As you can tell by looking at the chart above search engine optimization is becoming increasingly more important to small businesses as they realize the value that having a strong online presence can have.  When considering SEO as a part of your marketing strategy I suggest you consider a few things.

1. It’s typically an upfront cost with little to no ongoing fees once rankings are achieved. Unlike the Yellowbook or other forms of advertising that you will have to continue paying for year after year.  You may need to chip in a few bucks now and again to keep your top rankings but for the most part once you’re #1 it doesn’t take much to keep you there.
2. More and more people are using the internet every day to find local businesses.  Google has stated that 20% of all searches done on the internet have local intent and Bing recently has stated that over half of the searches done on mobile devices like your iPhone or Blackberry are for local businesses.  Traditional forms of advertising may not be going away completely but the internet is going to only increase in usage as more and more young people become the primary consumers.
3. Even with the huge customer base and AWESOME potential businesses are not utilizing SEO in mass yet.  This means the competition for your industry is probably not that great and when you’re the first one there it’s much easier than trying to compete with 5 other businesses who realized this opportunity before you.
4. It’s NOT THAT EXPENSIVE. If you’ve had the wonderful folks from YellowPages, The Blackbook, or Dex in your office you know how much that costs.  Anywhere from a couple grand to well into the five figures and really to reach everyone you have to advertise in all of the big ones mentioned above.  A good Coeur d’Alene SEO can provide you with a full list of services that will probably provide more ROI for a fraction of the cost.

So when considering where you want to spend your advertising dollars this year I think you should give some strong thought to search engine optimization.  If you want to schedule an appointment with me to see what I can do for you fill out the form on the right or give me a call.  Remember you dont pay a dime unless I get you results.  You can check out my pay for performance guarantee here!

After you’ve completed your on page SEO which I’ll talk about in another blog post the next step to getting top rankings in the search results is to start getting links.  If you’re unfamiliar with what link or hyper link is check this out.  Below are three great places to get links from.

Press Releases

Issue a press release with your local news paper.  Most news papers have an online version now days and when you issue a press release it will more often than not be included online.  I’ve found that they will let you include a link back to your site from that release.  This is really a great link because it’s coming from a local source and usually newspaper websites carry a lot of weight which translates into them passing some of that weight to your site.

A side benefit to this is that your press release is likely to be seen by a lot of people which could potentially generate some business for you as well! Here is a reference if you are unsure how to write a press release.  We can write the release for you for a fee of $75 as well if you’d like to go that route.

Local Blogs

The next place that can be a great source of traffic as well as a juicy link is local bloggers.  If you live in a town of any size at all there’s a good chance there is someone out there blogging about topics specific to your area.  For example in Coeur d’Alene you have IloveCda.com You might have to be a little creative depending on what your business is but here are a few ideas.

1. Offer To Write A Guest Post For Them On Your Area of Expertise
2. Ask Them To Come Try Your Service At No Cost In Exchange For A Fair Review
3. Flat Out Pay To Advertise Your Site On Theirs

Industry Specific Or Local Directories

There are directories out there today for about everything you can imagine and not all are created equal. However, the right ones can really help you.  Most industries have web directories. For example, you can probably find a directory specific to lawyers that will provide a list of all lawyers within a certain state and most likely city.  This would be a good spot for a link as it’s very thematic (pertaining to lawyers) but also tells the search engines exactly where your business is located.

Local directories are just as great if not better.  These are specific to certain areas and provide a large list of different services provided in your area.  CdaWebDirectory.com is a good example of this.  Local directories provide a lot of benefit as they once again really convey where your business is located and depending on what anchor text you use what your website is about.

Now it’s time to get out there and build some links!  If you’re more confused or overwhelmed now than when you started reading it might be a good idea to outsource this process to an SEO company.  If you’re considering this read my post on 3 Tips To Hiring A Coeur d’Alene SEO Company.

One thing many business owners fail to do is claim their local business listings with Google.  This is an easy process to complete and by doing this and filling in the missing details about your business you can sometimes see an instant jump in the local search results.

Even if you dont have a website yet you can start generating leads online with your Google places page that comes back in the results which is all the more reason to get this done.  Taking it a step further I would suggest you complete this process for the three major search engines.

I’ll link below to each search engines local business section where you can either create a new listing or claim yours. If your business has been around for some time there’s a good chance Google has already found it and all you will need to do is claim it.

Google Local Business Center

Yahoo Local

Bing Local (Currently offline as of April 4. Should be back Shortly)

If you’re looking to start an SEO campaign but are not sure where to begin this is the place.  If you would like to arrange for some consultation with myself to provide some more guidance feel free to shoot me an e-mail or give me a call.

Coeur d’Alene Search Engine Optimization

If you’ve done any research into SEO at all you understand it can take a little time.  You have to create a site, supply it with great content, and of course build links.  Then you’re at the mercy of the search engines when they will decide to rank it.  Now dont get me wrong I believe whole heatedly in this process and in search engine optimization as a whole but some people want to see some action as soon as that pretty new site goes live and I can’t blame them. And that’s where PPC or Pay Per Click Marketing comes in.

Coeur d’Alene PPC

You also get a chance to compete with people you wont be able to in the SEO space here.  For example if you do a search for makeup artist you will see Coeur d’Alene Makeup Artist at the top of the “Ads” section.  This is a highly competitive SEO term and honestly there would be no point in my wife ranking for it as she is looking for clients here in Coeur d’Alene and not world wide.

However with Pay per click I can show her in the search results here locally because Google first checks to see if there are any local providers bidding on that keyword based on your location. If so they’ll return those ads.

How to Customize Your Local PPC Campaign

First you need to sign up with Google Adwords or whatever pay per click company you want to use. The big ones all will let you customize your ads location. Once you’re account is set up and ready to go you need to create a new campaign. When you do this you’ll be given the chance to choose what geographical area you’d like for your ads to appear.

You can customize this to everything from city specific, to state specific, to putting in an area code and choosing the radius as pictured here.  You need to decide what works best for your business as there’s no point spending money on ads to get customers from Sandpoint if you know they’re not likely to drive to Coeur d’Alene for your services.

I’m not going to cover the entire process of setting up a PPC campaign here as its been written about a bunch and Google does a pretty good job of walking your through it. I will link to a couple good resources below if you want to research it further.

Resources For Setting Up A Good PPC Campaign

Using PPC For SEO – Great Post by SEObook.com On This Very Subject!
Setting UP PPC Campaign 101 -  SearchEngineWatch.com
PPC Campaign Tips – HighRankings.com

When thinking of where pay per click marketing fits into your overall web marketing strategy consider it one leg of a stool.  The great thing about PPC is that you can set up a campaign right now and have your ads showing up in front of potential customers within the hour.  The downside is that it costs every time someone clicks on your ad.

If you’re interested in this but dont have the time to manage it yourself we can set up your campaign for you. We offer that as well as Coeur d’Alene SEO services. Just give us a call or send an e-mail to get a quote.

Hiring an SEO provider to help boost your businesses ranking in the local search results can be tricky. You’ve no doubt been spammed by many of our friends from the far east promising you page 1 rankings in days for pennies on the dollar. The old adage typically applies here of if it seems too good to be true it probably is.

If you’re serious about using search engine optimization as a way to increase your online visibility for the long term and either aren’t interested in doing it yourself or are simply pressed for time I would suggest hiring a qualified Coeur d’Alene SEO Consultant. By doing so you can rest assured that they will be using

White Hat SEO Techniques that aren’t going to get you penalized by Google and will ensure lasting results.

3 Questions To Ask A Potential SEO Consultant

1) What Is The Process You Follow To Get Results?

You can’t expect your potential SEO consultant to spill all the beans here as there are some “trade secrets” but I would expect them to be able to give you a detailed outline of the processes they take to get a site to rank. As mentioned above you should expect these methods to be white hat and follow Google’s best practices.

There should also be a variety of techniques in their bag. If they’re relying solely on one thing this can be dangerous as our friends at Google are prone to changing things from time to time and if they change that one thing that was working *poof your site will be gone along with that stream of traffic it was getting.

2) What Type of Contract or Commitment Am I Expected To Agree To?

Search engine optimization takes time. The more competitive the industry you’re in the longer it’s going to take. However with that being said Local SEO in a place like Coeur d’Alene shouldn’t be a long drawn out process. Many SEO consultants will attempt to get you to sign up for a 6 month – 1 year contract. Bottom line it means more  money for them.

Not to say that in some cases it might not be necessary depending on what types of keywords you’re going after but do a little research. I for example give my clients an action plan for the first three months and try to educate them on what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and give realistic expectations of what types of results you should get. They are also welcome to cancel at any time if I’m not meeting their expectations.

3) What Qualifications Do You Have?

There really aren’t any schools for SEO (yet) and anyone can call themselves SEO Consultants. Remember our friends from the far east mentioned earlier. However, with that being said don’t be shy of someone who doesn’t have any formal “education” as there are many self taught SEO’s out there who do incredible work.

When this is the case however the best litmus test for you is asking for references of their work. If they can prove they get results who cares if they’re “educated”. I am constantly going to conferences and following the thought leaders in the industry to keep up with the latest trends and any good SEO should be doing the same.

So now you might be a little bit more qualified to hire an SEO Consultant in Coeur d’Alene.  If you have any questions or suggestions for other queries that should be asked of a potential Search Engine Optimist feel free to contact me or leave a comment. If you’d like a proposal for your sites SEO please give me a call and we can work up an action plan on how to get your site ranked!

Here are several more articles on this topic:

How To Hire A Good SEO -SmallBusinessComputing.com
How To Hire The Right SEO Consultant BusinessInsider.com
Hire and SEO According To Google TopRankBlog.com

Unlike a lot of other seo companies out there we guarantee results or you dont pay.  We’ll define goals and a price at the beginning of the campaign and if we can’t meet those goals you dont pay a dime. Why not pay for performance?

We are available for big projects as well as hourly consultation if you’re just in need of a little guidance. Some services we offer include:

• Search Engine Optimization
• PPC Management
• Website Design & Development
• Video Creation

Give me a call today and lets see how I can help you! ]]> http://www.localsearchsimplified.com/coeurdalene-seo/feed/ 0 http://www.localsearchsimplified.com/submitting-to-local-search-engines/ http://www.localsearchsimplified.com/submitting-to-local-search-engines/#comments Tue, 23 Nov 2010 19:53:30 +0000 admin http://www.localsearchsimplified.com/?p=47 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 crawling all of these pages and determining 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.

Google

Yahoo

Bing

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 providers 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 optimize 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!

If you’re interested in a Coeur d’Alene Search Engine Optimization provider doing this work for you to ensure that it’s done correctly and quickly then give us a call and we can find an SEO package that works for you and your business.

However, if you’re not doing something each and every day to grow your business you’re either as big as you want to be or you’re not trying hard enough.  We’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s not due to flat out laziness! 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 tasks 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!  If you’re too busy to bother with this consider getting  a quote from a Coeur d’Alene SEO Provider as you dont want to be left behind in this area and miss out on all the potential customers searching for your business online!

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:

• Atif Tafiq from Yahoo Local
• Steve Espinosa from LocalSearchNews.com
• Steve Stukenborg from Google
• Jason Calacanis from Mahalo.com

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!

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!