Optimize Your SEO for Local Businesses

November 6, 2011 By Tony

Local Search is really taking off these days, especially with the inception of Google Plus. Right now Google Plus is good for personal pages, but Google + for Business is right around the corner and will be a huge “plus” for local search.

In order to optimize your localization SEO for your business, you need to utilize keyword research. Your on-site optimization is based upon keyword research. Google Analytics is the industry standard for analyzing web keywords. The use of the keyword filter should help you to target the local used keywords for your small business. Keyword research is one of the most important SEO components for any business. It is this research which determines who is able to find your website and who is not and by what keyword are being searched for. If you neglect to incorporate important keywords then you lose targeted traffic. The less traffic you have the lower the opportunities for sales conversion.

When you use keyword research tools you will get national search volume information. However, in order to determine keywords for a local small business you do not need national level rankings. What you need is to help your company appeal to the local levels. This can be done with Google Places.

Use of Google Places:
Google places is referred to as virtual real estate for businesses that are listed in the top keyword searched spots. Small businesses can submit their site to Google Places, a virtual directory, for free. This is particularly useful for small businesses which are new or on a tight budget. Small business owners cannot afford to overlook the importance of using Google Places. The purpose of the directory is to connect local smart phone and internet users to local businesses near their area. With a smart phone, users can take advantage of the Google apps to find locations near them at any time. This is not only beneficial for the customer but for the local businesses. In order to take advantage of this, businesses must place their complete listing on Google Places, and enjoy the benefits reaped from it in terms of increased customers and profit.

The rise of the iPhone and Google Android smart phones, using Google Places has become one of the most popular means of marketing a small business. Out of all the daily online activity conducted via smart phones, nearly seventy five percent of it relates to local content on Google (comsore.com). Now, more than ever, small businesses should use the services provided with Google Places to increase their local customer base and draw attention to their company. Google Places is a viable tool for local marketing because it includes all of the same features that social customers need. There are demographics based upon geo-location, as well as reviews, recommendations, connected sharing, and mobile based marketing. Customers using social networks can even make recommendations to others on their network, which increases your small business. Whether you are a dry cleaners, dentist, or café, using Google Places means that people in your area and nearby can find your company instantly, review the pertinent information about the company, and then get directions to your doorstep.

As a free web marketing service, Google Places offers businesses an opportunity to describe their services and their products, including their hours of operation, their email address, phone number, address, and website. Small businesses can include photos and videos as well as customer views to enhance the Places page. When customers conduct localized search queries, Google Places pages appear at the top based upon category and location. They are generally accompanied by a red push pin which indicates the location of your business. From there users can click directly to the business website, read reviews, or read the Places page.

There are new tools offered to small businesses thanks to improvements on Google Places. Google places offers local maps which highlight the most popular places on the left hand side, which—if your business makes it to the top seven—is a very useful tool. It also puts local places listings above organic listings which help to increase your size and visibility. The listings with Google Places are more social than with organic listings because it leaps into the space for reviews and recommendations. It also ties directly to Google Maps and all of the related mobile applications for Google Maps which are used by potential customers.

I suggest digesting this infographic created by Mike Blumenthal.

How Duplicate Content Can Kill Your Website’s SEO

October 11, 2011 By Tony

Many people and businesses type websites think that they can increase their search engine rankings or obtain multiple listings by providing multiple copies of the same page or similar copies of the same page because the presence of keywords is higher. Therefore, it’s important to keep in mind that duplicate content can be a silent killer and be detrimental to your website. Search engines, as Google, want and need fresh, new, unique relevant content on every page. Many websites, blogs and companies do not realize that having duplicate content means they could face a loss in traffic and SEO will ultimately suffer, especially new website marketers.

Duplicate Content = The Silent Website Killer

Google seeks to bring results that are based on relevant keywords. When you see multiple pages which have the same content, it means that content was taken(or stolen) from someone else’s site. This results in search engines being unable to differentiate between which site holds the authority to the copy. This is a large problem if many people start to link many versions of the same copy. Google Webmaster Tools will help you to diagnose whether or not your site has duplicate content, as well as Copyscape.com.

It is common to see two forms of duplicate content on sites today:

Identically written pages which are listed on different websites. In simplistic terms, this means that the same article or blog post is listed on two different websites. This is considered to be duplicate and therefore considered unacceptable in Google’s eyes. This is a problem for associated sites which have the same or similar look and feel to them. With identical content, they are at a high risk for being marked as spam.
Scraping (also called Web harvesting or Web data extraction) is a technique of extracting information(or text) from websites. It simply means that you are using a program to remove the text from one website and place it on yours. The biggest problems associated with duplicate content are that search engines are unable to identify which version or versions should be ranked for query results. Search engines also do not know which of the version or versions should be included or excluded from their indexes. Another major issue with duplicate, scraped content is that the search engines do not know whether they should direct the link metrics to a single page or keep the link metrics separated between the multiple versions.

When search engine robots crawl through a website, they will read, store and sort the information found in their database. After this, the robots will compare the findings on one with information already contained in the database. Using multiple factors, including the overall relevancy score related to the particular website, the search bot will determine which content is duplicate content. It will then filter out the pages which qualify as spam or the websites which qualify as spam. If your pages are not spam but they still contain enough similar content to be considered as such, they still run of the risk of being regarded as spam.

Many popular sites have been caught scraping content from other websites for the purpose of increasing their SEO, which happens at the expense of the other sites which already contain the information. Larger websites, which scrape content and post duplicate content for the purpose of SEO rankings, will outrank smaller websites and blogs, which leaves the smaller sites marked as spam. Google works very hard to ensure that duplicate content does not exist.

Buying Backlinks Can Produce Positive AND Negative Results

September 30, 2011 By Tony

Backlinks are links from one site that point back to your website. They can be posted in forum discussions or an affiliate website. Typically when you buy Backlinks the link to your website is posted on a related website in exchange for their link being posted on your website. This is a form of affiliate marketing which can generate better SEO results for your company. When you buy Backlinks you can produce negative and positive results easily. Buying Backlinks can increase the number of backlinks to your site which than increases your search engine rank, but if you are not careful, it can result in your site being removed completely from search engines instead of being increased. Links on Google Plus will also help your site immensely!

Understanding how buying backlinks can produce positive and negative results is an imperative part of your SEO success.

Google and Yahoo both rank your website in terms of the quantity and quality of the backlinks which direct to your website. The quality of the backlinks is determined by how relevant the other sites are to your site and where the link is placed as on the page. When you buy backlinks it is important that you avoid buying in mass because this might not contain sites relevant to your company.

Understanding how buying backlinks can produce positive and negative results is an imperative part of your SEO success. Good backlinks are links which include anchor text. This means that the text can be seen in the hyperlink. This uses relevant keywords in order to increase your rank among the search engines. Other good backlinks include links to and from websites which already have authority. This means sites which already have trust of search engines such as authority websites like Amazon.com. Having backlinks from here can greatly increase your rank among search engines. Another form of good backlinks is when you link one useful website to another. For this, the sites should be relevant to one another. When you have forum signature linking, it means a discussion forum placed outbound links to relevant websites such as yours. This is a great example of good backlinks.

Bad backlinks present themselves in one of two forms. The first form is follow. This means it takes you somewhere. No-follow means it leads you no where. No-follow backlinks will considerably harm your search engine rankings. It is imperative that your links always lead somewhere. Other forms of bad backlinks include link spamming. This occurs when you add as many links as you whether or not they are relevant to your website. Sybill linking takes place when you establish a handful of websites under different domain names and then you link all of those together to try and trick search engines into giving you a higher rank. Using linking software to create many link connections and speed up your SEO process is another form of bad backlinks. These do not create links relevant to your site which then results in the links being marked as spam. If you use bad backlinks your site might get removed from search engines which will damage your business. If you do use backlinks it is important that you seek out good backlinks as a part of your complete SEO strategy.

How to Set up a Business to Business Local Pay Per Click Campaign in 9 Easy Steps.

September 26, 2011 By Tony

How to set up a b2b local PPC Campaign in 9 short steps.

One very proficient, but costly way to gather new traffic to your website is to utilize a Pay Per Click ad campaign. When you take on more clients you may feel the need to cultivate a Business to Business (B2B) local Pay Per Click(PPC) Ad campaign. In order to do this you will need to familiarize yourself with Google AdWords and AdGroups. You will also need to understand keyword tools. Once you are familiar with these tools and know how to use them properly, you can begin the process of setting up your local PPC campaign. Let’s cover the step here on how properly set up a b2b local PPC Campaign in 9 short steps:

Step 1 – Account Structure Determination.

It is important that you understand the structure of your account. If you are selling products on your site then you should create a campaign for each feature. This means that if your company sells software products, you need to make sure that you have a campaign for photo editing software, image editing software, etc…Each campaign should have generic ad groups and ad groups for features which relate to the keyword.

Step 2 – Conducting Keyword Research:

There are many great tools which can be used to generate the best keywords. These include WordTracker, Keyword Discovery, and HitWise. There are pros and cons to each so no matter which one you select, you should compile the list of keywords and key phrases which directly relate to your business.

Step 3 – Set up your Campaign and set a Daily Budget

This means that you create a search network campaign to target your audience. You should ensure that you stay within your budget first and foremost and only work with what you can.

Step 4 – Build a Negative Keyword List

This means compiling a list of the keywords which you DO NOT WANT in your ads. Google no longer shows its negative keyword builder but that does not mean you should not do it. Sit down with a few work colleagues and make a list of the negative keywords. You can run search query reports through AdWords in order to determine negative keywords as well.

Step 5 – Create Your Ads

Your ads should call people to action while simultaneously describing your product or services in an honest and accurate manner. The descriptions should use strong words which offer a call to action. The ad should reflect upon your services and products in a manner that offers a positive review which integrates your keywords.

Step 6 – Start our New Campaign with Google Adwords Editor

You can select a template which best markets your campaign. You can copy the text from existing templates and divide your ad groups into themes. With the correct software, you can create the ad campaign and load it to Google AdWords.

Step 7 – Manually Create New Ads for Each One of your AdGroups in Google Adwords

You should create customized ads for every one of your AdGroups. You need to integrate the theme keyword in the ad title.

Step 8 – Expand your Keywords

Once you have reached this point you can copy your keywords and paste them into the keyword tool on AdWords and produce possible alternatives which you can use.

Step 9 – Monitor your Ads, Duplicate your Ads and Track your Ads

Enjoying your new success!

10 SEO Mistakes That Will Kill Your Site’s SEO

September 24, 2011 By Tony

There are many mistakes which people can make that result in killing your website. These are often simple and avoidable mistakes which can cripple your chances of optimizing your site. The first mistake is coding. Coding can hurt your SEO if you choose to use difficult coding such as Javascript. Simpler code can offer the same results with less spider issues.

The second mistake often made is the choice of keywords. When people decide upon the keyword phrases they should pick a select few which will then be integrated throughout their site. By focusing on a small group of important keywords you can increase your SEO. If you try to incorporate every keyword which relates to your niche then you will waste all of your time trying to incorporate each word in all of your web content and will lose out on many search engine results.

The third mistake people make is having long and confusing URL’s which cannot be navigated with ease. The best URL will have relevant keywords and only use dynamic characters or a few slashes. The pages and names should be in line with your specific content so that the spiders and visitors can appreciate it.

The fourth mistake made is thinking that title tags do not matter. You cannot get away with only using a single title tag throughout your website. You need to create a unique title tag for each page which will explain what the page is about. These title tags will show up in all search engine results and as such can better convince visitors to click on your website.

The fifth mistake is not watching out for splash pages. It is important not to leave your home page bare. You need to keep it focused. If you do use a splash page you want to ensure that the content contained therein is relevant and has lots of navigation in it so that the search engines will go through your entire site.

The sixth mistake is thinking that all of the search engines are the same. Each search engine has a unique plan and your business might rank better with one search engine than another. The top search engines are Yahoo, MSN, and Google because they can attract local attention to your niche through vertical and visual search engines. The seventh mistake made which can kill your company’s SEO is just trading backlinks instead of getting good backlinks. It is important that you get links from related sites which are of good quality. If you trade backlinks with other webmasters you might not help your SEO rank as much as you think, especially if they are unrelated to your niche.

The eighth mistake is not balancing graphics and text. It can be very detrimental to have underutilized graphics or excess graphics. With a lot of flash or too many images your rank will go down instead of increasing. You need to always have text to back up the images.

The ninth biggest mistake which can adversely affect your SEO is not delivering your promises. Your site should offer everything that you say it offers so that visitors find what they want and expect on your site.

The tenth and final mistake made is thinking that only SEO matters and not paying attention to the other facets of your balanced marketing plan.