Tag Archives: Local SEO. Local Internet MArketing

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Top Five Local SEO Ranking Killers

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Top Five Local SEO Ranking Killers. Sometimes it’s more important to know what will kill your rankings than what will help your local rankings.

1.)    Inconsistent Name , Address or Phone, on different web sites.

Architecture of a Web crawler.
Architecture of a Web crawler. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Clean up old listings that have the old address by searching that address in Google, and then contacting each site and up dating it to the new address.

Same thing for a changed phone number.  Google the number to see what sites have it listed and get it changed or deleted, and if for some odd reason (and we have seen this several times) you have a different URL, with a different phone number, please remove the site!

As a side note make sure your business listings are consistent in every directory. Same exact name, same exact phone number and same exact address. 

A confused robot is not your friend!  ( Robots are what Search engines use to look at your site) 

2.)    No Address on the Site

English: White hat seo symbolizes good ethic t...

I don’t know why I see so many local web sites with no address listed. I assume it’s because they are home based. In most cases, you should either list your home address, or get an office. You can hide your home address on Google Places  (as a matter of fact its part of their terms of service that if you are home based, to click do not show my address). Any way, if its really important that you don’t want your prospects to know you are working in your pajama’s, as if they won’t figure it out anyway, your not going to have good rankings. And if you had good rankings you could probably afford the little office up the street. LIST YOUR ADDRESS, PHONE and Company name on the home page.

3.)    No local citations

 It takes an hour or two to list your company in the important local directories.  Go to getlisted.org (It’s free and a great resource).  List your business with most of the directories they recommend.

4.)    Using Dex tracking numbers for your PPC

There is some disagreement in the SEO world about how damaging this is. I have had several discussions with some of the countries best Local Maps and Local SEO experts , most notably Mike Blumenthal (see his blog here http://blumenthals.com/blog/  and follow it if you are a serious local SEO student), But they all do agree that after looking at some case studies, a DEX tracking number published on multiple different local directories is not good for your rankings.

I would take it a bit further, IT IS A COMPLETE RANKING KILLER for Google Places.  It’s the same thing as having different phone numbers published on different web sites. It confuses the Robots, and then you are in rankings trouble.

5.)    No Meta Titles or descriptions or poorly written ones.

So your nephew did your web site when he was studying web design… nice! The most important part of your web site for SEO, is your meta title.  If you don’t know what that is (and you can not see it BTW on your site) call a web design firm or SEO and ask them to check.  If its your company name, your hurting your rankings, unless you want to rank for people who all ready know who you are).  Have a pro take a look at your meta tags, and your on site SEO in general while they are there. This one may cost you a few hundred dollars on up to fix (including the on Site SEO changes), and yes 90% of the web design firms you speak with with tell you to build a new site (and maybe you should), but, just get the tags right to start!

These are the top 5 ranking killers for Local sites that we have seen. And any one of them can keep your site from being well ranked. It’s worth the time to have a company ( like us) fix this issues if Search Engine traffic is important.

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SEO Analysis Denver

Should you add no follow links for your site?

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Yes. And here is why you should not discount no follow links.

Rand Fishkin,  Founder of SEOmoz just did a great blog on early ranking factors data after his companies April Linkscape update.

One of his interesting points during the session was that many SEO’s are using more no follow links, and that they are seeing better value in them.

I have agreed with that for years. And here is why. A link profile that has a nice mix of Follow and no Follow is more natural.  Google likes natural.

Not only that,  but as Rand made this point in the presentation, alot of really trusted sites and high value sites use no follow. Face book, twitter, wordpress… the list goes on and on. I don’t think google really pays as much attention to the no follow tag as many people think they do. Why would they. Works to their advantage if we think they do, as they then have a metric that is pretty easy to identify sites building an unnatural linking profile using an unnatural amount or percentage of follow links.

So, I go back to were I always seem to go with Links. Add links that you would add without considering how they will effect your site rankings, and you will end up in good shape. SEO is not search engine manipulation. It is solid marketing and promotion for your web site.

 

You can see the blog here

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Denver Sales Training, or coaching?

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One of the challenges we face in business is a clear description of what a business does.

We are a sales acceleration firm. As such, we do a lot of SEO in Denver, as it’s difficult to find a business who can not benefit from a strong SEO program.

That is why you will find so much information on SEO  on this blog. Scroll down to find that most of these blogs are about search engine optimization and Internet Marketing.

But, we also offer sales coaching for business owners and senior managers. Sales coaching is not sales training. It is a process to accelerate your businesses sales through a proven system.

I coached two of Denver’s fastest growing companies (as named by the Denver Journal in 2010). And we still do the SEO work for both. But I can tell you that the SEO without the sales coaching would have been far less effective in what every business really wants. It’s not about higher rankings, it’s about more revenue.

If you want to see more on our sales coaching you can view it here.

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Denver SEO and Good Marketing

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It’s really the same thing. In our sales coaching, one of the main topics is how to sell more through business relationships.

Local SEO is just an extension of that principle. Your site needs to “build good relationships” with other local and national sites to attract attention.

In business you want to first, build great relationships with your current customers, and then build strategic relationships with other companies that can promote your service, and in turn you can promote theirs.

The bottom line on building better positive relationships in business is finding ways to support your customers and network in new and valuable ways.
Ask not what they can do for you, but ask what you can do for them.

A good step would be offering to write a letter of reference for their services, and allowing them to post it on their web site. Testimonials are an important part of building trust, and they should jump at the offer. It’s good for their site and company and if you add your business information to the testimonial include your web site, and that’s a plus for your SEO.

I truly believe that the way you advance your business is by helping others advance theirs. And just like with good local SEO, make sure you chose the companies you promote carefully, as you will be judged to an extent by their reputation.

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For Local Denver SEO, Content is King

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Going back to our premise that good Search engine optimization is all about good marketing, Google recently announced some more changes that will affect rankings on sites with duplicate content. You can see the Google blog here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/google-search-and-search-engine-spam.html

What you want on your site is fresh and good content. Site owners that just swap information from other sites or Blogs don’t do much to bring up the bar (so to speak) for good content.

Fresh, original and new…. those are great marketing concepts, and very good for S.E.O. as well.

Read the post on White Hat Search Engine Marketing

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Denver Local SEO is more than rankings

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Local SEO should be more than getting your site ranked well on search engines. You need to also think what your web site ranking will look like!

Given the choice of being first for a category with no reviews, or third with 10 great reviews I would go with the third spot, and the reviews.

Which one would you look at?

Reviews bring positive attention, and will more than likely bring more clicks to your web site.

There are several other factors that will affect how Google displays your web site. You need to manage all of those to get the right people to your site.

See more about us at www.salesjumpstart.net

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Understanding Search Engine Optimization

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When we explain SEO, or search engine optimization, to business owners, we explain it in this analogy.

SEO is like a popularity contest back in high school.  Every one wants to be liked by Google.  So the first thing is Google has to like your looks.  In this case, that’s your site.  Google like’s sites with good content,  easy navigation,  and a site that is clear what it’s about.

The second thing Google wants to know is who likes you ( who you hang out with). In this case what other sites like you, and how does Google feel about those sites. If they are popular, your site is going to pick up some popularity points in this contest. A site’s trust is also very important, is Google confident that the site that mentions your site is on the “good” list.

 

Google also wants you to be popular with sites that are related to you. No one likes a wishy washy site.  Are the sites that like you, related to what you are?

And Google knows who likes you (your site) by what other sites link back to you, or give you a mention.

If you want to see more about how Google Index’s web sites check out our  SEO Page and the video by Google’s own Matt Cutts.

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Local Search and SEO

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No question that local search will be the buzz for the next year or two. In a recent SEO national gathering it was all the talk.

There’s good reason for that. More and more business owners are finding that their customers find them through an Internet search, and the majority of searches have a local intent.

Getting your business visible on search engines is no longer an option in many industries.

We get many clients who have been using other SEO forms with poor results. Do yourself a favor, ask for three local references (recent) and verify their rankings.

www.salesjumpstart.net

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