Optimizing for Local Searches
All, I wanted to share a question/answer interaction that happened between one of our Linkedin group members and I. This is to further instruct and expose an answer/clarification on the post 5 Tips for Optimizing Your Site for Local Search Visibility
QUESTION
George Trauten • JD – Under #2 could you explain what you mean by: List with the major search engines and “include complete and geographically driven content”. The content part – some examples of what you mean would make this more clear. Thanks
ANSWER
Jovanky Delossantos • Sure George, and thank you for your question. Basically, local SEO is still very keyword driven, like organic SEO. Therefore when you do local SEO you want to also leverage it’s organic capabilities. When you list with the major search engines, you want to make sure that the description of your business ALSO includes geographical information, so that when the Search Engines index it, they continue to “localize” your listing even further. Also your listing is just like any other website page and having your city and state in the description of your profile will help Search Engines pick up the listing on searches not using the regular [city],[state] format that generates the maps.
As an example of this “geographically driven content” term, I can say that “JD Giron, LLC, has been providing Search Engine Optimization Services in the New Jersey and New York area for over 10 years. From our headquarters in Lyndhurst, NJ, we have served companies of all sizes with services that help them obtain higher online visibility” etc…
I hope this helps, let me know if you have additional questions.
3 Phrases or signs to watch out for when hiring an Online Visibility provider
Generally, every crooked service provider has an attractive pitch to catch your attention with; also, generally their success is indirectly proportional to your level of understanding and education around their product or service. My “Public Service” of the day, is to provide you with a few common phrases, sentences and words that should make you slow down and look closer in your decision making process. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy from them, let’s not stereotype and discriminate, but just take the time to ensure you are doing a smart buy, also find your other options and compare.
- 1st Page of Google GUARANTEED! – Watch out, when you hear this phrase, you should ask whether the promise is for the Organic Results or for Paid Placement. If it is for Paid Placement or PPC (Pay Per Click), this can easily be achieved by just bidding at the required level. For more information about PPC and Organic results, visit our post here. But if their answer is “organic results” definitely go more in depth in questioning what is their strategy and how they can make such a guarantee before looking at your specific case, competitiveness of your field and budget. Very important! There is another one of our posts addressing this topic if you’re interested in reading about it.
- Buy QUALITY TRAFFIC! – And then the list packages of traffic bulks based on prices. I won’t tell you to look closer or consider this, I will tell you to flat out RUN AWAY from them as fast as you can. You want targeted traffic, people looking for you. This requires analysis to find whether there is opportunity in your market, competition levels and other factors. You don’t just need traffic, you need quality leads, as one of our posts says “You sell fruit, do you want meat buyers?”
- Cheap SEO, only $199.00 / year (just to say a very low price): – There isn’t a specific price for SEO, sure there are packages most clients fall into, but the final price will be based (again) on thorough analysis. Two different markets may require different pricing; therefore the analysis is a must. Also and plainly, if it sounds too cheap, it probably isn’t what you’re looking for; SEO is a great investment and it pays off big time, but it certainly ain’t cheap!
Also keep in mind that before you can pay for SEO, your provider needs to show you that there is OPPORTUNITY for you to capitalize on SEO. If your services are not on demand on the Internet, then you will easily rank your keywords but no traffic will ever come to you. Look for an honest, qualified SEO provider.
Targeted Traffic, What every website wants!
Targeted traffic is the type of traffic every websites strives for. This traffic is directly proportional to the amount of business you will generate through online. It is important to note that not all traffic is worthwhile; for instance, someone may have clicked on a link and come to your website without really meaning to, this is still a visitor, but not the one you want to attract. What you want is visitors who are at least initially interested in what you have to say or offer. That in other words is targeted traffic.
By having an online presence, you want your website visitors to buy your product or invest in your service; the ultimate goal is to increase your business sales or simply attract the attention you are looking for. Therefore the visitors who click around your site should be those who have already considered the services you provide or the information you share.
With all this in mind, please be extremely careful to fall into the traps of -Drive Traffic to Your Website- sharks. In your quest to increase exposure you will find companies offering to increase your traffic through several methods, some being “Expired Domains” and other methods. DO NOT, ,and I repeat DO NOT buy bulk traffic services and also don’t fall into the promises that sound sensationalistic, if it looks too good to be true, it most likely is.
To get targeted traffic, invest in internet marketing services by a trusting provider. True professionals can help you obtain the type of service through various methods. One important method is Search engine optimization. This helps people to find your website when they are looking for your product or service through a search engine using the organic results. Using the right keywords will direct more people to your website, but those who are looking for you, not accidentally. A similar method is Pay Per Click Advertising, this method allows you to bid for positions on the Search Engine Sponsored areas. Depending on how quickly you want your results to be, you may choose one or the other (or both).
Using blogs, article marketing, email marketing and submission marketing are also other ways to increase traffic to your website. Targeted traffic is an important part of a successful business online. There are many outstanding ways to see these results. With the proper plan and method, not only do you get more sales, but your brand recognition grows.
Link Popularity- why do we need it?
Link popularity is one of the key factors that search engines use in determining where to place your site in search results. Generally, the more links on the Internet pointing to your site, the more popular your site is. This popularity is clearly compared to other sites listed under the keyword phrase and results are therefore, determined.
Google was the first search engine to focus on link popularity as a factor in ranking sites. Google concluded that sites receiving tons of links must be highly relevant, full of good content and should appear higher in the results. Ironically, Google has downgraded the importance of link popularity in ranking sites. Instead, it now focuses on the quality of links. This change was due to spam linking abuses.
Spam Linking
If the amount of links were the key to good rankings, why wouldn’t someone create a program or site to trade links? That is exactly what people did and links were being traded in high volumes. This became known as spam linking and the results were amazing.
Quality links are those from a site that is RELEVANT to the subject matter of your site. If you have a clothing site and other clothing-related sites link to it, you have the quality links. Alternatively, if it has pharmacy or animal sites linking to it, you have bad links and the site will drop in the rankings like a rock in water.
To further combat spam linking, Google through in a time factor in the linking process. The search engine smiles on sites that slowly and consistently obtain links. If your site suddenly picks up a few hundred links, Google assumes you are trying to pull a fast one and downgrades your site.
Yahoo, MSN and Google control most of the search engine traffic on the Internet. MSN and Yahoo have followed Google’s theory on linking and you should as well. If you can master these three search engines, you will be a very happy site owner.
How much is too much to pay for SEO
Or how much is too much for a car? or how much is too much for a set of fancy porcelain china? The question can be asked in many forms, using any aspect, service or “thing” available for us to buy. The question is, what are you intending to get with your SEO? what is your current baseline? and the response is simple, if your intentions are met, then your SEO investment is worth it.
I will give you an example. We have a client in the Rubber Manufacturing industry. We recently developed a website for them, and also customized a ThomasNet catalog so it could flow from and to the main website as if they were one. Their baseline was that they were initially getting an average or 3.5 quote requests on a daily basis (already an improvement, as they didn’t get any online leads prior to our work).
Each converted lead represented an average of $3500 to them, and they converted about 1 for every 5 leads they received. This is very high (20%); due to the nature of their work and their credentials, they were able to convert at a high rate, but they wanted more. When they came to us for SEO, we promised to increase their “targeted” leads. We did not promise more traffic, we promised better quality traffic; traffic that would fill out the forms when they got to the website, people interested in what they did, not just traffic.
We quoted them for a 7k SEO job and they accepted. In a matter of 2 months, we have moved their most fierce keyword “Rubber Manufacturers” to the first page of Google, this represented a share of thousands of visitors a month between our client and its competitors. The other 24 keywords were also dramatically improved with the ranking as well.
Quality leads were increased from 3.5 to 6 per day. At a 20% conversion rate, that was 1.2 clients converted every day, at 3500 on average, we’re looking at $4200 per day. Now granted, this is a big company, with big clients. Their profit margin was 50%, which means they were making (only off the SEO) $2100 in profit. The SEO made them an additional $875 per day.
What does this all mean? this means that our client was able to pay off their SEO with 8 new customers generated by the campaign. And 4 more months remain with not only sustained results but “improved” ones. Their targeted lead average will increase with time.
Was it worth paying for SEO? ABSOLUTELY!!
This however does not work the same way for all companies. In order to determine if SEO is cost effective for your company, you need to hire a professional who can tell you the estimated traffic for the chosen keywords. If they can promise sustained improvements on those keywords, think of a no-fail number of clients you need to pay for the SEO price. Calculate your profits per client and determine how many clients you need to pay for the SEO. If you can pay for the SEO and make a profit, then SEO is not expensive.
SEO is a great investment, but you need a responsible, honest provider to give you sound, sensitive and achievable expectations. Figure your numbers and you will see, that 9 out of 10, SEO will pay off for you.
Useful Social Media Usage Stats.
Articles for visitors, the power of your website content
I’m sure you’ve heard or read the phrase “content is king”…no? well, if you had not, now you just did. Informing and reiterating about this fact is my public service of the day.
A common misconception exists amongst business owners and other misinformed “advisers” or “providers”; this is, the common thought that having a live website with barely any information can increase ranking and online recognition by just updating the meta-tags. I have heard this a few times short of a million!
The fact is that it takes much more than this to increase popularity and ranking (therefore leading to qualified traffic). The first thing is, your site needs to have compelling, relevant and useful information so that, visitors can stay long enough to tell Search Engines that your website contains interesting information (another important driver in search algorithmic ranking). But don’t only do it for the attention of the search engines, do it to provide a service to your visitors too, you need to care about your visitor’s time and effort to read what you need to communicate.
See, as much as search engines need to know what your website is about through your meta-tags, description tags and other “On-Page” optimization practices, maybe (and this is debatable but almost 100% true) the most influential driver of ranking and visitors to your site is Link Building. Search engines give importance to your content based on relevance, time visitors spend on your site and mostly by how many related articles and links point to your pages.
With that said, your on-page content and meta information is very important, but the off-page content linking to your website is the major driver of your success.
So get to the typing, writing what you know about and how it relates to your website, products and services. Then distribute these articles across the net through the different free article directories. All your articles need to have a link to your website, I recommend using a link to the home page and another link to an internal page you want to help rank. Use Anchor text links with a relevant keyword to your site and page your are pointing to. Other article directories will syndicate your articles through distribution or RSS feeds, increasing the amount of links even more. This will help search engines identify the relationship between the article and the page and will associate them as valuable links.
In some time, these links (or votes) will accumulate and give you a true benefit. SEO is complicated and time consuming, but you can increase your odds by following some simple rules. Content is king, never stop writing.
Local SEO or Organic SEO? Where should my money go?
Local consumers typically make up a large portion of a small business’s client base. Therefore, it is essential that small businesses target consumers residing near their business location. To gain local exposure, many small businesses utilize geographically driven advertising channels like radio, newspapers and business directories.
Some of these businesses, however, have failed to recognize the importance of incorporating local search Web sites like, Yahoo! Local®, Google Maps® and ThinkLocal® into their marketing mix.
Local SEO
What is Loca
l Search Local search is a rather new and inexpensive advertising method that can effectively reach a large, well-defined audience. The local search audience is unique in that it is comprised of local consumers who request to see the business ads delivered to them and therefore, are receptive to the information they receive. Local search can strengthen any marketing mix because it gives businesses visibility among those who are most likely to purchase their products or services, precisely in the area you’re trying to serve.
Local search Web sites share the same model as paper-bound business directories like the Yellow Pages®. In fact, they are sometimes referred to as online business directories. In addition to displaying a business’s name, location and phone number, many local search Web sites also provide additional tools such as maps, driving directions and quality ratings. Some also offer extra benefits like weather forecasts, local event calendars and forums.
Organic SEO.
If your business is not looking to sell in a specific location then it is recommended that they use Organic SEO, as it doesn’t really relate to someone finding a specific service or product in a specific place. For instance, the reason that companies use websites is to attract new business and to maintain and accommodate existing business. This is true whether or not there is a physical location for the business or if the business is a web only presence.
A professional website marketing company will know that to achieve high organic rankings that expert keyword analysis, search engine optimization and strategic inbound linking are all important to process that is organic search engine optimization. They will also be able to demonstrate their ability to keep up with the changes and algorithms that search engines have in place to ensure that a website stays in good standing with the search engines SEO policies and stays at the top of the search engine results page. Investing in website marketing company can be the difference between success and failure. Whether a pay per click program is being employed to garner quicker results or organic search engine optimization is being utilized for long term results.
The decision
Decide wisely and based on the above provided information. If you are most likely to be searched for using a city, state or both included in the keyword term (ie. Floor installation, Bergen, NJ), then doing just SEO will not benefit you because you will lose visitors to Google Maps. The first results presented on the search engines when a location is used is precisely those optimizing for localities, if you aren’t doing that, then you might just throwing your money away.
Remember, if you’re local, do Local SEO (or Local & Organic), if you aren’t then you can just get away with Organic SEO.
Why is an SEO compliant website important?
First of all, let me define what a compliant website means, it means that your website follows all the rules set forth by the W3C, which stands for the “World Wide Web Consortium”. The rules is to set a way for webmasters to make the compliant site more efficient on the web, which helps the user have an easier time with the website. Following the W3C rules is not enough to be SEO compliant, you will also need to pay close attention to the wording of your website and make it easy for the reader to understand , allowing your site to be valuable to users.
Taking the time to make your site SEO compliant will also help you follow the rules of the search engines you are aiming to get ranking from. As we all know, the higher the rankings; the higher the changes of your site being found are, which in return will increase your brand awareness. You will also need to pay close attention to how you create the information you want your clients to have, the way you write will help you to get rank from the search engines and maintain that ranking.
So why is it important to be SEO compliant?
When your site is SEO complaint, you will find that more people enjoy hanging out at your site because it is easier to use, when a website is not as easy to navigate through, we all know we are quick to look for another website that is less complicated to use. At the end of the day, easier to use website means you will gain more page rank from search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and MSN. These will help increase your traffic, because not only are you recognized but SEO compliant also makes you more users friendly.
You sell fruit, do you want meat buyers?
This is my humble contribution to overall understanding of Website visitors. As a business owner, you have an audience, and in most cases a geographical target and other important demographics.
You business has a website that you expect will be visited by the type of potential clients you’re looking to convert into business; and if you’re serious about Internet Marketing you want to make sure you’re having the type of traction and attention you’re looking for.
Forget “Traffic”, you want “Potentials”
Stop listening to the regular bunch of clowns trying to sell you traffic from all different sources, what do you do with that? If the traffic you’re getting isn’t looking for you or is not at least closing to the buying phase, what do you do with that? It is like having a Fruit Stand at the Meat Market. What you need is “Potentials” and the way to do that is by creating a sound Internet Marketing plan that includes SEO after a thorough Keyword analysis identifiying your market and narrowing down your niche to help you be found by your audience.
OK, and then what?
You need to understand who is visiting you. As part of an internet marketing plan, tools for traffic reporting are installed on your website. Typically Google Analytics is the choice for excellence (since it is free and very comprehensive); Google Analytics let’s you see how many visitors you get, which page they landed on, how much time they stayed on your site, which location they’re from, which browser they used and many more details.
But how do you read this? what does all this mean? Your provider will have much deeper understanding of the report, but for the basic user like you, who needs to verify this yourself (it is advisable you look and understand these numbers so you know you’re provider is being effective), here is a brief of the data you need to dissect:
- Traffic Sources: Whether the visitors came from a referring site, a search engine, directly or any other source. If you are using an SEO provider, you want to make sure you’re getting traffic from the search engines. Also if you are getting Social Media Optimization services, are the social media sites referring traffic to your site (there being a Referring Site)
_ - Keywords: Which keywords where utilized to find your site on the Search Engines. If you’re working with an SEO provider, you will be targeting specific keywords, here you will see whether those keywords are being effective at giving you visitors.
_ - Avg Time On Page: This is a very important piece of information. The time a visitor spends on each of your pages reflects the level of interest they have in the content being shown. Once you know this you will be able to decide whether to strengthen the information on weak pages, or how to take advantage of the performing pages. Your performing pages can be used to add calls to action or anything important you want to communicate and give visibility to.
_ - Bounce Rate: This data indicates whether the visitor came and left without visiting any other page, or the contrary. The more pages the visitor hits, the lower the bounce rate. If you get a Bounce Rate of 100%, this means that the visitor left without moving to another section of your site. You want to keep your visitors engaged and moving around your site to see everything you have to offer. If the visitor goes right away, the page is not doing its job, you may need to strengthen the information on that page.
_ - City, State, Country: There is a section on the report, where you will see where the visitor is coming from. If your services are geographically targeted, knowing this information will help you determine the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts.
The important thing is that you need to know who is visiting you, their location and what they’re doing, this helps you determine their behavior and how you should react to that.
The above is just preliminary information you should know, this is in no way a guide or help material, nor has been organized as such. For more information about Google Analytics visit their help section. Or view the video below.
GOOGLE ANALYTICS VIDEO TUTORIAL
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