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Local Search - SEO & Social Media Marketing

SEO and the Power of Words!

Readers of my book or this blog know that I stress the importance of words when creating a optimized article, web page, blog and forum comments, etc.  Google indexes words; the words that define your content literally determine your success in getting ranked for those words.  Words matter!

The Power of Words is best illustrated in this video. See how a headline modification changed the results this man was receiving.

Although this is a dramatic video intended to demonstrate the producer’s web promotional capabilities, the point it makes provides a powerful marketing lesson. It shows the power that words have to literally change your message and how it affects your audience.

When you are creating content, the words you use in your headlines, your page title, filename and body text not only sell your message to the reader, but also instructs the search engines as to the important keywords on your page.

Words also can determine your success in ‘Local Search’. If you don’t mention important words like the city in which your business is located, or the counties you serve, etc. you will not rank well for local search results. Craft the words on your page as if the survival of your business depended on it…because it does.

See SEO is about words…

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SEO | Social Media | Small Biz. Options

Small Business Online Marketing Decisions

As it relates to optimizing a website for search and adopting social media, the challenge facing all businesses are the questions pertaining to the time, personnel and financial resources that can be committed to these efforts.

  • Can any of this be accomplished in-house?
    • Can we invest the time?
    • Do we have the skills necessary?
    • Will this effort detract from our other business responsibilities?
  • Can we afford to outsource this?
    • Who can we trust?
    • How do we find a knowledgeable, trustworthy company?
    • How do we know which questions to ask?
    • How do we measure and judge success?
  • What level of involvement is necessary?
  • What is the least we can do to have an effect?

This infographic illustrates the options

seo social networking infographic SEO | Social Media | Small Biz. Options

Do Nothing

  • Let the status quo alone

Do Something

  • Create your public profile on Google
  • Claim local Search Engine listing pages such as:
    • Google Places
    • Bing Local
    • Yahoo Local

Do More

  • Do all of the above, and…
  • Research your critical keyword phrases that pertain to your business
  • Optimize website for search focusing on critical keywords
  • Social bookmark all major pages in website
  • Launch a blog
  • Submit website and blog to major directories and industry sites
  • Get a Facebook Page
  • Open a Twitter account
  • Create a YouTube Channel
    • Create videos for YouTube & optimize for SEO

Do Everything

  • Do all of the above, and…
  • Post weekly to the blog, craft keyword-rich anchor text links to internal website pages
  • Update Twitter & Facebook mentioning  every blog post
  • Automate Twitter (Tweets, Direct Messages and Friend acquisition)
  • Post daily (or 2-3 times per week) to Facebook
  • Acquire strong content related links
    • Focus on high-profile local links
    • Seek out industry related links
  • Claim listings in community sites like MerchantCircle, SmartGuy, etc.
  • Create additional videos and distribute via TubeMogul for multiple links
  • …and scores of other traffic-generating tactics that you will discover in the “SEO & Social Media Marketing Guide“.

Get this book – and get your website found!

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SEO is more important than ever…

If you currently advertise online (i.e. PPC), or have plans to advertise in the future, you will want to read this interesting article, Companies that will rule 2011, by Josh Dreller iMEDIAconnection

“Search engine marketing, with its tiny, three-line text ads, was barely a blip on the radar 10 years ago. Now, the channel accounts for almost half of all online marketing revenue in the U.S. and has become one of the strongest return-on-investment media in the history of marketing.”  more…

The unique benefit of Pay-Per-Click advertising is that it permits us to place our ad in front of a person at the exact moment they are ready to buy. No other form of advertising or promotion produces such targeted results.  Implemented properly, PPC is the Killer App of advertising – if done wrong it is a very expensive and humbling lesson.

SEO makes PPC work

What you pay for a click is partly determined by the ‘landing page‘ that corresponds to your ad. Google assigns a ‘Quality Score’ to that page and the higher your score, the less you pay for each click. In other words, if your ad is touting ‘Organic Toothpaste” and you landing page is skillfully optimized for that term, you will spend less money and get more clicks. Search Engine Optimization isn’t just for websites in general, it is critically important for landing pages.

Another important quote from this same article, “A shift in advertising dollars will make social even more important“.

New technologies and converging trends mean opportunities for those willing to take the plunge and learn how to implement these things in their marketing mix.  For small brick & mortar businesses this presents a huge challenge.  Helping small businesses grasp these concepts and showing them how to leverage them for greater market exposure was the primary driving force behind my book,the SEO & Social Media Marketing Guide.

Optimizing the business website and social media platforms for ‘Local Search Marketing’ should be the #1 goal of every small business in 2011. As you begin this process be aware that making your site ‘mobile friendly’ needs to be one of your action items.  For more on this, see ‘Local Search’ – Is your website smart?

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‘Local Search’ – Is your website smart?

Here’s some very interesting (or possibly disturbing) points to ponder if you have a business website.  According to a recent survey by eMarketer.com:

• 46% of small businesses don’t have website
• 99.99% of small businesses don’t have mobile websites
• 20% of computer searches on the web are for local information
• 90% (9 out of 10) mobile searches are for local information

mobile web searches Local Search Is your website smart?

And if that wasn’t enough to make you say “oh-oh”, consider that:

• There are 5 times more mobile phones than computers!
• Google’s CEO said: “Mobile is GOOGLE’S #1 initiative going forward”
• Mobile will drive local search growth! Mobile local searches will
increase to 35% of ALL searches by 2013. (eMarketer.com)

Prepare or perish!

That may sound like a dire warning, but I’m not trying to scare anyone.  When the facts are considered, if your website is not ready for ‘local search‘ you will be invisible to most of the people searching for your products or services.

It is predicted that in the next five years, mobile phones (smart phones) will be the primary Internet access devices, but you can’t wait 5 years to address this. With 90% of all mobile searches today being local, this is something you need to fix immediately.

Help is one click away…

Just one of the topics in the SEO & Social Media Marketing Guide shows you how to make your website mobile ready.  Better still, I show you how to accomplish this using free software while making your website more search engine-friendly.

If you are one of those 46% of small businesses that don’t yet have website there has NEVER been a better time to establish your business presence online and do it right! My book, the SEO & Social Media Marketing Guide will guide you step-by-step through this maze of technobabble, and save you thousands of dollars in the process.  Yes, you can do it yourself if you know what to do.

You will never get a better ROI!

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