Some of the best Local SEO tactics are very much in line with being a good community member and corporate citizen. Here are some proven and effective ways to help your sites ranking while helping the community you do business in.
Sponsor a page on a local charity’s site. Think what type organizations are always looking for funding? Animal shelters, Food Banks, School Sports and Club programs, Churches, Political Organizations, Women’s Charities, Elderly Care, and many more.
Just search “your county charities” or “your city charities” and you will find a ton of excellent opportunities to help. Contact the local director and ask of they would allow you to sponsor a page on their site to hep pay the web expenses. I have seen donations from $50.00 a year to $500.00 a year. With or with out a link, this will give your company the type visibility you want in your community.
Start a blog and blog about charities and organizations that are making a difference in your community. Give a link to where people and businesses can donate.
Give a percentage of all your sales for a month (or a year, or forever) to your favorite cause. Ask your friends in the business community to help as well… by adding it to there site.
Ebay auction your company’s 1000th tweet, or 10,000th tweet. Give the proceeds to a local charity. ASk others to do the same… and do a how to auction off a tweet on your site.
So, by combining the need to promote your site, you can also do some good. Let me know how these work out.
We get a lot of questions about what sites to add that are good for Google Local Citations. Even with the recent changes to Google Places (not showing citations anymore) there is a considerable amount of belief that adding a “citation” link to your back link’s can be helpful in your Google Places rankings.
In our experience, adding sites for the primary purpose of gaining a citation had lost most of its value last year. We don’t make this statement out of simple opinion, but based on assessing local web sites places rankings for over 4 years.
For a brief time we thought Google may have just stopped indexing the deep pages associated with many of the common citation sites people would use. An example may have been a listing on Merchant Circle. Merchant Circle was built around (according to their PR) getting a local site ranked higher and bringing it more local traffic. I am not picking on them, there are hundreds of on line yellow page sites, and directories that web masters, SEO’s and others used for adding citations and trying to boost their sites rankings in Local directories. The truth seems to be; today those sites have almost no value in bring your local site traffic or rankings!
But Google does continue to index these pages. One difference between a year ago and now (August 2011) is many of these citations don’t show up as a link in our back link reports. And it’s not that we use just one back link reporting tool, we use 5 different tools, because you get different information from each, depending on their methodology on how they acquire the back links to a site. We also do manual checks to as a final scrub so to speak. So those lead us to looking at it in a different light. That being, more from a link value stand point, than a citation value.
So what happened? And how can we learn from it.
Our opinion is pretty simple and falls in line with the basic principle that Google is looking for the best quality sites for a keyword search. We think this started in the Local search area with last October’s update when Google changed significantly how a Local Maps listing was ranked, by blending the organic ranking factors into the Maps results, or to be more accurate, by weighting those factors far more heavily. And these local ranking factors have continued to evolve with the Panda updates this year.
Here is our thought. Pre Google changes the domain authority of the site you had a citation or link on was far more important than it is today, with the Page authority having less importance. Let’s take a completely made up model of that.
Your link appears on a P.R. 7 site. ( I know PR is not the metric to use and we don’t, but it’s the commonly understood vernacular of basic SEO) and your site appears on a page that has no external links to it or any real ranking authority of it’s own. In the old days it was clear your site still received some value based on the domain authority. Lets call it a formula like this. Link value equals: ( Domain Authority / 2 )+( Page authority / outbound links on page). DO NOT TRY AND ANALYZE THIS FORMULA. I made it up and its only supposes to show that the domain had a higher influence on the Link value.
We think today Google is primarily looking at the page authority of your link or citation, and has discounted significantly the added value of the Domain Authority (P.R., or SEOmoz DA) . So a link or citation is as good as the Page it’s on, not the Domain it’s on.
Is it really this simple? No! Those people at Google are smart as a whip as my Mom use to say (I still don’t get that saying, or was it sharp as a whip, or tack? ) But for those of us who work on web visibility and promotion, it’s a good guide, and it’s working for us.
And it is in complete harmony with Google’s public position on why sites rank well. More on that statement later.
Like all opinions on what makes a web site rank well, this is just an opinion. It does seem to be proving accurate to the extent we can test it with our web promotion programs. We would love to hear from others on what they see as important ranking factors. Remember our Golden Rule of SEO. If you would take a certain action irregardless of how it will affect your sites ranking, and only because it will give your site better traffic and visibility, it’s a good thing to do. If you are taking an action solely for the perceived value it will bring in your sites ranking, it’s not going to help long term.
P.S. (Bad news for all those marketing companies promoting that they will add a link to your site on 100 P.R. 7 blogs for $7.00. huh?
My One Call in partnership with www.metasocialweb.com is now making your Social Media easy.
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Multiply weekly tweets and interactions. Good for promoting and good for your web site ranking too! It’s your account, so jump in as much or as little as you like. No fake followers, just real local businesses and people who want to support your business.
We run your Face Book campaigns We Post interesting information about your company and your community. Growing your Face Book like’s will increase your branding and help with your web site rankings. And with our service your new likes will come from the local area, and be actual prospects for your service. We take care of the basics, so you can take care of your business, and participate as much you like.
Search Engine Optimization to get More traffic (prospects) to your web Site.
We have been successfully getting client sites ranked highly in local searched for 5 years. Adding our back linking services to your program can have great results and bring more prospects to your site. Today, SEO, Social Media, and Sales all work together. That’s why Internet Marketing is exploding.
Adding links every month from high quality sites is the key to increasing your rankings! We are researching and finding new sites every week where we can add your company information to increase traffic to your site. Adding your company to www.MetaSocialWeb.com will also give you valuable links and opportunities to promote your business with Twitter, Face book, Google Plus and all the major players
Call us today at 303 500 3053 ext 1 to get more information, or contact us here
Having your site rank highly in Google places is important. Many of the traditional (if one can use that term) tactics for SEO help a great deal.
One of the big differences is with organic SEO you can truly target many keywords. In maps, Google will decide what search terms get a map and which do not. So organic seo will help with a lot of search terms even if Google does not show a map.
In searches where a Map is displayed, you will need to have a Google places account, and it is smart to claim it, and fill it out, so when prospects go to the places page, they will want to contact you.
Here are some Google places accounts we have helped with in Denver:
SEO is a tricky little devil these days. Ultimately the bottom line on any SEO program is how much new profitable business you have come from it.
If you are looking for reports about the effectiveness of your SEO programs we thought we would show you what we produce for clients. This is a partial quarterly report.
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M and E Painting. 3 month Report on Status of Web Site Visibility and SEO for www.mandepainting.com
Suggestions:
Have your web firm add the Google 1+ button on your site.
My One Call to work on specific opportunities identified on this report. Including SEO for “Painting Contractor in” Keyword, via on site suggestions, places account and anchor text on My One Call owned sites.
Run Large Scale Keyword report to determine additional opportunities
Check why PPC is high in Fort Collins and Greely
Add social media links in August. Add no follow links. Link profile is high in Follow links.
Current SEOmoz SEO ranking. PA 37 and Domain Authority 26 ( Seomoz is the internet’s most reliable SEO ranking service, that closely monitors and try’s to replicate Goggles Algorithms ) Add diversity to link profile to improve rankings overall.
Key word reports from Google: Based on a review of your site these are the main keywords consumers will use to find you. SEE PAGE BELOW
As you can see the main keyword is House Painting. The way Google works is if a consumer in Broomfield (or any decent size city) types in only House Painting they will get a list of the top local sites in the map section. MOVE TO PAGE BELOW
In the following example we set our browser for zip code 80021 (Broomfield) to determine your site does rank highly with or with out the “local intent” city in the search
Your site is Ranked Number two using this method.
Here is your site ranking using the local intent term in the search:
Your site is Ranked Number 1 in Maps and Number 1 Organically
Here are the same comparisons for Loveland, and Fort Collins:
Loveland with City
Loveland with browser set to zip
House Painting with Fort Collins
House painting with zip in browser (as if in Fort Collins, no city Intent)
As you can see when a consumer searches with out a “city” you are still in great positions. The national sites do show up above the map, but as we are seeking consumers looking for local painters your click rate for these searches should be similar to the local intent (city name ) searches.
The second highest searched term according to the Google keyword report is “Painting Contractors In “
Her are the rankings in your primary cities for that search.
Loveland:
Fort Collins: Opportunity to move you into the MAPS section SEE PAGE BELOW
Painting Contractor In Broomfield
Opportunity to move into Maps! Number 1 Organic
Your sites ranking is determined by two large buckets. The first is your on site optimization, which includes Meta tags, Copy, and navigation, and the second is off site optimization which is how many sites, social media, and mentions link to your site, or mention your company.
Current Back Links from Link Diagnosis.com. This report is also attached as an excel sheet with more information.
We have attached a PDF of this report to the email sent.
Google Web Master Summary:
Shows no HTML problems
Shows no Google plus clicks
Shows site is being crawled (29 pages a day average)
Impressions you have by Key word (how many times your site showed up in search results on Google for the keyword last 30 days.
SEE NEXT PAGE…This report generally gives you a good view of how Google see’s the keywords on your site and how Google displays your site for those terms. Google shows the following Domains linking to your
We checked your sites linking structure in Google web master and it appears good.
Google Analytics:
Your site traffic continues to improve
Your bounce rate is acceptable
Top Traffic sources since April 2010
Top Traffic sources Last 90 Days
Google Pay Per Click:
July: Cost is down a little over July.
Greely and Fort Collins are by far the highest clicked and cost.
Action: Check way Greely and Fort Collins cost is this high
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Some of the images where removed, but you can see our point. SEO is about rankings, and those rankings resulting in customers.
Google places has made some changes to what is displayed in your businesses Google places account. Gone are the reviews from other than Google places users, although it will still show the links and number of reviews found on other review site (Yelp, Insider pages, and mores)
They also have removed the long studied (by local SEO firms) citations at the bottom of the page. Many bloggers are calling this a major blow to local SEO firms. They base this on old and outdated local SEO tactic where a SEO would research the Citation sites found on the top ranked local maps competition and use those citations to get ranking for a client. Frankly, that has not worked since fall of 2010. (Our estimate)
As we have been blogging about from time to time, Local SEO changed last October, when Google decided to mix both a sites organic rankings and Maps placement. We had always used both Local directories as well as organic SEO to get our clients better Internet visibility, but for the “Local SEO” firms that where just using Local only tactics, the changes must have had a negative effect on client rankings.
So what do yesterdays changes mean to Local SEO? Nothing. It’s still the same premise. Do great promotion and visibility programs for your site. Don’t try to keep up with every change Google makes (it will drive you crazy), just use sound marketing and promotion principles to get the right people to your site.
As this post is getting a great deal of attention and is ranked number 1 on Google for “Google places Changes” I thought I should add some additional content that might be of use to someone interested in the subject. I am assuming you are either a SEO or a business owner manager involved in the on-line promotion of your site?
Best current Local Maps (Google places) promotional tactics.
First, don’t fall in love with Maps. Organic SEO on local intent SER can do as much if not more for you. Remember only 30%-60% of searchers are searching with a local intent term. The others are being served local sites because Google assumes they are looking for a local company.
Second. Citations are dead. This is my opinion, but watching and assessing rankings for new clients seems to strongly suggest that building the old Citation links and mentions is a complete waste of time. Only add your site to local directories that will actually bring you traffic! Here is our YES list: Yelp, Angie’s, local Better Business Bureau, and your chamber. Also any niche directory’s with less than 10 0r 15 listings can be very valuable. Don’t pay for listings!
Third. In the beginning your physical address has as much to do with your local ranking as anything. The address of your company and its proximity to what Google considers “city center” is a huge factor. Also, make sure your address(s) are displayed on your home page and contact page. As your site gains better trust and SEOmoz page authority your physical address will become less of a factor. Make sure Google knows what cities you service by using your Google places account, and mention this on your site.
Fourth. Using SEOmoz page authority as your guiding light is the best method for improving your rankings on Maps and organic. Combine the other tactics I am talking about with high quality back linking and content is the only way to improve your rankings that I see consistently work.
Fifth. Link’s and mentions from other local site’s are highly respected with Google. Get your associates to mention you on their sites. Sponsor a local charities page, write real reviews of your local vendors that they can post on their site (include your Company Name Address and Phone, as well as your www if they will do that.
Eight. Domain names matter. So do Company names. Yes, I understand that if you have been in business 10 years you can not change your name, domain and address. Or can you? If it’s a new campaign, go ahead and start with a keyword based domain name.
Nine. No follow links are good. You hear a lot that no follow links pass no link juice (or whatever). The point is to get your site promoted, so if a site is no follow, but can bring you good traffic, use it! Twitter, Face book, most wordpress blogs are no follow, but have great traffic and, do you really thing Google is just blindly following the instructions of the site owner for what link is trustworthy and what link is not? Please.
Ten. If you are going to work on your sites ranking and visibility, you are going to need to put in the time to do it. Figure an hour a day for 3 months. That’s 60 hours of sometimes productive, and many times non productive time, some one has to invest.
And then the golden rule: No one thing is going to put you in the top of a Google Places search. I think you would agree, that all of the tactics I talk about are just good old fashion P.R. and promotion. Use this mind set… the P.R. mind set, what can I do to get my site (businesses/services) seen and noticed by the largest group of prospects possible. And once I am noticed, what is it they are going to experience?
Putting all this work into a poorly developed site is a pretty big mistake, I had three restaurants I owned years ago and did a BIG radio promotion selling any thing on the menu for .79 cents on a Saturday morning. It was a disaster of course, we had a line out the door, and ran out of half our items. Service was slow, and the product went out lousy. Not only did the promotion not work, it hurt us!
As in life, as in SEO ” above all, do no harm”
The best SEO advice? Build content your prospects want to see.
If you are interested in doing your own SEO, or are a SEO looking for a little help, you may want to check out our web optimizer club
The conversion percentage of a prospect to a customer is a cornerstone of a successful company. It influences everything in the company including gross revenue, gross margin, net profit, expenses, budget’s, hiring plans, expansion, and virtually every function of a business. Every sales organization should be constantly looking for ways to improve their closing percentage.
But first, a company must get their product or service in front of new potential customers at a cost that is sustainable and still allows profit. Generating leads is easy; generating profitable leads cab be very challenging.
The cost of generating new prospects is higher in the early stages of a businesses existence. Without a solid customer base to lean on, the vast majority of new sales will be “purchased” through advertising or promotions. If you are an established company with a solid customer base it’s important to leverage your hard earned reputation in the sales process.
As a sales consultant I have developed a list of areas that will improve both lead generation and closing percentage for virtually any business. These areas work on line or off, and are time tested and proven.
Closing more: Eliminate fear
Have a Guarantee
Have a unique offer
Have a sales questionnaire
Develop Trust through associations and testimonials
Have a defined buying Process
Lead generation:
Establish your budget with a percentage of gross for advertising
Develop a on the spot referral program
Use professionals for advertising information. It will save you a ton
Use our Crystal Ball to speed up sales for the year. knowing who and where your future customers are will grow your sales quickly
I want to focus on one small change that can improve your closing percentage significantly, and is very simple.
Use your contract or agreement as the sales piece. The most difficult moment in a sales presentation for many sales professionals is the transition from the “presentation” to the close. Moving the contract or agreement into the physical space between the two parties is always awkward, and you can feel the tension escalate.
Why not just develop a sales piece that is the agreement or contract? Using a little marketing savvy, and some imagination, you can turn your current paperwork into a decent sales presentation. By doing so your prospects will be far more relaxed, and it leads to a natural conclusion of signing the paperwork.
In my experience you will see an easy 10% increase in your sales peoples closing percentage. Going from 27% to 37% will have a substantial impact on your revenues and success as a business.
As a company that works on web popularity and marketing programs for businesses in Denver a lot, part of that is seeing what tactics other SEO companies use to get rankings for their clients.
SEO in Denver is a relatively small field, so if you are around long enough you have the opportunity to see the process and work of many of the leading companies.
One tactic that is used often by several is the production of additional web sites in addition to the primary web site of a client. As an example, of you business is a handyman service, an seo might suggest the normal process of working with your main site, and then add 4 additional sites with the words handyman _____
and add a city name to the city term.
Lot’s of good SEO thought process here, and some might call it black hat or at least gray. AS a comparison other SEO’s use blogs they clearly produced and optimized that frankly have little or no value besides the SEO value.
We think the multiple web site tactic is white hat. Why wouldn’t you want your business as visible as possible? If the Internet was a Interstate highway, your web site is a billboard. Of course you would want as many billboards as you could put up.
BUT, Using the same content on different sites is a no no. This is where marketing and SEO have to work together. In a Marketing sense, if you are being seen by a different audience than your main site duplicate content wouldn’t matter. (It’s like running an advertisement in two different magazines). Google however hates duplicate content and has no ability to discern logically if the content is intended and delivered to different audiences.
Just another example of how small business owners can get into ranking trouble, even when their intent is honest.
Recently there has been a great deal of discussion on the SEO forum’s and professional sites about how the Google Map rankings are changing.
We have been watching it very closely, and in a nut shell, the big difference between how you places account was ranked last year, and how they seem to get ranked this year is this:
Google places rankings now are based more on organic SEO than maps criteria. There are two elements that remain important that were and are unique to Places. First, and I know this sounds like I don’t have to say it, but you need to list your company in Google places if you are not there now, and fill out the profile with good categories. Two, the address of your business as it relates to the city center still is important.
After that, We use to add a bunch of known citation sites. Most of those don’t even show up as a citation any more, and many don’t even show up as a link. I wouldn’t forget citations, but I would down grade their importance a bunch.
Now it’s all about standard organic optimization. Get your home page up to speed (easy) and then add quality content to your site, and then add links from quality popular sites.
The best way we have found to determine how strong your site is (from an SEO prospective) is to use the free tool bar from www.seomoz.com If some or all of this is above your head, but you want to learn, SEOmoz is a great resource, as is SEO book and Majestic SEO.
Once you have it downloaded it will give you a Page Authority rank for any page you are on. It’s called PA and you need to see how the sites that are ranking above you ranked on PA, and then look at yours.
Many sites that have had very little attention will be around a 10 PA. In most local categories you will need a 25 to 40 PA for your site to get on the front page. You can learn how to add ranking to your site at any of the sites I listed above. I use the rule of thumb that you will need 10 hours SEO to get from 20-30, and 40 hours more to move from 30 to 40. If you follow with that logic you are looking at 120-160 hours to move from 40 to 50. And of course, if you are a beginner Triple the time, as you will be learning as you go.
Most SEO companies charge at least $100 to $150. an hour. If you do the math, you can then decide if SEO is viable option for your business. We have other options as well, including SEO management consulting, where we work with your employee to work through an SEO program. And we do the complete SEO programs for you as well.
If your interested in Doing your own SEO work, you may want to look at joining our Web Optimizers club. It makes your life easier
The conversation continues in the SEO circles concerning how facebook shares effect a sites ranking.
In a recent blog on SEOmoz , Matt Peters goes into great detail to test the relationship between a web sites number of face book shares and it’s ranking. You can read it here
For those of us who do not possess a degree in advanced mathmatic’s, it comes down to this. If a Site get’s a lot of shares, it’s because the page or site is interesting. Interesting web sites get lot’s of attention, and getting a lot of attention brings better rankings.
So once again, the best tactic to bring up your search engine rankings is to be interesting, and be clear. Some of the better rated sites we have developed or worked on do not have contest pages, or cartoons, or tips. What they do have is very clear information about what the visitor came to the site to get.
This is very good news for the small and medium business owner who doesn’t have the budget or time to put together a multimedia extravaganza produced by the top marketing minds in the Industry. All we need to do is be very clear and informative on what our audience wants.
The mistakes we see are trying to be to many things to to many people on a page or site. If you sell both Carpet and Tile, you have two different audiences that over lap. Better to have very two different sections on your site. Be clear and communicate one message at a time.
Think through what a person wants when they come to your page. They want to trust you, they want to know what you sell (brands and styles) they want to know your where you stand on pricing, and they want to know that you are popular. You can get all that in the fold.
The best bounce rate we see on client sites is one of the most simple sites in it’s category. Highly ranked, and a 4% to 12% bounce. It’s simple, clear, and attracts the right people because of those elements.
As a company that works on web popularity and marketing programs for businesses in Denver a lot, part of that is seeing what tactics other SEO companies use to get rankings for their clients.
Recently there has been a great deal of discussion on the SEO forum’s and professional sites about how the Google Map rankings are changing.
