This video was done with the Portland ~ Vancouver area in mind. There are websites for any large metropolitan area – you will just need to do a search for local directories in your area to apply this strategy.
Local Search for Traditional Businesses
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Archive for SEO
Why do I want to Advertise on the Internet?
I often get business owners asking, “Why should I have my business on the Internet?” There are many reasons but the most important reason is your bottom line. Weigh the cost of Phone Book Advertising, Magazine, TV or Radio Advertising against the cost of having a website. The Return on Investment is mush higher with a website and Internet Advertising.
More and more people are turning to the Internet to find services instead of having bulky phone books. According to Internet World Stats 73% of all North American citizens use the Internet. ABC News conducted a survey of online users – 47% of Internet users make purchases online. If 73% of your customers are using the Internet to get information and make purchasing decisions, and 47% are actually making purchases, then you need to be represented on the Internet.
Companies that do well with local search results are service based industries. With people moving into metro areas they need to find new service providers and are turning to the Internet to find and compare services that are available in their new location.
Two Types of Internet Advertising
The first type is paid advertising through a company like Google. Google’s paid advertising is called AdWords and is known as Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. The concept is simple – you define your best keywords (through keyword research) then bid on the keyword phrase. When someone types in your chosen keyword phrase then your website will come up in the listings for that customer to click on and go to your site. The cost of this type of advertising is industry specific meaning that is varies by industry. Keywords can sell for pennies or well over $50.00 per click. For business targeting the local market it is possible to take a costly keyword like “Web Design” and put a city or area behind it and get a much better price on the keyword.
The second type of Internet advertising is called Organic placement – these are the sites that are listed in the main area of the search results page. The goal is to get placed in the top half of the first page. There are many variables that come into play for the search engine to decide who gets prime placement. It is all based upon relevancy of the phrase typed in by the searcher to the websites listed. Some factors are:
- Keywords in the title of the website
- Keywords in header tags
- Keywords listed in the text of the page
- Keywords in the URL
- Keywords bolded or emphasized on the page
- The Keywords in the text of inbound links
- How many inbound links
- The PageRank of sites that are linking to your site
That is a short list of considerations made by the search algorithms – but all of those items are in control of the owner of the website. They should all be taken into consideration when optimizing your site for organic placement in the search engines. This is called SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
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I am always getting asked what are the best article directories for posting article content on the Internet. For those of you that do not know – posting articles on the Internet is a great way to build up your authority and credibility as well as generating back links to your site or blog. Articles are not sales letters or blatantly self-promotional. Articles are things that your customers need to know – not specifically about your business but in general. Demonstrate your wealth of knowledge and the customers will follow. Jack Humphrey over at the Friday Traffic Report has gathered a list of the best article posting sites. Here is his list of the top 21 article posting sites:
2. GoArticles
3. WebProNews
5. SearchWarp
6. PubsACS
7. ArticleBase
8. Isnare
9. Buzzle
10. ArticleCity
11. IdeaMarketers
12. Site Reference
13. Article Alley
14. Web Source
15. Amazines
17. TheWhir
18. Excellent Guide
19. Directory Gold
20. Articles Factory
21. SelfGrowth
22. ArticelCity
Here is an article on submitting content for Network Marketers.
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Categories : SEO
Tags : article content, article marketing
Everone knows that getting links to your site/content is how you get your content ranked well on Google. Sure there are other aspects to organic ranking – but a linking strategy is very high on that list. There are traditional ways to get links:
- Ask your friends for links from their sites
- Put a link back to your site in all your Social Profiles
- Buy links
- Get listed in various Directories
- Trade links
These are all methods that work – slowly. Thinking outside of the box a little can work much faster. What do you have to offer people to get them to want to link to you?
- Create “Link Bait” content
- Hold a contest that has value to the people
Jack – over at the Friday Traffic Report has created a contest to get links to his site. He has gained way more links in a short period of time with this method. Check out the comments to see how many links this method has gained him in just this week.
By thinking outside the box you will find linking strategies that will work way faster than the traditional methods. Comment here with ideas that have worded for you!
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Categories : SEO
Tags : Link Building, Linking Strategies
rssHugger is a website that lists different blogs from around the Internet. It is a place for Blog owners to get their blogs listed and also a place for Blog readers to find different blogs on whatever topic they are interested in reading. In a nutshell it puts bloggers and information seekers together in one place. I am all for convenience – so I love this website.
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Here is a great article on the different reports that Google Analytics can provide for your Web Site. Written by WebHelperMagazine.com Using the different report features of Google Analytics can help determine what your readers want to see as well as point out which posts are retaining visitors and which ones are bouncing your visitor.
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Is your website like this sign? Don’t let your Web Site or business get to this condition.
Having your site maintained on a monthly basis makes great business sense – keeping everything current from the specials offered by your business to the text and image changes that occur through out the year. There is nothing more disappointing than to find outdated information when current information about your business is what your customers are seeking. Premium Websites, LLC monthly maintenance package includes: Read More→
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You have spent a great deal of time getting your LinkedIn profile just perfect. It is finally at 100%. Is it helping you with Google? There are a few simple things that you can do to your profile that will make it found in Google better.
- Edit your LinkedIn personal url to have either your name in it or your business name
- When entering your Websites and Blogs use the “other” category. This will allow the title that shows in your profile to be customized. Use either your Website/Blog address or the Key Words you want to rank for in the Search Engines.
Take a few minutes right now and go to your LinkedIn profile and make these changes. I dare you!
Here are a few other articles about LinkedIn that you might find interesting.
Blogger Appreciation Day on LinkedIn – Put your blog down as a separate job on your LinkIn profile. I’m going to do that today. Blogger Appreciation Day April 14 Here are a couple of ideas on how to implement this with LinkedIn:. 1. Connect with the bloggers you know. …
Learning how to LinkIn and what it’s worth – Once you join, you post a profile (basically your résumé and information on any services you provide). Then you link to friends by inviting them to join (I don’t do that; feels too much like bothering people who already have too much to …
Here’s to your SEOing for your business
Dotty
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Here are 20 SEO tips as posted at Rustic Girls.
Search engine optimization can be confusing, especially for people who are new to the concept. However, there are a few simple things that anyone can do that will help increase a webpage’s chances of being ranked higher by search engines and increasing the number of visitors to your website. How much time you spend optimizing your website is up to you, but you should take a little bit of time to do some of the following techniques:
1. Have a site with well-written content. Optimization is worthless if your site is not full of good content.
2. Include a short site description in the title. Search engines will display between 66 to 130 characters of your title when they list search results. Each page title should be constructed so that it informs and attract users. For best results, include a title and a subtitle.
3. Create a site map and submit it to the major search engines such as Yahoo! and Google. You should also place a link to your site map on the index page of your site.
4. Make sure that each page of your site has at least 250 words of text on it.
5. Declare a “doctype” at the top of every page and a character-set type.
6. Keep your URLs as simple as possible. Try to use URLs that have keywords in them instead of numbers.
7. Decide upon several keywords and phrases and use them throughout the page. This includes putting them in the title, content, anchor tags, Meta tags, and links.
8. Avoid frames. Search engine spiders are unable to read them. If you feel that you must use frames, include important body text within a <no frames> tag.
9. Register with search engines and directories by hand.
10. Avoid listing words repeatedly. This is considered keyword “stuffing” and is more likely to decrease your search engine ranking than improve it.
11. Do not use “black hat techniques” to try and artificially increase your site’s ranking. It will only end up backfiring and will probably get you banned from the search engine.
12. Do not use flash or images in place of searchable text. Also, use the “alt tag” to describe any images on your site. This information is indexed by search engines.
13. Use headers that are relevant and contain key words. Not only do they help organize your text, but they are also weighed heavily by search engines.
14. Update your site frequently. Search engines like sites that are growing and offer new content.
15. Use a blog to extend your site and keep your content fresh. Your blog should be an extension of your website (“http://www.yourwebsite.com/blogname” and not “http://yourwebsite.bloghost.com”)
16. Place a robots.txt file on your server. This will instruct web robots which directories can or cannot be crawled by search engine spiders.
17. Avoid using doorway or splash pages. Doorway pages are designed specifically for search engines and are considered another black hat tactic. Most search engines are capable of recognizing them, which makes them pointless. Splash pages are intended to be entryways to your site and usually consist of some type of flash animation. Although they might look cool, they take a long time to load and contain no content for search engines to crawl.
18. Include the major Meta tags on all of your pages. While the “key words” tag is not as important as it used to be, it should still be included. The “description” tag is more important since it is what search engines list after the title in their results.
19. Validate your HTML so search engines can read it. You should also validate any CSS and JavaScript that you use.
20. Hand submit your site to the major search engines. This is a simple step but can go a long way in getting your site listed.
Now that you understand some of the basics of search engine optimization, you can decide if you want to go more in-depth and take the time to optimize your site further. You might also consider having your website optimized by a professional. Either way, you have at least minimized some of the things that can lower you website’s ranking, which could have cost you potential visitors.- Darcy Logan
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Improving Google PageRank
In a nutshell the best and only way to improve the PageRank for your website is to get incoming links from websites that have a higher PageRank than your site. The PageRank is a mathematical computation that involves a ratio of incoming links and your PageRank vs their PageRank. So what are some ways to get links?
I am sure there are other suggestions. Feel free to leave your suggestion in the comments here!
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Dotty