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Local SEO in 90 Minutes

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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.

Ensure Website Visibility With Search Engine O...
Ensure Website Visibility With Search Engine Optimization Slide9 (Photo credit: hongxing128)

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.

 

 

 

 

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Do It Yourself SEO

Do It Yourself Local SEO

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Do it yourself local SEO.

As promise, here are the key tactics to make sure your local business is visible for local searches.

First, make sure your web site and business is listed in the major search engine local directories. A great resource for this is www.getlisted.org.  This will allow your site to come up on the Google local maps, and the yahoo and Bing local directories for search terms that relate to your business.

Make sure to completely fill out your local directories. Pay careful attention to the categories you choose. Each directory offers different opportunities, so take your time and fill them out with all the information they request. This process should take about 90 minutes all together, and it’s the best 90 minutes you will spend on local search engine optimization.

Second, make sure your local address is prominently displayed on your home page, with your phone number. Add it to your contact page as well.  Also, you may want to search on Google for your business to see if you have any old listings online with an old address or phone number.  If so, do contact the site or directory and ask then to either changed it, or delete it.  Search engines hate conflicting information. Only use an actually physical address.  Google doesn’t accept P.O. boxes.

Third, make sure (as in all SEO), your title and description meta tags have your main keywords in them.  Also add your keywords to your headline of your home page.  Don’t over do this, make it natural.  It’s important that the search engines understand what your site is about.

Now you have a good start!  It’s time to get “votes” for your site with the search engines. Votes are when other sites link back to, or mention your business on their sites. As search engine optimization becomes more and more competitive (lets face it, more businesses are paying for it then ever) and there are only 10 or so sites listed on the first page of a search, and the top three get the vast majority of the traffic,  in many cases you are going to need a lot of high quality votes.

The first place to look is with associations you belong to.  The B.B.B. is a great link, and so  are many chambers and associations. Check and see if your listing has your web site on it.

After that, add good local directories.  Go to Google and search  Your City Directories.  You will find a ton, and many will have categories that fit your company well.

Plan on spending about 30 minutes a day linking for a few months, and maybe a lot more.  Yes, that’s what it’s going to take..  I could write a book about link quality (the type of links that pay off)  and how to research for them, but if you are doing your own  SEO, this is a great start.  If you want several excellent researches you can subscribe to www.seomoz.com , or SEObook.com

I do want to leave you with two additional thoughts.  A great start for back linking is www.metasocialweb.com You can add your site,  plus your blog, and all your social sites.  It’s a powerhouse SEO, Social media tool. Yes it does cost money,  but you may find that many valuable sites do, because they are human edited (A big plus) and they have to pay to keep the site up and running.  We  built Metasocialweb.com to help small business with Social media, and it turns out to be great for SEO too!

If you want a jump start on links every month you can subscribe to our Do It Your Self SEO package that provides the information on  20 quality links we have already researched.  Or our starter SEO packages where we do the linking for you.

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