Every business wants to be ranked on the first page, but if you are a local business in San Diego ranking well in Atlanta, it doesn’t really help your business to the extent it should.  Here are just a few tips on how to get your company a higher ranking for your locality.

There are a few ways to help optimize local SEO:

First, get listed with the search engines. Getting listed by Google Maps will help tremendously. You have to fill out an application, get verified, and then wait a few weeks before your business will show up. Yahoo Local is another important listing. You can do this without the verification and your business gets listed faster. The more exposure you get on these sites, the more customers you will get.

Another way to optimize your SEO for you local region is to get listed in yellow pages type directories. Yellow Book, Yellow Pages, Yelp, and CitySearch are all examples of these types of directories. People utilize these just like they used the Yellow Pages phone book in the past. They need a service or a product and they look it up. Your business will get much more exposure when listed on these sites.

You should also list your business on free local classifieds such as Craigslist, Backpage or USFree Ads. People look to these sites to find service every day. These are very popular with Internet users and will get maximum exposure for little cost and effort.

Another way to get more exposure is to get reviewed. Ask your customers, or your friends and family to review your business on the various directories and online review sites. You can also attempt to put a link to your business on various local sites such as a Chamber of Commerce site.

One of the most important thing you can do is to manage your business profile. Your profile contains the basics: business name, address, phone number, and business description. This is what information will appear when someone does a search. This information will also appear on sites for national data providers. You certainly want this information to be correct and give a true description of your business.

Throughout an SEO campaign you should be keeping track of progress, rankings, and results of any SEO work that has been done on your site.  Many companies do not provide their clients with a thorough picture of the actual improvement in site rankings and the ending results from an online marketing campaign.  A legitimate and ethical company should provide it’s clients with Google Analytics, an online tracking tool that displays a myriad of information about a website.

Many people may not know that it will give you a competitive edge since it provides a clear picture of what you need to do to beat the competition. Moreover, Google Analytics will save you a great amount of time, money, and effort in the optimization of your site. In addition, it can help you make better decisions on investments about your web site and your SEO campaigns. For some people who manage more than one site, Google Analytics allow them to spend less time running ad-hoc reports and more time analyzing their SEO campaign and planning for their next moves.

So, how does Google Analytics work?

Getting started is actually very easy. All you have to do is set-up an account for your web site and SEO campaign. The nice thing about this tool is that you can even have multiple campaigns running at the same time while targeting different parts of the site with various keywords. As soon as you are done setting up, you need to walk through the 5Stage SEO Process while following the task indicated on the screen.

Some of these include data and reports with which you can take a look at and consult the help and advice sections which basically inform you of the significance of each task. Consequently, you can make decisions about the campaign keywords yourself or you can ask other people to do the task for you. As soon as you are done with this task, you can proceed to measuring and analyzing your progress, and you can start the whole process again.

If you couple Google Analytics with Analytics SEO, you can actually perk up your SEO campaign. By having Google Analytics in your web site, you can have additional insights and reports that are very helpful on your SEO campaign. These reports include keyword potential, keyword ranking, summary of keywords by visits, and interactive charts to name a few. All of these reports play a vital role in the optimization of your site. BY knowing the status of factors such as keywords and traffic, you would be able to evaluate if your SEO campaign is working or not.

These daily influx of information that can be made available through Google Analytics allows you to modify, upgrade, and improve your marketing strategies. Thus, if you want to ensure that your SEO campaign is on the right track, it is most important that you can find the means to actually monitor and evaluate its performance.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising is still a useful tool in Search Engine Optimization, it enables your business to pay to be ranked at the top, albeit through a different channel.  When it comes down to it though, which is more important:  the actual clicks or the conversions?  One reason PPC advertising is a popular method is because you only pay for the advertising when someone clicks on it. It is important to note, however, that there is a difference between a click and a conversion.

Click versus Conversion

So what is the difference between a click and a conversion? A click simply means that someone clicked on your ad and landed on your website. That’s it; that is all a click is.

A conversion, however, is a click that converts into another action by the site visitor. They actually “do” something after landing on your website. This could be a number of things, such as:

- the site visitor purchases something

- the site visitor signs up for a site membership or subscription

- the site visitor opts in to your mailing list

- the site visitor uses your contact form to ask a question about a product or service

Many people think that a click is not a conversion unless something is actually sold. You should receive value for your advertising dollars, and that varies for every business, but it does not have to be solely monetary. A conversion does need to provide some value to you and your business, however, because otherwise there would be no benefit to spending the money.

PPC Advertising Providers with Conversion Tracking

Not all pay per click provider services offer conversion tracking capability. You do need to track pay per click conversions in order to determine if the money you are investing in this form of advertising is providing any return for the investment.

If it isn’t, you may need to make some modifications to your ads and work on your targeted keyword list to achieve a better PPC advertising conversion rate.

Here is an interesting take on the new role of social media.  In such a saturated market, using social media is no longer enough, but using it effectively is key!  Courtesy of Marsha!

“Imagine yourself at a big cocktail party where many of the people may be potential clients and customers. Everyone is milling around, enjoying the evening and you’re working the room to meet those who interest you. Now, which communication strategy do you think is going to be more effective? Going from person to person, giving them your “elevator pitch” while handing them your business cards? Or simply engaging in genuine conversations about current events and issues relevant to your expertise?

I’m sure you’ll agree the latter is a far more desirable approach to meeting new people at a cocktail party and the same holds true when conversing on a social networking site. I learned this concept from social media guru, David Meerman Scott, best-selling author of the #1 bestseller The New Rules of Marketing & PR when I interviewed him a few years ago.

While Social Networking started with no commercial intent, it has become a fact of life for many businesses who are engaged in Social Media Marketing (SMM). Commercial concerns are becoming a big part of Facebook and Twitter more and more each day. People use the social networks as part of their social lives with the commercial aspect of it being only slightly relevant.

The companies that are successful with SMM recognize that the first word is social and how they “socialize” is crucial. They use their status updates and tweets in a non-commercial manner, providing information and interesting tidbits that are related to their expertise without pushing a sales message. The important thing to remember about Social Media Marketing in general is that it’s interactive. That means when you send out a tweet or a blog, people can respond in a public forum. So, someone tweeting about how upset they are that their favorite contestant on American Idol got voted off the show knows they’ll get feedback from people who may agree or disagree with them. The same thing holds true for commercial tweets. If you send out something about your company or yourself, you’re inviting fair, as well as unfair, comment and criticism. The social networking sites are not your personal Web page, where you get to edit the content. The space is home to millions of people with all their various opinions; so if you’re not careful, you may wind up with a lot of negative chatter as a response to your business outreach.

To help you avoid some of the more common pitfalls of SMM, I’ve put together a few tips on how to use this strategy in a productive way that gets results.

Don’t Sell – People mostly use social networking sites to interact with friends and associates. If you tweet that people should buy your new book that was just released, you’re opening yourself up to negative responses for invading this social space with a commercial. It’s not like a Tupperware party where people are expected to buy what you’re selling. Treating it as such could cause you to lose followers and friends as a result.

Inform and Entertain – People will think more positively about you and your company if you use the social media connection to inform and even entertain. Let’s say you own a scuba shop, and you want to use these sites to promote your business. Don’t tweet about a sale on scuba supplies. Instead, tweet what the boating and diving conditions will be for the weekend, and include a link to a blog or informational listing on your Web site for more information on it. People who are divers will use that information to decide whether they want to dive that weekend and many may need supplies. Now they recognize and respect your shop as a resource, and will be far more inclined to stop by to fill up their oxygen tanks before their trip.

Respect the Culture – The culture of Social Media is not unlike an Internet forum or message board. The delivery mechanism is the same, but many people engage in lively and serious debate, so think of ways to engage people in those discussions without painting yourself in a negative light. A good rule of thumb is that if you wouldn’t say it at a social gathering in person, then chances are it wouldn’t be appropriate online either. Keep your updates useful, informative and neutral. People will respect the fact that you respect them.

It’s Not a Numbers Game – This is not a direct response medium, so tweeting five times a day with new information may annoy people more than help them. Confine your communications to a reasonable number, based on the groups you belong to. Focus on the quality of your communication instead of the quantity.

Capture Your Audience – Providing quality information that your friends and followers enjoy can cause them to want more information from you. So, give people an opportunity to get it by setting up a free newsletter or a blog that they can opt into. This allows you to maintain an ongoing relationship so that when they are ready to buy what you have to offer they will remember you.

SMM is a great way to build relationships with new associates as well as potential customers and clients. When used properly, you can build a huge following of people who come to know you as an expert in your field. It’s a forum that will pay enormous dividends for years to come.”

One of the most common newbie mistakes is using fully automated tools for link building. Avoid all tools that promise complete automation. If a tool requires minutes of setup time, but promises thousands of backlinks do not use it. If a tool requires a fair amount of work you may consider it. Here are the top link building methods that you should avoid.

1. Automated blog commenting tools: latest version of Word-Press puts a Nofollow attribute on each link (Search Engines discards these links).
2. Manufactured links: they’re created by making thousands of fake blogs and interlinking them together.
3. Stolen links: Which are created by hackers who break Word-press and other CMS systems to inject your links.
4. Buying link: Google can easily detect purchased links. Net citizens can also report your site to Google.
5. 2 way linking schemes: Google updated its system to devalue those links.

Google software engineers spend lots of time on link analysis. You may have already been personally sandboxed for using these techniques. Don’t make the same mistake twice!  Spending hours creating a site and getting it banned is a painful experience.

But where do you get good links?

There is an easy method for discovering how to get relevant backlinks. Go to Google and type in the keyword you’re targeting. Write down URLs of your top competitors. Go to Yahoo Site Explorer https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites. Type in competitor’s URL, select “Explore URL”, click “Inlinks”, in Show Inlinks dropdown select “Except from this domain”, then select “Entire site”.

This will give you a list of all the backlinks that your competitor has. If the competitor has good rankings it means Google likes their backlinks. Write down all unique pages in the list. Now visit each page and analyze what type of site is linking to your competition.

Remember that link building is not about ranking your site. Link building is about outranking your competitors. Armed with this list you can negate the advantages that your competitor has.

So you’ve gone through the long process of optimizing your website for search engines; completed keyword research, applied your keywords to your HTML page titles ensuring they also appear in your content and submitted a sitemap to the major search engines, that must be it right? Wrong!

These are vital steps in the process and will definitely have a positive impact on your website rankings in search engines, but without ongoing link building you are unlikely to achieve that all important Page 1 spot (unless you have very little competition).

What is link building?

Link building is pretty self explanatory, it is simply the process of getting other websites to link to your site, however doing it right is somewhat less obvious.

Why is link building important?

Every link to your site is effectively seen as a vote for your site, therefore the more links your site has the more important search engines consider it to be, and this has the effect of gradually improving your sites rankings.

Why doesn’t everyone just exchange links?

Probably one of the first questions that springs to mind for most people, however when we talk about links having a positive impact we mean one way in-bound links, if you exchange links with people then you effectively cancel out the effectiveness of each link. It is also important to limit the number of outbound links on your own site.

Another key reason to avoid simply exchanging links is that search engines don’t like sites that constantly exchange links in order to trick them into ranking sites higher, and the longer term effect of doing this could be having your website penalized or even dropped from the search engines index.

What sort of sites should I try to get links from?

Lots of people stumble across the important of link building for their SEO efforts and then embark upon a campaign to get as many links as possible, however they miss one vital element of link building. Links should come from sites that are relevant to your website, otherwise it will carry very little value and end up being a wasted exercise!

Hiring an SEO company to help your website succeed is a highly recommended business investment. Whether you have a large corporation or a small company website your business will benefit greatly from SEO services. SEO refers to search engine optimization which is a popular marketing strategy being used by businesses all over the world. It is a marketing strategy which focuses on boosting the business of a website by attracting relevant quality traffic through major search engines. By building a strategy around ranking well for particular keywords you stand a good chance at being listed towards the top of search engine results. When you are listed towards the top of search results the likelihood that you will get more visitors to your website that are genuinely interested in your products and services increases.

The SEO company you choose to hire for improving your business website should have a good reputation. Research them on the Internet and visit their website to find out more details about them. Just by visiting an SEO company website you can get an idea of how professional they are. You can also find out what kind of rates they offer for their SEO packages and what each package includes. If you want to see what kind of results you could get by running an SEO campaign with them you can find out if they have an SEO portfolio available on their website. This section usually has information about clients they work for and how they helped them obtain the results they needed. An SEO company should be open about their clients and should provide you websites to see their work up close.

If you have narrowed down to the idea of hiring a particular SEO company ask them for a quote. A quote will be given to you after they review your website to see what needs improvement and what factors are properly in place. By reviewing your website they can get an idea of what your products and services are, what your targeted keywords should be, what the current status of your website is and where it needs to be. Based upon the amount of SEO work that needs to be done for your website to achieve successful results they will give you a quote. If you are working with this SEO company for the first time it is better to choose 1 package at a time. If you are happy with the results of this SEO package then you can go in for more.

The internet is saturated with millions of websites and with each passing day, the number keeps on increasing at a rapid pace. This points out to the important fact that more and more people are launching their business on the net. There is a mad rush to sell or market the products and services, online. This is because internet provides a quick and direct access to global audience at a click of button. The desire to reach out to the vast customer base, ahead of the competitors, has resulted in creation of new marketing strategies. Search engine optimization is one such technique that helps the search engines to locate articles based on, keywords typed in by the visitors, when they are searching for that particular product or service advertised on the net.

Selecting the Right Keywords

Numerous products or services are launched on the net through websites. The websites have content that describes the product or service. It is important to select the 2 to 3 words or phrases that best relate to the product. These words or phrases will form the backbone on the content because the content will revolve around it. Before selection, it is good practice to research well on the most likely word or phrases that the visitors are likely to type in, for the product or service that is to be advertised in the website. This greatly helps giving the website higher page ranking with search engine. The next important step is to write an attractive title and include keywords in it. This gives the webpage a higher search engine optimization value.

Maintaining the Right Density

The search engine optimization principles highlight use of the right density of keywords or SEO number throughout the content. The SEO number or percentage usually varies from 1% to 5%, depending upon the site developers. Basically the SEO number is percentage of the keywords used in comparison to the total number of words in the article. It is important to maintain the right percentage because SEO value of the page depends upon it. Suppose an article has 500 words, the SEO number for 1% density means 5 keywords. The SEO ratio depends upon the type of article. For Technical, health, travel articles it is usually around 4% to 5%.