Local SEO in 90 Minutes a Week.

I run into so many small and medium businesses that are taking on their own local Search engine optimization programs these days. Generally the strategy is to list their site in as many directories as possible, and hope for the best.  That strategy wasn’t all that terrible 4 years ago, but today there is a good chance that they will be competing against other web sites that have hired a professional web optimization company.

Since I want to give some unique ideas here I am not going to cover in any detail the basics that are published in a billion other places.  I do want to give you a quick list of those just in case you don’t have them, and you can find a good how to SEO for local video and transcript at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-basics-of-local-seo-whiteboard-friday.  I would also suggest you start at www.getlisted.org  a wonderful free resource for local business owners and managers.

Great, now you have the basics just like the 10 or 50 other competitors for your key words. What next? To be really successful in the Local SEO field, you really need to become unique. You need to stand out both with your on site content and your “link profile”.   So here are my top tips for doing just that.

• Write a blog every week (or more). Google likes fresh content. Make sure it’s related to your service/ product, and don’t worry about being a “great writer”. Just do it.  Make sure this blog is part of your domain! There are so many businesses who just can not write blogs, that I would suggest you hire a writer to do it. It can be that important. You can find them at our local college, and all over the Internet. Just Google it. And don’t be afraid to hire an editor for your blogs. It’s about the same cost, but will sound far more authentic.

• Write a testimonial for a local company every week. Send it to them in a digital format. And let them know its fine to post it on line. Make sure you have a small paragraph of about you on the blog, with your web site.  Give the business instructions on how to use it…Dear vendor,  Feel free to have your web master post this on your testimonial pages… or use the first paragraph on the first page of your site.

• Get involved in local forums on your topic, even if that topic is generic business. Participate weekly. Make sure you fill out the profile and include your web site.  You can find them by doing a Google search like this, “Business Forum + Your City.

• Post your blogs on your companies Facebook.  Most business face book pages have a life span of 4-6 months before the owners give up. This gives you new content to post weekly. Search engines like you to have social sites, and they like your stuff to be shared.  Posting your blogs takes 1 minute.

• Comment on the respected Local blogs once a week. Make sure you are interested in the topic, and that the blog is well respected. News Media blogs are always good for this.  Stay away from the controversies… your prospects don’t need to know your politics. Just sayin…

• Have an SEO do a one time on site assessment of your home page and site structure. This will cost you, but I have seen more good done in this one move than all of the linking you can do in a year. You may already have a bunch of quality links, and it’s just your title tags are messed up, or you have duplicate descriptions on some pages, or a friend who knows SEO told you to use your keyword a lot and now your page looks spammy, or they told you to hide some keywords or cities on your home page through font color.  Who knows?  I would just suggest that SEO has changed a lot in the last year, and if you do not have the on site stuff, you can waste a lot of time on every thing else.

So start with:

A blog (30 minutes a week)

A testimonial written and sent (25 minutes a week)

Join and participate in a few local forums. (15 minutes a week)

Post your new Blog on your face book, Twitter and Linked In. (5 minutes)

Comment on Local respected Blogs (10 minutes a week)

And have a trusted SEO do a one time on Site assessment (Do this every 12 to 18 months)

There you have it. 90 minutes a week to build your web sites popularity. Will this get you to the top of the search results? Maybe, but it will make you more visible every week. And that’s what you want, more visibility and traffic to your web page.

If we can help you feel free to call us at 303 500 3053 ext 1.