Los Angeles SEO Company for LA Local Search

admin    SEO Video     Angeles, Company, Local, Search

Los Angeles SEO Company for LA Local Search

Location, Location, Location! Thousands of Los Angeles businesses are overlooked everyday because their location online is hindered by incorrect or incomplete data regarding their business.

Even when the data is correct, it is very limited, with just a name, address and phone numbers.

Proper online placement is critical to modern commerce. Whether you have a
website or not, a Los Angeles SEO company (Search Engine Optimization) will get your business placed and ranked in the Los Angeles local search engines provided through Google, Yahoo, Bing and others,.

Ultimately, yellow pages are incapable of bringing relevant business information online.

Yellow page directories are all but obsolete now with

82.6% of U.S. homes searching on Google, Yahoo and Bing MSN instead of those bulky
books.
• 79% of US consumers
perform searches online

• 71% of searchers are done
weekly

A Los Angeles SEO company can enable your LA business for search by publishing a comprehensive business profile in Google and Yahoo

A Los Angeles SEO company would start by verifying and submitting your basic information with the root data providers,such as Info Seek, this the same data provider which supplies directory information to nearly every search destination including Google, Yahoo and MSN.

A Los Angeles local business listing profile, in turn, fully optimized by a reputable Los Angeles SEO company is an easy and effective way to communicate the important aspects of your business to people searching the internet. Your profile enables you to provide detail rich information about your business including:

Company Name and Logo
Street Address with maps
Driving directions
Phone Numbers,
‘Click to call’
Website URL,
Email Address,
Brands Carried,
Payments accepted
Services Offered,
Coverage area,
Business Categories,
Business description.
Photos, Videos
and much more …
Mobile Search

Prospectives customers can search for business listings from a wide selection of mobile devices; including the Google Phone, Apple iPhone, cell phones and other wireless devices.

Now you will be able to be found wherever and whenever your prospective customers are searching the internet.

you can have peace of mind in knowning that your business information is registered with the worlds leading information providers, additionally your customizable business profile page will propell your online search engine presence

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Why SEO, Brings More Value to the Local Advertiser

admin    SEO Video     Advertiser, Brings, Local, more, Value

Why SEO, Brings More Value to the Local Advertiser

SEO can bring local advertisers more business than traditional advertising, by following a few simple steps. There is a disconnect between the term, “World Wide Web” and how the Internet is actually used. Yes we can reach around the world and watch videos of local beach surfers on the isles of the sea, but when we need to find a scooter shop or find someone to re-upholster our couch the, “very local web” magically appears. The local web is segmented in the minds of the Internet surfer with help of some carefully planned and executed Search Engine Optimization. This is how a typical search goes:

First we go to Google and look for “scooter”, but the search shows results for mobility scooters, electric scooters, and moped scooters. But we want to get our scooter repaired, so now it is time for the second search with the term “scooter repair”, and the results are narrowed down to just the type of scooter service we are looking for. But there is still a problem. We are seeing results for Internet scooter resellers, Scooter shops in other Cities or even other States. Time for the third search term, “scooter repair Orem”, and we then see the “very local web” come into view. This type of search happens for all kinds of products and services, and tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of searches like this happen every day.

In Orem Utah, Endurance Scooters is a local scooter dealer who has a repair shop, sells new scooters, and sells parts locally and on the Internet as Scooter Stock. When we search on the term “scooter repair Orem” the first page of results shows seven or eight links that will lead users to Endurance Scooters or Scooter Stock, without any Pay-per-click advertising. The owner reports over ninety percent of the business come in from Internet users. Why does the business owner dominate the first few pages of an Internet search….. You guessed it SEO. Search Engine Optimization works wonders on the local level; it is easy to make a big splash in a small pond, using mostly free methods of SEO.

The steps are simple; we will use the previous example as a case study, but remember these steps can be used for most local business, products and services.

Step One: We need to get a free website evaluation from several SEO consulting firms. Often many of us work to get a website up, but do not look beyond that. The most common issues that come back from any free evaluation will center on meta tags, key words, page descriptions, and content related issues. If you are a scooter repair shop, be sure your meta data has “scooter repair” in the mix; be sure you have a landing page devoted to scooter repair. Somehow get your website fixed. Generally the cost is reasonable and can be done by the same people who designed your website, do not spend thousands for this, one or two hundred is plenty, and it can often be done for much less.

Step Two: Write a blog on the website devoted our products and services and how they are available in our Town or City, this is very important, also we need to include in our blog, our local address and contact information. We will use our Town name, product or service several times in the blog, but do not over do it; our blog needs to be useful and interesting. The length of the blog entry will need to be two hundred words or better, that sounds like a lot of writing, but it is not, it is about one half of a type written page. Cost for this step is free, just your time and the time of a good friend to proof read our blog before posting. If we must pay someone to write something on our blog, do not spend more than twenty five dollars, or we have spent too much.

Step Three: We know our address and phone number, so go signup in as many local Internet directories as you can. Google has a local directory, super pages, newspapers, Television and Radio stations often have Internet directories, professional associations, and government. One thing we must do, is put a website link to our product or service landing page, from step one. This step can be done at little or no cost, we can even have an administrative assistant do this work.

Step Four: Time to show off with some article marketing, we are in business offering our product and services because we are experts in what we have to offer. Let’s take that knowledge and share it, write a few articles about us and our services. If we own a scooter repair shop, write about changing the oil in a scooter, or how to store a scooter in the wintertime or how to find parts for scooters. You can have staff members write articles about something they know best. We need to make the articles informative, useful, and fun. Try to say with general topics like routine maintenance, or tips for making a product purchase more useful or last longer or get more value out of it. Do not write articles that give out competitive advantages or trade secrets or how to do the extraordinary things we can provide, be helpful, but not overly helpful. We can hire people to write for us, the cost for each article should be no more than twenty five dollars. With our articles in hand, post them to websites focus on publishing articles, some sites are “how to” sites, some are industry specific, others publish categorized articles like Buzzle. Once again the most important part of an article is to place a website link to our websites, that is what I am doing with this article by putting in a link to iXod Search Engine Optimization. This allows an incoming links to our websites, and another opportunity for the search engines to provide information about our company and put the link in the search results. Posting and publishing our articles can be done for free as well, it is a bit tedious and time consuming, this task can also be hired out for two or three hundred dollars.

Step Five: Do the math and watch the results, for the cost of a modest print advertising campaign, we have Search Engine Optimization working for us, and unlike Print, Radio, or Television, our efforts are visible on the Internet long after the last advertisement is played on the Radio or tossed away. Now you know why SEO brings more value and huge cost savings to the local advertiser.

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How SEO Services Benefit Local Brick And Mortar Businesses!

admin    SEO Video     Benefit, Brick, Businesses, Local, Mortar, Services

How SEO Services Benefit Local Brick And Mortar Businesses!

Gina Gray is a local New Jersey  SEO business consultant, business owners want to know how to show up on page one of Google?

Well for starters the first thing you’ll need to know is local search is now at 80%. Consumers search online to find solutions to their problems.

After someone ( meaning your prospect or customer) types a search request into Google, a total of 10 results show on the Google search results page.

This means you only have 10 listings or 10 opportunities for your business to show up on the first page of Google, follow me?
Now most SEO companies will only optimize your website for just a listing on page one of Google only.

But you see, as a local New Jersey SEO expert and marketing consultant I look to help your business DOMINATE Google by giving your MULTIPLE listings for your top keyword or search terms.

So let’s say you own a Dental Practice or law firm in Cherry Hill or Trenton, NJ.
What if after your prospect typed ” Dentist Cherry Hill” or “Cherry Hill, NJ” the first 6 or 7 listing on Google belonged to YOUR business?

What I’m talking about here is effectively wiping your competition off the Google map!

Can you see just how powerful this can be?

What would it mean to your business to have 5-10 of the top listings on Google for your top keyword or keyword phrases?
Imagine owning the entire section for Law Firm in your local phone book or at least the first 2 or 3 pages!

Now I know what you are saying, this sound pretty difficult and a ton work right or money right?

Well not entirely true, depending on the type of business you own.  If you want the kind of business from Google then you would hire a New Jersey SEO and website design expert like me to manage your campaigns.

You see, you stick to drilling teeth, practicing law or selling real estate and you let me identify your targeted keywords for your business and then dominate Google to get you multiple listings for those search terms.

You see, most SEO Companies only optimize your WEBSITE…this is a mistake…your website is actually a series of pages built around keyword phrases, make sense?

If your SEO company is not doing off-page optimization for you and creating articles, using video and blogs with relevant content for your most important keywords and keyword phrases you’re wasting your time and your money!

Tips and Best Practices for Local SEO

admin    SEO Video     Best, Local, Practices, Tips

Tips and Best Practices for Local SEO

How frequently do you refer to your telephone book or the Yellow Pages to locate a local doctor, electrician or grocer? Most of you must not even remember where your precious phone book is; the reason being that everyone today is logged on to the web, looking up services via mobiles and Google Maps. It is common intellect that one will first make a priority search with local intent for any product or services before resorting to outsource SEO needs. Thus if your business has not yet focused on making its presence felt in the local search arena, you are sure missing out on some easy big bucks.

You must have noticed that if you search for a particular service like a dentist, Google is most likely to throw up data close to your own location. This Geotargeting algorithm being used by the new age search engines provides you a unique opportunity to improve your visibility on local searches. You can optimize your online business with local search engine submissions. Below are some tips and best practices to heighten the presence of your local affordable SEO service.

To promote your local affordable SEO service, claim your local business listings on all well known search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo and prompt them to properly index and rank your website. This will also ensure that your listing is never tampered with by a competitor.

Follow proper listing guidelines. While filing information for your local business listings provide an accurate and comprehensive profile with the address and phone number of your company. This enables search engines to correctly collaborate any third party business data it picks up, to you. Your verification will be complete with a phone call or postcard sent to your business address.

Upload loads of pictures and videos of your affordable SEO service business to promote and make it more realistic to the visitors.

It is acceptable to ask for reviews from your customers to improve credibility. Request customers to provide unbiased review on Local Google and Yahoo platforms. Even negative reviews make your website more appealing to potential customers. Just don’t promote the negative trend.

Take help of Google Trends and Insights, Adwords and PPC campaigns to determine which keywords to target for highest traffic to your affordable SEO service. Create valuable unique content for local site promotion and earn local links.

Create one listing for every physical location of your company. Create individual pages targeting different geographical locations. Route all local listings to the relevant pages of your website and not the home page. Have the page enumerate all services and products for that specific area in detail.

Instead of focusing only on popular keywords that attract huge traffic it might also be a good idea to concentrate on less known but more specific keywords that will probably show up your website many more times on the local SERPs.

Make sure to incorporate your address on all your web pages so that the visitors are always aware of your geographical location. Also always include a local phone number o your website.

Whatever happens, always remember that Customer is the King. Treat them correctly and never give negative vibes. Both your online and offline customers use the web and can leave reviews that hurt your business. Search engines compile information on your business from third party profiles and other business websites. Try to represent your company in a good light and take some if not complete control of what appears about your company online.

For more information visit http://www.seomixi.com

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Local Seo Tactics For Your Local Business

admin    SEO Video     Business, Local, Tactics

Local Seo Tactics For Your Local Business

If you are a local business and wanted to grow your customer-based list, then you should try to think of promoting your business online. You may have figured out already that local business is not right to be promoted online since the Internet is basically for international coverage. Well then you think wrong.

These days, the Internet is for both local and international companies. Big or small, online marketing is really helpful for all kinds and sizes of businesses and local business is not an exception.

If you are new to local SEO practice then you should take note of the following tips and strategies to start your local SEO campaign effectively:

1. You should try to get your website listed. But before listing your website to local sheets online, you should be able to make sure that you get to list your location, title, and as well as description. Do not also forget that your listing should contain your link back to the site. Videos and images are also great. This will eventually grow your traffic in no time.

2. You should also try to create and maintain your keywords that are localized in nature. Make sure that your keywords are always localized by inserting location on your specified keyword or set of keywords.

3. Focus also on on-page optimization besides promoting your website online. Make sure that you have the meta tags right, contents edited and optimized, and do some important internal link building. In addition, remember that on-page SEO should also focus on local setting. This means that your content should contain your localized SEO.

4. Speaking of content, you should try to include a geo meta tag, your local address, phone number, ZIP code, and a map that locates your business location. If you own several location pages, just make sure that you have different pages for it and that you optimized different keywords and content for it as well.

5. It is important to also include a site map in your web page. Site maps are search engine friendly and that they help a lot when it comes to on-page SEO. But you also have to know that Google only accepts 100 links for each site map. So if you have a large number of pages, make sure that you start creating html in hierarchy manner.

6. Make use of several known social media as well when it comes to your business. These sites also help a lot in driving local traffic to your website.

There you have it. These are a few but effective SEO practices you can apply for your local business. What is great here too is that you are using these all free. Free tools and tactics about search engine optimization is always nice since you are cutting a large amount of marketing budget to more than half. Imagine how you can save a lot of money here. Just make sure that you localized your keywords and do not forget to do both on-page and off-page SEO. Good luck!

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SEO Tips For Local Business

admin    SEO Video     Business, Local, Tips

SEO Tips For Local Business

The purpose of SEO for local businesses is to establish a marketing tactic online with the products and services marketed strategically to local markets. With this purpose, local SEO is all about targeted keywords.

Unlike SEO in general, local SEO keyword research should include geography plus the keywords your target audience are looking for in the first place. Such keywords examples are “Florida SEO” or “Orlando Real Estate”. These are geographical keywords that can help your business be found on the pages of search engines.

After establishing your target keywords, you should also be able to start developing a website with individual pages that will support each brick and mortar location. The keywords you have established should also be reflected in the ff. areas:

-Link
-Title
-Meta
-Heading
-Content

You should also be able to write some good and quality contents to all pages to be able to also make traffic to these pages and at the same time also make your pages crawl search engines pages. You may also add photos to make online reading worth enticing. Just make sure when you include photos, be able to include text name, describing your photo. Doing this also adds importance with regards to indexing your pages by search engines.

Adding a site map to your website is also essential. This is called on-page optimization, making inter linking strategy with proper keywords partnered to specific pages. Regional tagging is also a must since this will tell search engines that you take emphasis regionally or geographically.

A very important online marketing SEO tactic for local businesses is to make use of Google Map or Yahoo local. These two tools prioritize local business and usually appear on top off search queries. But if you are interested n doing this, make sure you have included the following in your listing:

-Target keyword
-Company name
-Description with important keywords on it
-Photo or video
-Tracking banner where you can track the effectiveness of your listing

For starters on local SEO, you can come up with effective strategy by going into local websites or hosts. Such sites can be local directories. Get your business listed on local directories. You can also search for websites that cater to reviews. Get your business there also. There are a lot of free ways to do local marketing online. You just have to remember to target specific keywords and optimize them. For as long as you concentrate on this, you will be able to get the right traffic and convert them to high sales. The Internet has really paved way to online ads and companies are taking advantage of this.

Remember, local SEO should be targeted. You should start targeting your market by choosing the right keywords with location. There are a lot of ways to do local SEO all you need is to make sure that you only target market interested on your business by combining geography and targeted keyword/s. Doing the right SEO can lead your business and goals in the right track. Good luck!

Shortage Of Seo Professionals To Local Businesses Explained

admin    SEO Video     Businesses, Explained, Local, Professionals, Shortage

Shortage Of Seo Professionals To Local Businesses Explained

There’s a lot of free articles and information you can read about SEO all over the Internet. That’s all fine and dandy, but when you try to learn it this way you learn it in bits and pieces. There are hundreds of little tricks you need to know to become truly proficient at Search Engine Optimization, and that’s learned over years. Plus to be a true Search Engine Professional, you need some contacts, at least a dozen tools, some which charge a monthly fee and you need to keep reading up on the latest techniques.

What It Takes to Become A True SEO Professional

An SEO Professional is no different from a Piano Player. You can learn the basics in a relatively short amount of time, but to become proficient, it takes lots and lots of practice. It’s also more of an art than a skill since you can always get better, no matter how good you are at it. I’m speaking as someone who does this everyday and I still get nerve wracked from time to time, and I’ve been doing this on a professional level successfully for over 3 years now, and in the most competitive global markets.

I’ve also attended SEO Seminars, bought about a dozen Niche Marketing Courses, learned how to create Screen Capture Videos and a lot of other stuff. And to be honest I still have quite a bit to learn, and anyone who tells you they know it all, put your best sneakers on and run as fast as you can. I can assure you they are lying to you and just trying to close a quick sale. This industry is flooded with people like this unfortunately.

So what is the point I’m trying to make? The point is that a good SEO Professional is very hard to come by. They are not a dime a dozen. It is a very specialized skill that takes a special person to perform. You have to be willing to sit down at a computer for hours and write content, get backlinks, read journals, buy and take new courses just to keep on top of the Google Game. A real Search Engine Optimization Expert is a full time professional. The trade does pay relatively well but it’s a huge trade off of your time.

You can not learn this skill at your State University or Community College. Much of the stuff you learn in SEO is by true insiders, people who have worked for Google or Yahoo in the past that run expensive training seminars. Or people who have done SEO for 10 years or more and know it like the back of their hand since they’ve had so much practice. Almost all Search Engine Professionals come from extensive technical backgrounds.

Local Business Demand Exceeds SEO Supply Bigtime

Right now there’s about 2000 people in the world that understand SEO. I know this for a fact because this is the total amount of people who have taken the type of advanced training we have received. There are millions of Small Businesses in the United States alone who can use targeted, local SEO Services that will make them the top dog in their local niches.

What this means is that statistically it’s almost impossible to find an qualified SEO Company that will truly go to bat and help you out, and is the reason that this subject is so mysterious to almost everybody today. But the good news is that we’re here and we’re ready to help you get the necessary leads to take your company to the next level.

So when you compare the 2000 SEO Professionals to the millions of Business Owners, the supply lies within the Small Online Local Business Owner such as yourself, and the demand is with us. I’m sorry I’m not trying to sound arrogant here, I’m just pointing out the facts.

It’s hard to find good, qualified Search Engine Professionals who can actually document their successes and achievements. This is because good Search Engine Work isn’t cheap, and there are a lot of scammers and fly by night companies that know this, and take advantage of Local Business Owners and charge them for work they don’t really know how to do right.

Your responsibility as a Small Local Business Owner Online is to find and take advantage of the right people who are not afraid to get on the phone with you and prove to you everything they claim. They should be able to give you detailed information about your Top 10 Competitors and exactly what it will take for you to pass them up.

They should also be there to answer all your questions over the phone, and if geography dictates, be happy to arrange a personal meeting as well. Most people won’t do this and hide behind a terminal, hoping you’ll load up their Online Shopping Cart with their services. We don’t take automated orders because there is no cookie cutter approach to helping you achieve your goals. Each Business Owner has different goals, different needs and different budgets.

Also there are certain business Models we can’t do anything for. And if this is the case a Search Engine Optimization Company should be honest enough to tell you up front that they can’t help you, not charge you thousands of dollars and not do anything for you anyway.

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How SEO Can Work For Local Business Set-Up

admin    SEO Video     Business, Local, SetUp, Work

How SEO Can Work For Local Business Set-Up

It is even great that search engines also now prioritize and filters search locally. You can use Google maps and Yahoo listing to make sure that you are included in the local search results. These search engine tools are one of the many features major search engines try to work out when finding local results.

Localized results in major search engines such as Google help small and local business alike promote their products and services online effectively. It also helps businesses owners make a brand known online with the many on-going features search engines now make to prioritize local search results on their web pages. And because of this very reason and trend online, many business companies are now opting more with web marketing, SEO and web branding rather than the traditional advertising in prints and other offline methods that can be s expensive in cost.

With the existence of Google local search, there is now an easy way to find and search for local businesses online. However, amidst this great tool, only a few local businesses take advantage of it. For those who are not familiar on how to promote local business online, there are certain tactics and steps that may be confusing.

To start doing local SEO, you should be able to write some good and quality contents to all pages to be able to also make traffic to these pages and at the same time also make your pages crawl search engines pages. You may also add photos to make online reading worth enticing. Just make sure when you include photos, be able to include text name, describing your photo. Doing this also adds importance with regards to indexing your pages by search engines.

It is suggested too that you upload your videos on video hosting sites such as Google, Yahoo, You Tube and others. This also makes a lot of traffic from the website aside from a greater chance of getting into the top pages of search engines.

You have to remember that local SEO is about target keywords with geography as modifier. This technique can be tedious but very effective when targeting your market in local setting. There are several local SEO tactics you can use to search for possible and related local SEO keywords for your business.

To start taking advantage, you have to first check your domain. It is important that your domain also speaks of location. Google has the tendency to give importance to a website according to its domain. So if Google finds your domain hosted locally then you may appear in local search results in your area. Make sure that you have the right domain setup for your website.

By understanding the concepts above, you will also be able to know that not all these search engines deliver the same result in its pages. Thus, if you are promoting a local business, it is best to look at the results in a local search engine as well.

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SEO Decisions – When To Stay Local

admin    SEO Flash     Decisions, Local, Stay

SEO Decisions – When To Stay Local

SEO, an abbreviation for search engine optimization, has become a rather indelible buzz-word on everything from blogs to forums and contracts to – you guessed it – search engine results pages, or SERPS, for short. Search engine optimization defines the process of increasing the number of visitors (amount of traffic) coming to a site through the avenue of the large search engines – Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. SEO’s obvious use in targeting keywords is highlighted among two hundred additional factors in which search engines base their analyses. Who has time to plan and implement a marketing campaign when all of your productivity is being sapped by referring to a cookbook of desired particulars arranged by search engine analysts? We thought you’d never ask. That’s why we’re discussing the facets of selecting a good SEO company.

First, let us stress the importance of local, one-on-one contact. It’s ‘oh, so easy’ – in our inundated-digital-information-overload-age-of-computer-technology – to rely on some faraway, faceless firm to lead us down the information superhighway. Why not get up close and personal with a solid handshake and a square look in the eye? Do business with someone you can see and meet with when the need arises. If you’re marketing widgets from Kalamazoo, maybe your Kalamazoo SEO company should understand the local Kalamazoo widget market. Maybe they have other clients who make accessories for Kalamazoo widgets. Maybe they have relationships with other companies in the local market and are able to network your information around the community.

That being said, there are a few qualities of trustworthy search engine optimization companies of which you should avail yourself if you’re in the market for a good SEO firm.

They should be willing and able to provide references for you to call. You should be able to talk to past clients of the SEO company and ask questions. Some may guard the performance of their website and search engine rankings, but ensure them that you’re just looking for advice. Do your homework.

A one-size-fits-all approach works for Halloween costumes – not SEO marketing for your website. Your old site may be full of SEO unfriendly elements and non-compliancy issues. Sometimes this might need to be fixed first above all else. Also, some sites require more content, while some require much less. Let your SEO company tell you how they plan to fix your site. Listen intently.

Next, the SEO firm’s game plan lays out how they intend to accomplish the job. They should not be hiding the process from you. It should be clearly laid out and make sense. A good SEO company will divulge the basics of what they’re doing and how your business will benefit.

Content, content, content – it’s the icing on the cake. Good SEOs create killer content to attract links from other sites. Thought-provoking articles and press releases can expose your business, build name recognition, and garner brand loyalty.

You may have spent a fortune on your site design, trendy flash movie, and giant-sized logo. A truly honest SEO company sets the record straight with you by informing you of things that are detrimental to your site rankings. Listen and learn. They’re the experts, not you – remember. That’s why you’re contacting them, right?

Search Engine Optimization Tactics: Local Search + How To Use Graphics and Flash

admin    SEO Flash     Engine, Flash, Graphics, Local, Optimization, Search, Tactics

Search Engine Optimization Tactics: Local Search + How To Use Graphics and Flash

With the global economy struggling, acquiring new customers is top of mind for most organizations.

Did you know that 50-70% of consumer and business purchasers start with a search engine like Google? If your website doesn’t appear at the top of a search engine results page (sponsored ads or organic search results), you’re losing potential customers to companies that do rank higher.

What can you do? I’ll share with you my top strategies and tactics that can help you acquire new customers via search engine optimization and advertising.

1. Local Search Engine Advertising. For businesses that serve specific geographic regions (i.e. Denver, Colorado), you can create search engine ads in Google and Yahoo that only appear to people in your area.

How does this work? A search engine like Google uses a computer’s IP address and other information to discover where someone is searching (including city and state).

Why does Google care where a person is located? Google’s mission is to give their end users the best search results possible. So if I need a someone to walk my dog in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, it does me little good to receive a paid search result from Arizona. This is a real example – my brother has a petsitting business, and I’ve used local Google search engine advertising to drive new clients to his organization.

Thus Google (and the others) tries to match search results to the geographic location of the person searching.

How does Google make money? Google gives businesses and organizations the ability to display paid advertisements (sponsored results) on search results pages. These ads are triggered by keywords you choose (more on this in a different strategy).

You don’t have to pay for your ad to display; you pay Google only when someone clicks on your ad. The technical term is Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising. The more relevant your ad (more on this later), the less you have to pay for specific keywords, and the higher up you will appear in the sponsored advertising results.

Local Search CPC Ads. In Google Adwords, you can create an advertising campaign that will target someone in a specific city or state. You can even specify a 5, 10 or 25 mile radius from a specific location (like your retail showroom or office). Below your local ad, Google will place the name of your local area (i.e. Denver, Colorado)… making it more likely that someone searching in your area will choose your organization vs. an out-of-town competitor.

Local CPC Ads are usually a more cost effective option than a national search engine advertising campaign. As a general rule of thumb, the more geographically targeted and specific you can be, the less money you’ll need to pay to acquire new customers. And make sure you have conversion tracking code placed on your site, so you can measure and track how much you’re paying for each new customer via local search engine advertising.

2. Don’t Confuse The Search Engines With Graphics. Search engines are really good at reading text. But they’ve very easily confused. And if Google gets confused when it crawls through your site, you won’t rank very high in search results.

Search engines, for example, can’t read words that are contained in graphics or flash animation. So if your company’s name is only contained in a graphic on your site, this content is ‘invisible’ to a search engine. Same thing goes for product or service names.

The root of the problem lies with graphic designers. Graphic designers are really good at building graphics. And don’t take this to mean I don’t like graphic designers. (I employ a bunch of them, but they know how to do SEO-friendly design.)

But most websites are designed by graphic designers who are really good at building graphics, and less interested in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It takes a bit more time to have content placed in text, and use a stylesheet to format it so that a search engine can read it. Especially when it’s just so easy to create a good looking graphic in photoshop.

Here’s an example of a site that uses all flash (and is invisible to search engines):

http://www.gelazzi.com/

While it looks pretty to humans, to Google the content is completely invisible. Here’s how the site appears to Google in it’s cache:

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:-qvxrs72gygJ:www.gelazzi.com/+http://www.gelazzi.com/&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1

(You can see that there is no text or content that appears)

Even if you’re not worried about organic search positioning, but are doing paid search engine marketing (like Google Adwords), it’s important that the content on your site is easily digested by a search engine.

Why? Google Adwords ranks the pages on your website, and compares it to your keywords and ad copy. The more relevant Google ranks the text on your site, the less you’ll have to pay for a sponsored ad on Google (and the higher your position).

In Summary: Don’t confuse search engines by keeping your content ‘locked up’ in graphics. It’s a small little detail in the web design process, but one that will pay dividends for a long, long time with increased search results.

3. Title Tags & Why They Matter. When you search in Google, the search results on the next page each start with a blue underlined link.

What displays in this blue link is usually what is contained in the title tag of a web page. The keywords you placed in the search box are usually boldfaced in the search results.

So, just what is a title tag, and why does it matter for search engine positioning?

According to the World Wide Web Consortium (w3.org), the Title tag was designed to help people “identify the contents of a document.” When people view individual web pages out of context (often via search), context-rich page titles help tell the visitor a summary of the page.

Instead of a title like “Introduction”, which doesn’t provide much contextual background, web designers should supply a title such as “Introduction to Medieval Bee-Keeping” instead.

Google and other search engines use these rich contextual clues as a way to hone its search results.

On a web page, the title tag is part of the HTML code. Here’s what the code looks like on Customer Paradigm’s site:

Title: Customer Paradigm: Website Design, Development, Email Marketing, Content Management, PHP programming

Most end users won’t see the title tag*. But the title tag is what a subject ine is to an email campaign: It entices the end user to pay attention and open the page to read more.

Top Five Most Common Mistakes for Title Tags:

A. Untitled: When many of the popular programs create a new HTML page, it puts ‘Untitled’ into the title tag. It’s up to the Web designer to change this… and since most users don’t see it, sometimes they forget to change it.

B. No Title Tag: Like the “Untitled” tag, another key mistake is simply leaving out the title tag. If you do a view source (Internet Explorer: Right Click and select View Source), and the title tag doesn’t appear… then you don’t have a title tag.

C. “About” Tag: Another common mistake for title tags is to have the title tag refer to a section of your website. But a title tag that reads, “About” doesn’t tell me much about what the company or website is “About.” Instead, have it read:

Title: Customer Paradigm – About the Company: Website Development & Marketing, Email Deployment and php programming

This is sure to get more keywords into the title tag, and if you’re searching for a company, you instantly know what they do.

D. No Company Name In Title Tag: We recommend putting your company name at the beginning of the title tag, so that people can quickly see your company’s name when they search.

E. Same Title Tag on Multiple Pages: You should have a unique title tag for each page of the site. Why? As each page is unique, you should have a title tag that describes it’s unique content.

* Here’s where they might interact with the title tag:

– The title tag is displayed at the top left of most people’s browser window.

– Page titles are used as the default description for a person’s bookmarks when someone bookmarks a site.

– Visually impaired people use title tags to summarize the contents of a page before they have a text-to-speech reader read the contents of the page.

– These, along with Google’s search results, are the only places end users actually see the title tag.

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