to reach out to local customers searching for this information. That way when local customers sit down and begin searching your business comes up first on the pages of the product they are looking for.

Search engine optimization contains several strategies that can get you higher search engine rank when someone uses Goggle or Yahoo to find services in your local area and beyond. Your goal is to be visible on page one of the search results and as high up on the page as you can be. You can try implementing some of the available optimization strategies yourself, and a perhaps undertake it successfully. However, there are also tricks to the trade that only professionally trained and experienced people can provide.

After you have established a smart web site for the enterprise (or even if you currently have one) the task is to get it found, and once found, returned to by your top customers and the local prospective clients in your area.

Precisely what is SEO for a local company?

Getting seen in a world wide web search depends on where you are ranked. If you are using the correct tactics for search engine positioning like key term in most page of your webpage, and search engine optimization key term in your paid-for on-line ads, your website will begin to boost in the rankings. Determining what the key phrases are and where to use them is the solution to your ultimate success.

What can a SEO advertising firm actually do for you? An experienced local SEO provider will be able to:

Assist you in building links to your website and website optimization in ways you may have never thought about.

Submit online articles daily related to your products or services to major magazines to build your audience/client base.

Get you noticed in blogs and forums – like commencing the buzz about you and your goods and services.

Submit on-line press releases to announce corporation news and firm activities.

Make sure your organization is present and noticed on social network sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Create e-mail internet marketing search engine optimization campaigns and distribute them on a timely basis.

Local SEO is an ongoing, dynamic variety of marketing techniques that demand close awareness for updates, revisions and new ads. SEO can be a Do-It-Yourself project, but a dedicated local SEO campaign takes a local SEO expert.

The main function a local SEO expert is to prepare a program that is certainly exclusively developed to cater your business needs and make you instantly visible to customers already prepared to buy your products. A local SEO expert fully grasps the goals of your business and your target audience when they create your search engine optimization campaign.

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Targeting customers with local SEO

Saturday, November 6th, 2010

Using local SEO you can target your website to countries or territories, or to specific regions and cities. When someone enters your keyword on a search box, the search system uses several factors to determine whether to show your website:

Search engines analyze the actual search query the user submits. If someone enters a search query that contains a recognizable city or region, search engines will show related regionally targeted websites. For example, if someone searches for Asheville Dentist, search engines may only show websites targeted to Asheville, regardless of the user’s physical location.

When possible, search engines determine the user’s physical region based upon the Internet Protocol (IP) address. This also applies to regionally targeted websites. For example, if someone searches for Dentist, and the computer performing the search is located in Asheville, search engines will only show websites targeted to Asheville even though the location was not specified.

Look at this screen shot and you’ll see what I mean:

Unlike country-specific search engine domains (such as Google.fr), search engines consider a user’s IP address for ads that show on Google.com. For example, if a user with an Australian IP address visits Google.com, Google will display ads targeted to Australia, even though the user isn’t accessing Google.com.au.

Local SEO practices are conductive to generating huge gains in local, targeted traffic. Instead of getting random, useless traffic you have targeted customers waiting to buy coming straight to your site.

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Avoiding local SEO mistakes

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

Local SEO work is always a flowing dynamic art, full of maintenance and upkeep. It’s necessary to stay on top of the game and it’s also important not to make key SEO mistakes.

Search engines use algorithms to determine search engine ranking, with Google recently changing its algorithm. Google’s change just shows that you have to constantly be up-to-date with search-engine changes.

Avoid the following local SEO mistakes at all costs:

Redesign that doesn’t work

The first thing you need to think of when planning to redesign your company site is if the redesign will work to your advantage in search visibility. You have to factor in page layout, content and keyword usage, navigation, links and redirects in the grand equation that is local SEO.

A Content Management System without a Migration Plan

You must have a migration plan if you’re installing a CMS. A change in your content management system means a change in the templates that format Web pages, navigation, and often the URL structure of pages.

Letting inbound links drop

Stay updated with your inbound links, and think of new ways to prevent inbound link loss. You prevent or minimize link loss through constant content creation, promotion, and social participation.

Replicas

Do not use duplicate content. For example, if you are promoting a press release, RSS feed, or an article then make sure you have the original on your site first, then you can link any duplicates back to your site.

The one thing you can do you prevent your site from dropping in search-engine ranking is have a local SEO expert stay active and updated with your site. Site maintenance and innovation are the keys in local SEO when trying to reach the top.

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Finding the power in local SEO

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Everything you have heard about the power of local SEO is true. It works here in Asheville the same way as it does everywhere.

About 85% of your potential clients will search on the Internet for what you are offering.

They will either find you or your competition. It’s up to you.

Chances are, you did not just run into this website by accident. It’s likely that you found us by running a search in Google, Yahoo or Bing. You may have searched for a custom web design firm or an Internet Marketing firm that specializes in building your online exposure.

As you can see, we didn’t simply leave it to chance that prospective clients would somehow stumble across our website. Instead, we’ve worked extremely hard at testing and developing solutions that effectively influence search engine rank and bring prospective clients (like you) to our site.

Local SEO can include some simple tricks, but adding dedicated local SEO to your business site takes a professional who can utilize a comprehensive local SEO plan.

Within the last few years the search engines have been providing improved local search features. The largest search engine, Google, has in fact been embedding these “Maps” inside their search pages as part of their Universal Search results. This has opened new opportunities for local businesses and requires different techniques, from original “organic” SEO, to get exposure they couldn’t have before.

Look at the following screen shot to see how Google now favors local posts:

When the Internet hit its first big boom most users were thinking globally. They were excited about the prospect of finding far flung customers for their products and services all over the world. The reality is that this concept simply doesn’t work for most businesses. However many potential customers, local to your business, sit down at their computers with their wallets out. They are looking for the nearest business that will suit their needs. In most instances, they will conduct a localized search and not a global one.

Local SEO experts simply aim to get your name, website and business in front of the people that are most likely to use it – those that are physically located near it. Think of it as the local section of your yellow pages. At the end of the day, local SEO means that if your hardware store is located in Asheville, NC potential customers will find your shop by searching locally.

Don’t forget that people are trying to find you, you are not trying to find them. Utilizing local SEO techniques will make it much easier for potential customers to find your local business. Having a traditional SEO campaign is fine, but if you are looking to increase traffic with local prospects, a local SEO campaign is a necessity.

There are specific tactics and techniques that can and should be used to ensure that your SEO is targeted to a local audience. If you want this kind of powerful local SEO to work for you contact us at SEO Pro Asheville and find out how.

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Getting a start on local SEO

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

Local SEO, which is the art and science of ranking well in search engines for local results, is one of those things that is easy to learn but hard to master, so let’s focus on the easy part. Say you’ve got a website and it’s not ranking in Google very well for whatever search term you desire results from. What is there to do about it?

These are some simple things you can do, or even better get someone else to do for you, to start off your local SEO campaign.

Figure Out Your Target Audience

Until you know who you are targeting there is not much point in doing local SEO. What words are your potential customers searching with when you want to be found? What are different modes are they in when they are searching? Are they ready to buy? Are they just doing research? Are they big spenders or are they cheapskates?

In general you should pick terms that match up with your service, that you think will convert well and that have good search volume. To get an idea of search volume use Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool.

Then once you come up with your target keyword list…

Update Your Page Titles

The “title tag” is perhaps the most important element of SEO and local SEO. These are the words that appear at the top of your web browser when you are on a page. They are also the words that show up in the blue links in Google.

Put the search terms you are targeting in your page titles. In general keep the titles as brief as possible while at the same time making them appealing to searchers. Put the most important keywords at the beginning of the title. Don’t worry about getting this perfect the first time as these are very easy to change and Google usually reacts to these changes quickly.

Make Each Page Title Unique and Add Your City Name

It is also important in local SEO that all of the pages on your site have unique page titles. Make sure you add your city name to the titles as a lot of people search for your service in your city.

You also should check the meta descriptions tags of each page to make sure those are unique as well.

Add a Few Internal Links

The number of links a page gets from its own site and which pages link to it matters. The home page is the most important on the site and so the pages that are linked to from the home page are also important. Figure out which pages you want to rank the most and add links from other pages to these pages. Make sure you use relevant keywords in the text of those links. For example if you want to rank the page for “pasta” use the word “pasta” in the text of the links that go to that page. Try not to use the exact same phrases in each link to make it look more natural. For example in some of the links use “best pasta” or “terrific pasta”.

Add Your Address to Every Page

Ideally every page should have your address and phone number. This is helpful for users but it also reinforces your location to the search engines. If your business has multiple locations then you may want to create a separate page for each location or at least a single page that lists all locations. Make sure you link to these pages from as many pages as possible on the site. It would probably be a good idea to list as many location names as possible on the home page too.

Also use these tried and true tips for local SEO improvement.

Get Links

None of this stuff will work very well if you don’t have any links to your site. The big search engines look at links from other sites as a sign of quality and trust. So you should spend some time thinking about what other sites you think you can get links from. Here are some of the obvious ones:

– Chambers of commerce/local business groups
– Local business directories/Local newspaper site
– Friends who have sites (including your kid’s blog)
– Partners/Vendors

There are hundreds of other ways to get links like writing articles for other sites, sending out press releases, adding your business info to social media sites, etc.

It’s important to understand that local SEO is not a one-time thing just like running a TV ad campaign is not a one-time thing. It’s a marketing tactic like any other. And as more people use the Web to find local services, local SEO could become one of the more important components of your marketing plan. So get familiar with it today so you can master it tomorrow.

If you have any more questions about local SEO please use our contact form for Local SEO Asheville.

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Tried and true tips for local SEO improvement

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

Working in local SEO there are a few things you immediately learn that can help a client with local search engine optimization. Some are easy to implement, and some sound a bit easier than they are, something that makes my services valuable to my clients.

Here are a few of the many SEO tips that are among the most common and first approaches used when running an SEO campaign. As a business owner you can implement some of them yourself, but the time needed may be daunting to you. These components to a good SEO campaign are things I stress as an Asheville SEO expert.

Deep linking

Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? It says that you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.

Social bookmarking

Make it easy for your visitors to social bookmark your website, creating important links that the search engines value. There are plenty of free social bookmarking widgets available. Here is a recent look at social bookmarking popularity:

Article exchanges

You’ve heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else’s article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links.

Article marketing

Writing your own articles (or having an local SEO expert do it) can be a valuable way of obtaining local search engine optimization. Go here for my blog post on Local SEO Article Marketing.

Be bold

Use the <b> </b> tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do not use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.

Newsletters

Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.

Become a foreigner

Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?

First come, first served

If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won’t follow additional links to the same page. You can see this in action at the link to the home page on this web site monitoring page

Multiple domains

If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?

Titles for links

Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.

Not anchor text.

Don’t overdo the anchor text. You don’t want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation – something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times.

Site map.

A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It’s called the navigation bar.

There is a lot more to local search engine optimization, and there are always more details when looking at an individual site. But these tips should help any website significantly improve its rankings. The services of a local SEO expert can make your SEO improvement times exponentially better.

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