SEO is more than getting a site ranked highly. What good is a high ranking in the search engine results if your prospects decide to click on a competitors link and not yours?
The results Google or any search engine shows for your site needs to be compelling enough to get the searchers attention. So careful attention to your Title and Description tags are in order as these will be shown most of the time.
Next…get as many positive testimonials as possible for your Google listing. It’s pretty simple. If your company has 10 good reviews and your competitor has 2, your prospect is far more likely to click on your listing.
Several good things happen with having more reviews. First it going to help your rankings, and it will build your business reputation, and those two things will lead to more clicks and more revenue.
Request that all of your good customers review you on Google!
You can also suggest they review you on other sites using the same methodology. Yahoo, Insider Pages, and yelp are all great sites to get reviews on, and Google places may pick them up.
Make a plan today. Ask for one review a day. Get ranked!
I know we are a bit early here, but I wanted to make one prediction about the annual local search ranking factors report that is published each year on the excellent blog about local search, at http://www.davidmihm.com
Local SEO’s love this report, and will invest a large amount of time reading and assessing each area they rate. I have always enjoyed reading the opinions of the some of the largest and best SEO firms in the world and comparing their thoughts on how important certain things are to your sites local ranking (Maps, places) to what I have seen over the year.
Question: H0w Important are Citations to ranking?
Traditional the consensus has always ranked “Citations” as one of the most important ranking factors. Once you get past the obvious factors of the address, claiming a listing, and the categories you use, it’s the top dog! And in 2009 I think that was true.
Answer: Citations just are not very important any more!
Here is my prediction, and the reason behind it. The number and quality of Citations ranking factor will drop from very important to just important, maybe as low as number 8 on the top 10 factors. Now here is my opinion based on what I have seen and bloged about for a year.
Citations are close to meaningless for ranking factor. And all of the local SEO companies who are still chasing citations are 14 months behind the curve. All of this changed in October 2010 and has continued to change with all the panda updates through out 2010. Today, your local rankings are based 98% on the same factors that you use in organic search Engine optimization, once you get past the already stated factors of having a local listing, and making sure you fill it out correctly.
Chasing the wrong stuff for local SEO
In a nutshell, it’s not a citation that makes any difference, it’s the quality of the page that listing and link (if included) is on. A very well respected SEO blog (and deserving so) recently published the top 100 (I think, may have been 200) citation sites. So today and next week, and next year local seo’s will be taking their clients money and using a bunch of these “Top 100” to try and increase their clients ranking. What a waste.
In the vast majority of cases, Google only looks at the page the citation is on and that specific pages value, not the domain. So when your site is listed on (Pick one of the top so named citation sites) if the page your site is on has no or low P.A. value (Page authority as published by SEOmoz) or any of the other page quality tools you want to use that look at number of inbound links, and number of out bound, SEO juice from the other pages, and all that) then you have wasted your time. The bad news is the vast majority of the “top Citation Sites” fall into a low or no PA value for the page you end up listing on, and right now, because the mainstream SEO’s have not caught up to this lot’s of businesses are wasting a portion of their dollars on tactics that have not worked since 2009.
So why would I publish this, when my competitor’s read this blog, and it can be a great help in their business? Because I truly do believe that what helps one business helps all businesses, and that the small business clients they have will benefit through this information.
But then again, I could be wrong, as most everything in SEO is an opinion. I do feel confident in this information, as since we changed our strategies and tactics to reflect the new local search world, we have seen a 100% first page top 3 ranking for every client.
Help me, help you, help me, help you.
If we can help you as either a business seeking a better Internet strategy, or a small SEO looking for addional help or support, please contact me through our site, or call me directly at 303 500 3053 ext 1
There is so much buzz on the internet about how writing a blog can help your sites ranking on search engines. All of this is true, but, I don’t see bloggers explaining really why a bloghelps your sites traffic and ranking, and without that information, you will have limited results.In fact, you will probably end up, as so many bloggers do, with three of four months of twice a week blogs and then the great void. Nothing for months,notta, a silent voice in the mass structure of the digital word, speaking to no one, having no purpose, aimless and alone…
But be of good cheer!(Wow am I weird today)Must be the holiday thing…
Your blog may help bring traffic to your web site through these means.
Google likes fresh content.But this alone won’t do much for you.
Good content is picked up by other sites, giving you a link from their site. Google and search engines base a lot of your rankings on how many sites link back to your site. This is far more important than just adding fresh content. You can add fresh content (new blogs) until the proverbial cows come home, (proverbial cows sounds like a really odd name for a football team in India). But it won’t do much until other sites link to it or use it with a link.
(Sorry lost my train of thought as my 5 year old daughter just walked in and announced she had found the elf on a shelf this morning, you know, theymagical move every night, and she gets really excited when she finds them)
You can tweet and add your blog to your social media. That’s a good link and good mention for the search engines!It also gives you something to say on your social media which is clearly a problem for many of us.I can hear the thought process as we all think, what should I post on facebook today?The weather? My recent IRS audit results? Another discount offer?Oh gawd how I HATE this. A blog is a great thing to post.And, it gives your web site a little love from the search engines.
Search engines seem to love word press.(That’s the platform many blogs are written on.)
I hate to sound all SEOie here, but really, use your important keywords in the title of the blog, and use the categories and all that stuff built into your blog. I don’t use any seo plug in, but I don’t think they hurt.
And finally…your blog will help your traffic and ranking only if your web site, and then blog, have a good SEO ranking,A blog will help you build some ranking, but having a domain that already has links to it is really important! Work on getting links to your main site.
So there you are.
Write good content that others will link to (there are a million blogs and articles on how to write good content on line, clearly I haven’t read many)
Post it on your social media pages
Use word press
Use keywords in your title
Work on getting your domain ranked before your blog.
If we can help you with getting your site ranking moving the right direction, please call me. Our starter SEO program may be an affordable and great way to jump start your site visits and get your blog noticed. http://www.salesjumpstart.net/weboptimizersstarterSEO.html
Always good to end the week with some good news. We had two new campaigns start less than a month ago with our Internet Marketing, including search engine optimization, and both are in a top three position for a important keyword search.
Blue Sky is already number one for basement finishing in their city, and now remodeling.
And American painting Specialist started a few weeks ago…
From nowhere on the first page to either number 1 or number 3. Not all of our clients see this type of fast rankings growth, but they all do eventually. Watch for Pinnacle Structural Services in the first few SER’s over the next few weeks.
Search engine visabilty is important for most small business and it always feels great to see it working so well. If you are working on your site’s visibility there are several key areas to pay attention to.
SEO TIP:
Although the term “meta title” may sound like an eighties rock band, it’s the most important on site piece of information Google and others look for. Not only is your home page title important, but every page on your site should have a unique meta title. Google doesn’t rank your web site, Google ranks a page. Don’t let your pages compete for the same keywords! Make sure you choose one page you want to promote, and use your main keywords in that pages title, and then DO NOT use it in all the others.
Our starter SEO packages is also a great way to get your site more visible in search engines and it’s rankings moving up. You can read about it n our starter SEO page.
If you look for an “SEO” (Search Engine Optimization) Company you may find pricing from $49.00 a month to $5000.00 a month and more. It’s no wonder many of the businesses I speak with are completely confused. The truth is there is no correct answer to how much SEO services may cost, there are just too many factors that have to be taken into consideration before any professional SEO company can give you an idea what your investment might be.
It starts with what your geographic target area is, the competition for your keywords (or services), and looking at your current optimization, both on your web site, off site (commonly called back links) and social signals and mentions. If your web site was built by a friend of a friend’s cousin who did it part time to get through college in 2003 and, you have no idea how to contact that person, well, as part of the SEO process you may have to build a completely new site. Cost? $1200 to $7500.00 for the basics.
If your site was built in the last couple of years (hopefully by a web design firm and not a friend of a friend…) then you may only need to make some basic changes to the site, and in many cases this may only take an hour of your web companies time. Cost $50 to $150.00
Then it all comes down to are you trying to target searches in a certain area of a metro area, the entire metro area, a state or region, a country, or International.
A small locally target SEO campaign for a suburb or two in a mid level competitive industry may cost as little as $600.00 total. A city wide SEO campaign in a city the size of Denver will probably run at least $2700.00 or a $500.00 per month program for 6 months. A national program will run between $750 and $2000 a month and you can count on working with an SEO for at least a year before you start seeing results and frankly you will probably end up doing SEO for years (as long as you are seeing a return)
But what about those $49.00 and $99.00 guaranteed programs, you may ask. Well, they don’t work. Don’t trust me, just ask the company for three LOCAL RECENT references for the program. If they can provide them, use the service! If not, call us, or another real SEO firm. If any one reading this blog can show me an actually example of a SEO program (not PPC) working for under $175.00 a month. Please contact me. I am begging! I have had so many clients come to me after wasting time and money on these; I would love to hear of one, just one, actual success story.
SEO, in my opinion is a great value even today. The market is pushing pricing down. At the same time the number of businesses using SEO services is rapidly increasing. Remember, in every category there are only so many first page rankings and only 3 top 3. SEO is never going to cost less. It’s just too competitive, and in a year or two, because of the competition, it may start costing more than it’s worth in many segments.
Now’s a good time to look at SEO, and what it might cost.
Call us for a free assessment and investment pricing. 303 500 3053 ext1
It seems like I get a call a month from a client or prospect that have been running pay per click on Google and getting terrible results. Once I look at the campaigns I consistently see the following three BIG problems.
First. So far this year with only one exception, the campaign is set up using broad match keywords.
Google gives you 4 options of the way you can run your keywords. Here is their explanation:
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You can set each search-targeted keyword to have one of those four settings. To use a keyword matching option, just add the appropriate punctuation to your keyword:
Broad match: keyword
Allows your ad to show on similar phrases and relevant variations
(The broad match modifier may also be used to further refine your broad keyword matches: +keyword.)
Phrase match: “keyword”
Allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase
Exact match: [keyword]
Allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase exclusively
Negative match: -keyword
Ensures your ad doesn’t show for any search that includes that term
With some options, you’ll enjoy more ad impressions, clicks, and conversions; with others, you’ll get fewer impressions and more narrow targeting. By applying the appropriate matching options to your keywords, you can best meet your ROI goals.
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So as an example, I have seen a House painter show up in the search Basement Finishing. Why? Because they are using Broad Match, and when someone searches Basement Painting, they have “painting” as a broad match keyword. You can imagine how many searches the ad shows up for that have little or no relevance to house painting.
The natural thought is, so what, if no one clicks on the ad under a non relevant keyword, it doesn’t cost you a thing. Well…. Wrong. Your keywords quality score, which I will blog on latter, is lowered when your ads click through rate (number of times the ad is cliced on divided by the number of times the ad is served) and the lower your quality score, the more your bid will need to be to get higher placement.
So… use phrase and exact match!
Two. I also see the client or prospect has added all of their keywords under on ad group and possible one ad.
Your keywords should be divided into very specific groups, where the keyword matches the ad you use for that ad group.
Using house painting again, here is a brief example. You should have diiferent ads for each of these and the ads should use the exact keywords in it.
House painting
House painter
Exterior House painting
Painting contractor
In a perfect world you might see a new ad group and ad for each keyword. Lot’s of work, but well worth it. Your cost will be lower and your conversion rate will be higher.
Three: Scheduling. Your product or Service has peak days and times that prospects will look for it on the Internet. You know what these are, just track back to when prospects call you the most. When was that last time someone called you on a Saturday? For home improvement companies, Mondays and Tuesdays are peak, and Friday and Saturday (generally) are dead. Why show your ad on day’s no one is really looking? Instead, up your bids on the peak days and lower your bids on off days and hours.
And I do need to mention a 4th. Geo Targeting! Google has great options for you to serve your ad just in the cites you want, or a specific radius around your business. Don’t advertise across n entire metro area, if in reality you are not going to get sales more than 15 miles (or 7 or whatever) from your business. The natural tendency of customers is to have a preference for a company closer to them, no matter what you sell.
I will go into some other areas and more detail on future blogs. Pay attention to these 4 areas in an account when you set up an Ad Words campaign. We do offer very affordable PPC management and set up, so if you just don’t want to go through the learning curve, and need to see better results, call us!
This answer was once a 100% no for us. But as SEO has become more and more competitive, we see many more sites in the top of the Search Engine results that are paying for links, and appear to getting better rankings because of it.
The type of links I am referring to here are directory links, not text in blog link farms, or anything developed for the sole purpose of getting your rankings to increase, with very little or no real readership.
A good link should have the potential to bring you more traffic, on its own, period. There are a ton of directories that are free, and do show up high enough in the search engines, or do their own advertising, to bring real prospects to our site. It does take some research to identify them, and the directories you choose should be dictated by the industry and location you are in.
It’s logical that a directory charge if the edit and review every submission, and have the expenses of keeping the site running. Although we are a big fan or organic natural ranking increases through great content and relationships, now and then paying for a directory listing does make sense.
One of the more powerful SEO tools for a business is winning business awards. The problem is the vast majority of businesses don’t understand the process of submitting their business for consideration to the hundreds, if not thousands of organizations that issue awards.
Traditionally a business would use a P.R. firm to identify and submit their firm for business awards. The truth is very few small companies can afford a P.R. form, and when they can, they will generally run out of patience long before any results are obtained.
One of our clients, M and E painting, is owned by an up and coming entrepreneur, Matt Shoup. Matt owns several companies, and has worked diligently over the last few years understanding P.R. and specifically how a business can win awards. The result of this is his Book, How To Become An Award Winning Company. You can read about it on his site here www.becomeanawardwinningcompany.com
The value of winning or being noted in a business award category is obvious. It builds credibility and trust with potential prospects, it helps create a powerful company culture with your employees, and it can create great links and citations for your site.
In this era of SEO, a great SEO knows that we need to think outside the old, Link, Link, Link, thinking and move more into a early to bed early to raise, Promote, Promote, Promote. When your client receives an award from a trusted local or national organization, you will see good things happen to their sites rankings.
Take a look at Matts’ book. It will be released in December of 2011, and has already received excellent reviews
What’s the difference between Local SEO and Organic SEO?
Before October 17th 2010 it was a clear distinction, but on that date (in Denver Search Engines Results
anyway) Google began merging search engine rankings between the Local Maps and the organic
results. Some search terms that the day before had returned the traditional 7 pack, now had a few
organic results listed above the Maps, and some had a mix of maps and organic.
We have been researching how your organic rankings relate to your maps rankings recently in our
attempt to get further understanding of what really determines Google places rankings. We know there
are lots of factors of course. You can read about them all over the Internet. The common factors being
claim your profile, complete your profile, get good citations.
Yet, we have found several highly ranked places listings that have no citations, partially completed
profiles, and don’t seem to represent the common understanding of why a listing would be highly
ranked. One doesn’t even have a web site.
So we are comparing the highest ranked Places accounts in average to very competitive categories.
We are using the sites SEOmoz page authority as the organic score. The theory is, if great on site SEO
scores are the major factor in Google places rankings. Before October 2010, this was not the case.
We will be publishing some of the results as we get a broader base, from multiple cities, and keyword
categories. In the early view there appears to be very little doubt that your SEOmoz score is a huge
indicator of your places rankings. We are looking into how your “categories” relate to your rankings as
well. (An early hint is, not as much as you think) SEO News
Lot’s of data points to look at, and the first run we are keeping it simple. SEOmoz page authority
compared to Places ranking and a few other tidbits.
There are some early surprises. Where we do see a consistent correlation between SEOmoz rank and
Places rankings, there are some glaring exceptions, and those are the situations we are most interested
in.
We will keep you posted on results as we understand them.
Big changes for Google place accounts this week. In a nut shell, Google will be allowing the general public to edit and make changes to your Google places account. They also will be updated your places information based on what they find on the Internet which may be information they think is more current.
Google will send out an email before they make any changes, but that assumes you have a verified listing, and you check your emails. I have already had several emails forwarded to me from clients from Google.
We can all see the good and bad in this. What concerns me the most is the black hat SEO’s or competitors who submit bad categories or just misleading information on a competitors places account. I have seen some SEO’s
submit bad reviews in Denver on competitors, so submitting incorrect information on purpose is not only a possibility, but likely!
What a business owner needs to do if their Google places account is important to them.
Make sure you claim your business listing with Google places
Make sure you read any emails from Google, and respond if the information they have is not correct!
Make sure you check your places listing weekly.
I recently had two businesses contact me because they both had bad reviews posted on Google. One had no idea who the person was, and the problem they described was not familiar to them. Could it have been a case of mistaken identity? Could it have been a real complaint? Maybe it was a competitor? With the current system (not likely to change) all you can do is look at the reviewer’s profile, and that rarely will help.
The only solution is to monitor your listed, report incorrect information, respond to Google if someone does try to change your places account, and get great reviews on Google by asking your current customers to review you on your places account. Provide each customer with your Google places url… !
We do provide on-line reputation monitoring, with a focus on Google places, major review sites, and Search engine results. With the most recent changes with Google places, it’s more important than ever to know what your on-line reputation is.
