One of the best in the local SEO game by the name of David Mihm (along with many other geniuses) put together a list of the most important and most negative factors when trying to rank locally. You can find the entire report here
I am going to outline some of the things that I think are intersting that I think a lot of businesses either miss or disregard. Read the rest of this entry »
My friend Matthew Hunt from www.smallbusinesscoach.com created this video on how small businesses can go about finding a domain for their company website. He has some great tips on finding a domain that is aged a little which will greatly help you especially if there is much competition in your area.
However, if you cannot find a domain that is aged I wouldn’t rate it an extremely important factor in local search. The competition for the local search space is not great at this point in time and with good SEO techniques the age of your domain doesn’t play a big factor.
If your’e interested in getting your small business website to rank when people search for products and services in your community check out my Business Boosting Blueprint for a step by step SEO guide!
Craigslist is not only used for scams and online prostitutes contrary to popular belief. I’m sure most of us have found a good deal on there or got rid of an old futon at some point or another in our existance! It can also be used as another tool to not only advertise your services but hint to the search engines what your geographic location is.
Here is an example of an insurance agent in western Washington offering some form of dental insurance:
http://seattle.craigslist.org/oly/fns/1351953261.html
He’s got the right idea by advertising what he’s offering to Craigslist goers as you can see but I do have several ideas that might boost the value he gets out of a post like this one. First I would create a strong call to action like Get A Free Dental Insurance Quote Today to See How Much You could Save. This gives the reader of the ad a clear concise path of what he’d like you to do.
The next thing I would do is change the URL. He’s got the right idea of linking to his site but craigslist allows us to post html so we have control over anchor text. So instead of posting a link that looks like http://www.oakinsure.com he could post something that looks like Western Washington Dental Insurance and tell the search engines exactly what the page he is linking to is about.
Craigslist does add the “nofollow” tag to outbound links so you’re not going to get any link juice but as mentioned this strategy if used well could not only give the search engines another indicator to your geographic location but bottom line you could get some calls to your shop or hits to your website from a potential buyer which is exactly what we’re all about.
Ideas like this one and many more can be found in my business boosting blueprint.
If you’re looking to get listed in 411 directories there is an easy and affordable service you can check out. Universal Business Listings is quick and easy to work with. They are a Directory Industry service that allows businesses to post their business listing once and have it posted to all major Online Yellow Pages, Search Engines, 411 Directories and other vertical industry Directories.
Here are a list of where they post to:
411 Directories
Get Listed in the 411 directories as well as
GPS guides today!
The folks at SEOmoz.org have released a report on the top search engine ranking factors of 2009. If you are at all serious about SEO you should get over and check out what these guys have to say as they’ve queried over 100 of the top minds in the SEO business to compile this list. While no one except Google actually knows 100% what really goes into their alogrthym it’s a pretty safe bet these guys are pretty darn close.
Of course when we talk about local search there are some things that Google looks at differently but looking at the big picture these are all things that you should pay attention to when considering your site.
2009 SE Ranking Factors by SEOmoz.org
Hello,
I recently found that Web CEO is offering their products at a discounted price through August 22nd. This software greatly increases your ability to check out where your competitors are getting their links, and which of their links seem to be giving them the most value.
It also provides you with in depth reporting on your own site to see where improvements can be made. I strong urge you to check out these sale prices as they’re more than 50% off the normal price!
This year the Local Search Summit will be held at the San Jose Marriot on August 13th. The cost is $495 for this two day search extravaganza! I would encourage anyone who is participating seriously in the local space to get to this conference as I’m sure it will be jam-packed with useful bits of info. The key speakers will be:
Sadly I have some real estate closing that week and I will not be able to be in attendance this year. I look forward to getting lots of blog updates and tweets through out the conference!
As a business owner I can identify with a busy day filled mostly with things you have to do in order for your shop to stay open and not neccessarily the most valuable use of your time. The thought of adding one more task to an already full schedule can seem daunting when all you want to do is go home, put your feet up, play with the kids, and have an ice cold beer.
However, if you’re not doing something each and every day to grow your business your either as big as you want to be or you’re not trying hard enough. I left out that you might be lazy as that hits too close to home. I’m guessing the majority of us didn’t fall into our business and it required some significant work on the front end to get things going. Maybe now though as your business has grown you’re not quite at the place where you can afford to hire someone to do all the mundane taks that fill your time so you can be out doing the valuable customer getting activities that got you to where you are now.
I encourage you to get back into the mindset of trying to do one thing every day in efforts to bring in at least one new customer. This is a great opportunity to spend updating your web site. It is after all a tool that you should be using in order to get more foot traffic in your shop. Making your site more search engine friendly, and following the process to move it up in the search engine rankings can be a great use of your time.
If we look at the stats back from 2007 approximately 109 million annually people performed local searches online and at least 41% of those people were searching for businesses in their area and not an area they were planning on visiting. The comScore study also said 82% of local searchers visited a merchant as a result of their internet searches. That’s 2 years ago! Think what the numbers look like today as we get more reliant upon these boxes by the day!
So consider working on building some links, adding a blog post, twittering about something related to your market, or doing some on page optimization, and then go home and have that cold beer that you so well deserve. Those efforts over time will most certainly generate some visitors and sales!
There are tons of search engines out there. Understatement of the year!
Constantly I am amazed by the amount of content on the web. They number in the trillions with millions being added EVERY DAY. It gives me a break from my frustration with sites like Google when I think about the job they have in spidering all of these pages and determing what’s relevant and what’s not.
So as a small business owner who is interested in getting their site out there in front of potential customers how do you decide which search engines to submit to? Great question! First you have to start with the big 3.
From there your options are endless. However this is a service that UniversalBusinessListing.org provides where for $30 they will submit your site to all of the important local search engines like Local.com, and Yelp.com as well as 411 information hubs, gps service prodviders and much more.
For only $30 this seems like a deal to me. Now once these are submitted I do suggest that you pick a couple of them and optamize them for best results but the first step is submitting. So whether you use LocalBusinessListing.org or not get out there and start the process by submitting to a couple!
Welcome to the world of local search. Search engine optimization has been around for quite a few years now and it’s always evolving. In the beginning it wasn’t that difficult and anyone with any technical know how could pretty much handle their own.
It however has changed quite a bit and become significantly more complex in the past few years. The Google alogorythm has well over 100 factors they examine when determing how to rank a web site.
This increase in difficulty has lead to an opening for search engine optmists. These are people such as myself that you can hire to make the changes to your web site both onsite and off site to improve it’s rankings. There are different ways to do this, some good and some frowned upon by the search engines, so it’s good to get an idea how someone is going to go about improving your rankings before you hire them.
Another factor in search which is becoming more important by the day is local search. Google recently changed it’s formula to try and incorporate local results into it’s search results. This means if you search the word dog training, not only are you going to get relevant results for dog training but google is also going to offer local dog trainers in your area.
This leads to a big opportunity for local businesses. With today’s consumer becoming more savvy all the time and the search for better deals always on the forefront of people’s minds you have chances to get in front of potential customers that have never before been available.
So those are the types of things I’ll be covering in this blog. The different ways to best optmize your site so you show up in the search results. I look forward to sharing what I know and helping you improve your business.