Tried and true tips for local SEO improvement

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.

Tags: Ashville SEO expert, local search engine optimization, local SEO