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By Phillip Longmire in SE Positioning

SEO2When it comes to getting your website to rank higher in Google, there are some things you need to be mindful of. What I want to do is give you some tips that you can use to not only rank higher in with your site, but generate more income from the work you put into your website.

Write For People Not Machines: While content is key to any successful search engine optimization, it’s important to remember that ultimately you are writing for other people, not the machines. I am not sure this can be overstated or said to many times. You have to be creating High-quality, readable, and informative content. If you do then you get readers and clicks. If you don’t then you spend your wheels. If you are looking for a long term solution, just remember that Quality wins over quantity in the end. The other thing that this allows you to do is build an online business or following without relying on Google for all your traffic. Outside of blog posting and forum posting.

Build Relationships With People: Ask an educational website or a non-profit to link to your content. Search engines look favorably on sites that have been linked to by reputable sources. Provide high quality information that will entice reliable websites to want to feature your site. The keyword here is reliable and perhaps I add readable websites. I am not talking about spinning an article and submitting it to article directories. Create content that these organizations will find useful and worthy.

Add To It Everyday: Websites need to be regularly refreshed with new content and pages to help with search engine optimization. Keywords are great, yet they can only help your site to an extent. If you are writing about popular subjects, it is easy to get lost in the crowd. You do not want your website ranked low. Keep your recommendations fresh by linking to appropriate and influential high ranking websites on a regular basis. Just like you want great sites linking back to you, you want to be linking to great websites.

Know What The Joneses Are Doing: Don’t forget to investigate your competitors’ SEO campaigns. Seeing what techniques your competitors are using to get to the top of search engine results pages can help you rank your own website. Learn from their success, then adapt and expand on the SEO methods they are using and use them on your own website.

Learn A Little HTML: Do not forget that search engines are not people. Use HTML, which they can read, to give your site an advantage over the competitors. Including other forms of programming is useful and perhaps even necessary, but including HTML as a back-up will give the search engine the information in needs on your website.

Mix Up Your Tactics: When it comes to marketing, backlinking, advertising, or whatever methods you use, you need to always be mixing up your tactics. Not only in the advertising you do off your website, but the marketing you do on your website. What you want to see happening is that people stay on your site longer, and that they click on your links. Both of these are measurable. In the bounce rate alone you can tell if someone just comes and leaves.

I know some have a bounce rate below 20%, but if stay around the mid to high 30% range and, or lower, you will be doing well. What we are talking about is increasing your overall profit and success during the course of the year. Learn A Little On-Page SEO: To better optimize your site for search engines, you should place keywords in the title tag for every post. Most search engines place more importance on titles than other types of contents. This means that using effective keywords is your title is one of the best ways to draw in traffic from search engines.

Learn Proper Linking Techniques: When linking back to your homepage through other parts of your website, be sure that you are linking to the domain name and not /index.html or another iteration that has something appended to the end. Your homepage will be placed higher on search results pages if you help search engines recognize that the domain name is the anchor of your site, rather than confusing the search engines by having two (or more) separate homepages (such as /index.html).

Also Work The Free Stuff: This really does work. You need to have some free stuff to give away. What you will learn real quick is that after doing this for a while, you will have more than enough free stuff to give away. A great way to get free stuff is to join a membership site that gives it away. Some are OK, but there are some membership sites that really give away quality stuff.

Phillip Longmire has been doing internet marketing full time since 2008. He his a speaker, writer, and business owner. He works with business owners teaching them how to get more traffic to their sites. All his articles, advice, and know how comes from the front lines.

By Stephen Monday in SE Positioning

SEOptimizationOn the Web, attention spans are short. Formatting is critical to getting people to finish reading your article, or watching all of your video.

Folks do not like to come across huge blocks of text which are not broken down into bits that are more manageable.

The same is true as far as the quality of the content. Why provide only a few bits of wisdom, when you can pack valuable information into every sentence?

People would much rather find many pearls of wisdom, than have to sift through page after page, only to find sparsely placed helpful content.

Power Web copy is high impact, hard hitting, engaging, as well as informative. It is full of action verbs and adverbs, not adjectives.

It does not use “hype”, or make impossible sounding claims. It takes what is being said, and slams it “out of the park” with crystal clear points that are highly illustrative.

The copywriting world has noticed this style of writing is most effective in getting visitors to take action.

It very often uses a “story-based” platform because people relate very well to stories.

It makes use of the “active voice” (where the noun performs the action) instead of the passive voice (where the action happens to the noun.)

This style of writing helps keep the reader engaged. The points use vivid, picturesque, wording that incites the reader’s imagination, and makes him want to read the next sentence.

This keeps the reader moving forward in the copy. Video scripts written in the same manner, avoid boring viewers.

There are way too many sales websites online (which are not making sales) that have yet to learn this strategy.

Take a good look at your e-commerce site – does it fall into this category?

You probably have a good product or service to sell, but if your copy suffers from not having this style of writing, then this is the reason, your site is not selling anything.

Look at some of the sites that are having brisk sales – do you notice the difference in the style of writing used?

There is a good reason those sites make use of the “active voice” style copywriting – it works, it is much more persuasive than the “passive voice” style copy.

It is amazing how presenting such a small change can make a huge difference in the response generated.

Get a professional to evaluate your sales page. He will tell you the same thing.

Copy that makes sales follows very specific guidelines, especially Web copy. Any copy that compels readers to take a desired action, or “convert” is copywriting.

Capture or squeeze pages are specifically crafted to compel visitors to enter their email address, or apply for further information such as a “white paper” or a “Case Study”.

Whatever the case may be, power Web copy can do wonders for your bottom line sales.

Sites not written to make sales directly from the page, should still use “power copy” to get the visitor to perform a desired action.

If you remember to incorporate this style of writing into your next sales page, or video script, you will see a huge difference in the response it generates.

Articles written in “active voice” tend to garner more readerships, more republishing, and more “likes.”

This results in getting the author much more exposure. Go ahead and make a “splash” when you enter the water, you just might provoke the perfect response from someone you need to meet.

If you begin an article marketing campaign aim high – try to get at least 20 to 25% (on average) of your submissions to be republished.

Some articles may get as high as 60% – others 12 – 15% but aim for an average of at least 24%.

Doing this will ensure not only a good following, but a good, responsive click through rate that will earn you money.

Besides, having nearly 25% of the articles you submit published may result in getting further exposure on high traffic sites and consequently more publishers running your articles. This could result in having thousands of readers eagerly looking at your content, and clicking your links. Does this sound good to your ears? I thought so.

Stephen Monday is a Professional Web Copywriter, Creative Writer, and Sales Writer for the Web. Get your free Sales Page evaluation here: http://www.AAAWebcopyservices.com

By Warner Carter in SE Positioning

mobile-seoMobile Web usage is growing stronger every day. The popularity of this service is one of the main reasons behind the smartphone’s dominance of the mobile communications market. On-the-go Web access is also proving to be one of the most sought-after conveniences of Web users today.

The mobile-friendly versions of popular social media sites and search engines have long enjoyed high visitor traffic. Blogs and business websites are starting to cash in on the trend, acknowledging how the population of mobile Web users can significantly change site traffic and possibly contribute to revenue. Many SEO experts recognize the quickly-rising percentage of users who access the Web through their mobile phones.

Basic Mobile SEO

There is a notion that mobile SEO is a separate branch of SEO. While there are slight differences between both concepts, the two processes have a similar goal: to help websites rank in search engine results and dominate their respective niches.

The first thing you should keep in mind when doing mobile SEO is that the process is still based on traditional SEO principles. The proper usage of keywords, tags, and anchor links is as important for mobile websites as it is for regular websites. However, you should remember that mobile search engines often consider a site’s speed and its ability to be rendered well on a particular phone.

Creating a mobile version of your site and venturing into mobile SEO can help you capitalize on the growing mobile Web user population. Businesses and companies are at risk of losing revenue when they take mobile SEO for granted. With smartphones and tablets selling like hotcakes these days, there’s no reason for you not to take advantage of the trend and enjoy success for your business.

Of course, it’s understandable if you’re a little skeptical about mobile SEO’s abilities in making your business more successful. The Web provides a lot of articles on how mobile SEO can benefit small business, especially those that cater to localized markets. You can use these articles as resources for the basics of mobile SEO. You can also contact a professional SEO provider, in case you’re interested in the method.

Mobile SEO Keywords

Web designers usually overlook keywords even if they are aware that they are designing a mobile website. If you can’t design your own mobile website, make sure to hire a designer who is knowledgeable about SEO. Your working relationship with your web designer is a critical part of your mobile SEO strategies.

If you’re thinking of optimizing your mobile website using the keywords for your regular website, think again. Smartphones and tablets are structurally different from laptops and desktop computers. Typing on a mobile phone or dealing with an onscreen keyboard is said to be a big factor for users to choose shorter keywords. These users may search for keywords that are more concise. Experts call it the “rush search.”

Before consulting your Google Mobile Keyword tool, keyword analysis must be completed. First, you have to revisit and restudy your target market and niche. You have to think from a different perspective and put yourself in a mobile Web user’s shoes. List down all the possible keywords, regardless of competition, length, and strength, then get some recommendations from your customers, friends, and colleagues.

Then, jump into AdWords and use they Mobile Keyword tool. Look for keywords Web users are actually searching for. Just like typical keyword research, you have to know the strength of every keyword you are going to use.

What’s the point of researching keywords without consulting Adwords and the Mobile Keyword tool first? This helps you re-associate yourself with your business and market. Some SEO experts forget the essence of knowing their market because of the vast availability of keyword tools. They always end up choosing high-ranking keywords without even considering major factors that may affect their business. For example, if you’re selling secondhand or used Chanel and Hermes items, you would not want to mistakenly choose the keyword ‘brand new designer bags’, just because you were distracted by the long green bar that indicates its rank.

Basically, you should have a mobile version of your website if you want to jump into the mobile SEO bandwagon. However, if you’ve already established a strong domain authority, creating a new domain may affect your site negatively. Instead, use a sub-domain to retain your current domain authority and link juice. The mobile version of your website should always be in XHTML or Basic XHTML format. This is where you can use your new mobile keywords.

Have a mobile search self-test and analysis If you’re not familiar with mobile searching, you can do a self-test of how it works. Knowing the search engine is like studying your battlefield. You have to recognize the competition, the competitors, the rankings, and the current situation. Accessing some mobile websites can give you ideas on what you can do for your own website.

Investing in Mobile SEO

Some think that mobile SEO is only for businesses that have secure markets. There are business owners who opt to do mobile SEO to show success, because the process often requires more financial resources. On the other hand, some business owners choose to venture into mobile SEO to strengthen their promotion strategies, because they know the importance of having a mobile presence today.

The Future of Mobile SEO

The future of mobile SEO greatly relies on manufacturers of mobile phones and computers. As long as these companies design and produce smartphones and tablets, mobile SEO’s future is secure. 2011 starts the decade of the mobile Web, and this fad is yet to fully boom. As long as technology and Web giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! exist, there’s no end in sight for mobile SEO.

Additional mobile SEO reminders:

• Submit your site to major mobile search engines for quicker crawling and indexing.
• Put relevant keywords in the title tag, headers, body text, and anchor text, and make sure you integrate these keywords into your website’s content.
• Promote your mobile website in social media sites.
• Check how your site looks on different smartphones and tablets, and be open to revisions and improvements for your mobile site.

Warner is interested in everything about discovering and learning new things online. He works with the only for SEO Resellers outsource resource Endless Rise

By Ricky Weber in SE Positioning

SearchEnginesA large amount of Internet users come to their computer looking for specific information, and most of the time they will use a search engine to find it. It stands to reason, therefore, that if you have a website related to their topic of interest, you can benefit by having your own web pages show up at the top for what they are searching for.

However, if you commit any one of these following three search engine optimization sins, you run the risk of having your website deleted from the search engine listings and you minimize the amount of Internet users that your website will be visible to.

Since search engines first acquired their widespread popularity, people have been trying to figure out the ways to outsmart them, and today there is a reliable list of the strategies that will most definitely get your website banned from the search listings. Some of these techniques might have experienced limited success in the earlier days of the Internet, but today using any of the following three techniques can do much more harm than good, and they should be avoided like the plague.

The first way that you can get banned from the search engines is to create something called a doorway page. This is when you build a web page filled with keywords about one topic in order to garner a good listing in the search engines about that topic, but then automatically redirect the visitor to a different website with a totally unrelated topic. This is a practice that makes a person’s Internet viewing experience unpleasant, and it is easy to understand why such behavior can get you banned from the search listings.

The second way to prevent your website from being listed in the search engines is to use invisible text on your web pages, where you set the font color the same as the background color and fill it with keywords that are only visible to search engines but not to people. This trick is easy to spot, and it will not be of any real benefit to your website if you try and use it.

The third way to get your website banned is something called keyword stuffing, where you create a web page filled with keywords for the search engines but no real content for your visitors. You can tell that such a behavior is ethically questionable, and while it might work for a short time, the long-term losses it can cause means that it is not worth doing.

It is important to view your search engine ranking with a long-term perspective, instead of looking for a quick search engine optimization shortcut that can end up doing damage. Since having a high ranking for a competitive and popular keyword can deliver a large amount of visitors to your website, make sure you take the time to do it right so that you can reap the rewards.

Do you want to increase the search engine rankings of your website and earn much more money? Go to www.NinjaSeoMethods.com and discover the top three “must have” search engine optimization tools that will help you to skyrocket the success of your business in record time!

By J Pal in SE Positioning

SearchEnginesThere are many pay per click advertising search engines to choose from online. The traffic quality varies across all of them. Some generate more sales than others and give you a better return on your ad spend.

3 of the best pay per click search engines for traffic quality are: Google AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Search and Microsoft’s adCenter.

According to ComScore.com these 3 have the following search market share in the United Sates (in March 2010):

Google Sites: 65.5%
Yahoo! Sites: 16.9%
Microsoft sites: 11.7%

Why is this important? Between just these 3 search engines they have an astonishing 94.1% of the search market share in the US. Ask have a 3.8% share and AOL have 2.5%.

This means the top 3 have the most traffic for you to tap into.

Which search engine should you use to run your Pay Per Click Advertising on and why? Here is a pro/con review of each…

GOOGLE ADWORDS

Pros:

Huge search volume. Because of this you can also dig deeper into your market and target niche markets.

Keyword research. They offer the best keyword research tool in my opinion and it is very simple and easy to work with. It gives you a ton of data on just about everything.

Excellent user interface. The AdWords interface has always been very clean and user friendly. They recently changed the interface and have improved it further to allow you to make multiple changes faster amongst other things.

Target different networks. You can target their content network (also known as Google AdSense) as well as different search networks.

Target different devices. You can target mobile phones as well as computers.

Ads go live fast. You don’t have to wait too long to get your ads approved.

Upload multiple campaigns easily. If you have big campaigns and many of them, you can upload them quite easily using the Google Adwords editor program.

Cons:

Very competitive. It is getting more and more competitive so you must get a good quality score with them. And this can also affect your sales.

Uncertainty for the future. If you base your business around this type of traffic you are vulnerable to the changes in Google that could happen overnight and stop your traffic dead.

Stricter guidelines. Guidelines are getting tougher as Google try to thin the herd and unlike the old days, it does take some work on your campaign to get a good quality score.

YAHOO SPONSORED SEARCH

Pros:

Good amount of search volume. So you can target different markets and niche markets.

Guidelines not as strict. Guidelines can be more relaxed than Googles’s but not by much.

Less competition. Less than Google that is but is still competitive.

Cons:

Keyword research. The keyword research tool is not as good as Google or Microsoft’s.

User interface. Not the cleanest and easiest use. Takes longer to put your campaigns together.

Less targeting options. Not as many as you would find at Google and Microsoft.

Uploading multiple campaigns. This is not as easy to do as it is in Google and Microsoft. You have to email your campaigns to Yahoo unless you have a gold account.

MICROSOFT ADCENTER

Pros:

Keyword research. Their keyword research tool has been improved lately and does include a demographic search option (something Google doesn’t offer). But Google’s keyword research tool is still more advanced.

Not as competitive. Not as competitive as Google and Yahoo.

Target by demographics. You can target by age and gender which can increase your sales.

Less strict on guidelines. A little less than Google but not by much.

Upload multiple campaigns. This requires the Microsft Silverlight application which is free. You can also import campaigns from Google and Yahoo.

Cons:

Not as much search volume. No where near as much search volume as Google and Yahoo which means less traffic.

User interface. This user interface is not as clean and as simple as Google’s but is better than Yahoo’s.

Less targeting options. You can’t target as many networks and devices as you can in Google.

Summing up The best pay per click search engine (in my opinion) is Google AdWords because the keyword research tool is the really good. The competition is high and guidelines are strict but they also have the most traffic which really helps.

They have a great user interface which makes setting up campaigns quick and easy.

Both Yahoo and Microsoft don’t have the search volume that Google does. This means it is harder to get traffic in niche markets where the competition is lower. But with the merger of Yahoo and Microsoft, there should be some great improvements ahead.

And now i would like to invite you to download your FREE eBook “Traffic Generation for Newbies” when you visit:
www.RealWaysToMakeMoneyOnline.org/freebook.html
Read this eBook and you will learn the real ways to make money online and avoid the mistakes that stop 95% of people from doing so.

By Chris Hopkins in SE Positioning

To learn how to increase search engine rankings and drive website traffic you need to understand the concepts that govern the way the search engines work.

Without an understanding of these principles and a system to incorporate them into everything you do online, you will not get the success you are seeking.

On the other hand, learn how to effectively utilize them and you will start dominating niches all over the Internet driving thousands of visitors to your site on a daily basis.

So what are the principles that rule search engine rankings and how do I improve mine? Here they are:

1. Relevancy
2. Popularity
3. Originality

Relevancy

Relevancy is something defined as having relationship to. For example if your website was about golf, related content would include information about such things as golf clubs, golf courses and golf lessons.

Content about anything other than the topic of the website or related topics would not score for relevancy, thereby having no chance of ranking in the search engines. Search engines check your site for relevancy.

You need to be right on topic for whatever it is you are targeting with the content you create. A final word of caution about relevancy: Relevancy alone will not rank your site. You could have the most highly relevant, best original content ever written posted at your site, however if there are no sites pointing to it, it will never rank in the search engines. Relevancy does not work without the concepts of popularity and original content.

The first step is to choose the keyword or keyword phrase you want your content to target. Let’s say you’re trying to get a higher ranking for this keyword phrase, the topic I am currently writing about, “Improve Search Engine Ranking”. First, you would want to find what people are searching for and specifically target that keyword if you want your content to rank for that phrase.

Make sure you include the keyword phrase in the title of the article. For example, your title could be “Strategies To Improve Search Engine Ranking”. Always try to put the keyword or keyword phrase as the first few words of the article title. Always remember to use the keyword phrase, several times throughout the article. Finally make sure your content remains 100% relevant to the keyword phrase.

Popularity

Popularity works together with relevancy to improve search engine rankings. Popularity is based on two key measures:

1. How Many Sites Link to Your Site

A site’s popularity is measured first by the number of sites that directly link to your site.

To demonstrate popularity let’s take a quick look at YouTube. YouTube is one of the most popular sites on the Internet, Why? All links and embed codes taken from YouTube and embedded on other sites, whether on Facebook, Myspace, a blog, a sales page or a website, create automatic links back to YouTube where the video is hosted. Every time someone shares a YouTube video a link is created.

With the number of videos shared, Youtube gets thousands of new incoming links daily. This is one of the reasons why YouTube videos rank very highly on the search engines. Their site is super popular.

2. The Popularity of the Sites Linking to You

The more popular the site linking to you is, the better the score given by the search engines.

The more incoming links to your site the more popular it is. It is therefore always important to syndicate the content of your site (with a direct link to the content on your site), to as many sites as possible. The Internet presents a host of sites where you can post your content for free to increase your search engine rankings, including popular high ranking sites like article directories, blogs, social bookmarking sites, video
sites, press release and social network pages.

Originality

Originality basically refers to unique content. In simple terms the search engines ask the question, is this same piece of content all over the Internet? As an example, if I took a highly relevant and popular article from my site and posted it to hundreds of sites it would not rank high in the search engines as it would no longer be deemed unique.

There is no doubt that spreading your unique content across the Internet is important for driving traffic to your site. The secret is to make several unique versions of the same information all with a backlink to your original article posted on your site. Spinning is a popular term used to describe the process of changing the titles, key words and phrases throughout your article to make several unique versions. Placing these all
over the Internet with a back link to your site will improve rankings.

Follow the steps above and I promise you will see an increase in the number of visitors to your site.

To learn more about how you can improve search engine ranking and drive more traffic to your site it is important to learn all you can to rank highly. Visit the following link to access my Free Marketing Training and start ranking today.

By Andy Lunt in SE Positioning

So you’ve bought your Dreamweaver, an eternity later worked out how it works, started to build your site which is targeting your chosen niche or promoting your affiliate product and after what seems like forever you have added quality content. You’ve bust a gut to get this far, but this is where the real work begins. You need to get your site seen by as many people as possible. You need to drive as much traffic as you can whether it be through a pay-per-click campaign or via organic traffic.

Let’s say you decide to target organic traffic. You need to get a high ranking in the search engines. During your website construction you have already been using a keyword research tool and a SEO Tool and spending the midnight hours mulling over the chosen keyword phrases your research has indicated you should be targeting on your pages and using in your URL. Your whole site from headings to meta-tags, to meta-descriptions and anchor text are all optimized taking account of semantically related words, keyword density and the long tail.

Next you begin your back link campaign spending hours trying to get quality back links to your site. Social bookmarking takes over your life for days on end, you post on relevant blogs and all relevant forums, you set up your own blog, submit articles to article directories and then submit your entire site to SEO friendly website directories.

Yet more analysis follows, as you now study your competitors’ websites. You investigate what keywords they are targeting and study the links that they have developed and you develop strategies to be better than they are. Slowly but surely your site climbs the rankings. You constantly update your site adding quality content and before you know it your site is fast approaching the first page. A steady trickle of traffic flows on a daily basis. At this rate you should soon be top of the rankings and then… the sky’s the limit!

Unfortunately it doesn’t usually quite work like this. Yes it is true that if you have picked some long tail keywords to target you may be able to get somewhere near the top of the rankings or indeed even to the number one spot. In most instances however the traffic won’t be great and you would need to get each page of your website targeting a different long tail phrase and getting to the top of the rankings for that phrase each time for the total traffic to be lucrative. It’s certainly possible but does require a lot more graft.

For very popular keyword phrases it proves incredibly difficult to dislodge the top sites from their positions, even though in theory you may know that you have better back links and better content. Without the top positions the mass traffic will never be yours. It is just so frustrating as you probably know. I certainly do. So you go away and you research again and you analyze again and you spend days poring over the detail and you
work and you work and you know what, it makes not one jot of difference. You just cannot crack the top spots. Why not? How many times have I asked this of myself?

Now perhaps your tactics aren’t quite right. Perhaps the phrases you are targeting are the wrong ones or perhaps you’re back links are not quality back links. Do you have the quality of content on your site that you think you do? Yes, yes, yes, I hear you say. So what is going on? Well it could be something as simple as the age of your domain.

Google places a lot of trust in back links, especially quality back links to your site, but it also places significant trust in sites which have been around for a significant period of time. This is especially true if they are frequently updated. In many cases the top ranked sites are trusted sites as far as Google is concerned because they have an authority status due to their back links, but also due to the length of time they have been operating. If your site is an equal to a competitor’s site in terms of content and back links, but it is a far newer domain, there will be little chance of you dislodging your competitor from the top slot. The site that has been there for five years serving the web community carries a lot of trust with Google.

To dislodge these sites requires tremendous effort to create quality back links and sometimes you may never achieve it. It can be done however, you just need to be aware of what is going on and keep persevering. Some internet marketers have resorted to buying old domains in an attempt to overcome this challenge in building the website around the domain. I’m not entirely sure how Google reacts to this, especially if you are adding new content on a continual basis. Does the domain itself carry an inherent trust because of its age or is it the content that carried the trust from the old website?

Either way it’s worth exploring as one of the tactics along with keyword analysis and building back links that you could adopt in an attempt to get higher rankings and hence higher rates of traffic.

Andy Lunt is an internet marketer who concentrates largely on organic traffic and the techniques needed to drive this traffic to various sites. If you want to learn how to find lucrative keywords that make money then you need the best keyword tools possible. Take a look at the options at http://www.keyword-selectortool.com

By Jeffrey Taylor in SE Positioning

Many small business owners are just becoming aware of a powerful and free way to get their business in front of thousands of local customers using what is known as local search marketing.

You see, over the past several years the big 3 search engines have become aware that more and more people are using local identifiers in their search for products and services. In view of the fact that search engines rely on relevant results in order to survive, they have taken serious action.

Google, Yahoo, and Bing have all added local search results to their results pages and have allowed small business owners to add their listing for free.

How important are local results to the search engines? Well, just the fact that they place the local results at the top of their results indicates that they take it very seriously.

Here are 2 important reasons you need to take local search marketing seriously:

  1. Most people searching for a business in your local area are ready to act. This means if your listing does not show up on that persons local search you are kissing their business goodbye and driving them to your competition.
  2. You can reach Mobile searchers. Local listings display on cell phones and mobile search is exploding as more people are using smart phones to find local businesses.

Setting up your Local Search Listings.

Ok, where do you start?

The first place you need to go is Google Local. You will have to set up a free Google account and it may be a good idea to grab a free Gmail account to use as your email address for all your listings.

Your business may already be listed in Google results because they pull information from a lot of local directories like Yellowpages.com. The key here is to claim your business listing and optimize it to fit the right keywords, city, state, zip code, phone number and make sure you are in the right categories.

The description part of your listing is very important. In 25 words you need to describe what you do. It is important to get your most important keywords in there without spamming. Just give the facts and avoid sounding like an advertisement. Avoid phrases like best, most experienced, lowest priced etc…

Google will use your description, phone number and address to determine where you show up when people type in certain search phrases.

Warning! If you do not claim your local business listing you risk what is known as hijacking. This is where someone else claims your listing and changes the phone number, address, and website. Until you claim and verify your business listing it is open game for scammers.

After Google, do the same thing at Yahoo and Bing locals. It is very important to make sure you make your listing information consistent. The address, phone number, and keywords need to be the same. If google sees listings with multiple phone numbers or different addresses it will penalize you.

If you have multiple locations than you need to set up separate listings. Google also looks at the phone number so you should avoid using an 800 number. A PO Box is also a no no.

You must understand that the local search engines are looking for local identifiers to determine where you will show up in their results. It looks at phone numbers, your business description, and your address to help them.

After you have claimed your business in the big 3 local search, it is time to look at your local directories.

It is simple to find the good ones. Go to Google and type in the keywords people are using to find your type of business and check the results on the first page. There is a good chance that several local directories will appear on page one. Go to those directories first and submit your business.

Your goal is to get in as many local directories as possible using consistent information. Many of these directories are visited by Google and you want them to see the same information in every directory.

Many directories allow people to submit reviews about the particular business. Google will use these reviews in your listing, so try to get your best customers to take a few minutes to give you a good review.

Local Search Marketing is a small business owners secret weapon and if you are not currently doing it you are missing a great opportunity to attract new customers. The good news is that most of your competition is probably not aware of local search or are doing it all wrong.

If most of your customers are searching for you online, don’t you think it is a good idea to be there?

Jeffrey Taylor has been an Internet Marketing Specialist since 1995. He is a SEO (search engine optimizer) and an expert in local advertising. He is one of the partners at Local GoldMine, which is a online marketing company for local businesses based in Phoenix Arizona. Find out how our Local Search Marketing Domination package can help you.

By Michael Small in SE Positioning

MSN’s new counterpart Bing is rewriting search engine history. Touted by Microsoft as the first ever “decision engine” it’s picking up steam like Yahoo in its heyday and is in place to give Google a serious run for its money.

Speaking of “serious”; it’s important to mention that MSN and now Bing are the search engine of choice for most credit card carrying adults. In fact, MSN Bing is the default search engine on every new Windows PC sold. That’s Big! A lot of people go to Google for playing around but stick to Bing when they mean business. And that’s great for you!

I recently obtained ten (out of 10!) top five placements on MSN Bing using a simple formula I can share right now. It took me only a few hours to do all the work, including the domain purchase and setting up hosting. Here is that magic formula:

  • Focus on just one keyword for the site. Make it your most important.
  • Use the exact keyword phrase as your domain name and be sure it ends in .com, .net, or .org. It is fine to use dashes between each or any combination of words in the domain name. They are treated as spaces by the search engine and are typically much easier to get than domains without dashes.
  • Pay for two or more years when you register the domain. They appear to be using Google’s trick of checking registration dates and giving preference to those registered for more than one year.
  • Post just one or two pages. If you need more than a home page, add a contact page or something else light on text. Note: You can use your site as a landing page and create links to all of your main site’s pages.
  • Keep your home page text between 250 and 400 words. If you need to say more, add images that contain the text you want displayed.
  • Put your keywords in the headings but do not use “head tags” or “strong tags.” Just make the text big and bold using the “bold tag.”
  • Use your keyword phrase up to two times per one hundred words of text, but do not go over five full mentions for the entire page of text (plus up to two more for headings.)
  • Mention your full keyword phrase once toward the beginning of the first paragraph and again within the first one third of the page text. Then use it once near the end of the page text. The other mentions can go anywhere in between.
  • If you decide to go the software route to get faster results (still using these tips), stick with one that works well for MSN Bing. Many do not. Note: I developed the method above by using the tool I found at http://www.SEOeliteWeb.com.

Results: Here’s one example… I took one local client’s main keyword phrase of “richmond auto repair”, separated each word with a dash and registered the dotcom version. Within two weeks it became number one on MSN Bing for that keyword phrase and has stayed there as a gateway to the main site. It’s been four months now and I’ve done this for dozens of keywords, with my last experiment yielding 10 for 10 using just the tips listed here.

You can do it too.

Mike Small is the SEO Specialist for Marketing Considerations, LLC. Based in Richmond Virginia, Marketing Considerations helps clients from all over the US, Japan, Germany and the UK with their search engine optimization needs.

By admin in SE Positioning

There are millions-if not billions-of articles on the internet. No matter the topic, people have already written about it online. So it can be difficult to get new articles to the top of the search engines. But, it can definitely be done.

It isn’t enough to select a topic people about which people will want to read. Let’s say that you went over to Google’s AdWords (or another website that determines which keywords are the most popular search terms at the moment) and then decided to write about one of the latest trends. While this does improve your chances of ranking higher on the search engines (and it is, in fact, a worthwhile step to take), it alone will not guarantee success. Instead, you will need to make your article stand out somehow.

Tips on Writing Your Article

Writing about the current buzzwords and trends-also known as viral marketing-is a great start. But you can definitely take other steps to make sure that your article rises to the top of the search engines. These are some ideas that you might try:

  • Choose your keywords wisely. Let’s say that you did research and found that a certain brand of candy bar was a big trend that a lot of people were talking about because of a contest that was going on. Keywords for your article could very well be ‘candy bar’ and ‘contest.’ The brand name could also be a keyword. Don’t, however, choose something extraneous, such as ‘chocolate’ or ‘nougat.’ For this type of article or articles, you won’t need to describe the candy bar.
  • Select keyword placement wisely. You should include your keywords in the headline of your article. You should also make certain to include them in the body of your article several times, toward the beginning and the end.
  • Keep keyword density in mind. Keyword density is the number of times your keyword appears relative to the number of words in total. Your density should be no more than 5% to 7%. Any more than that, and most search engines may regard your article to be spam.
  • Include links to high-ranking websites (or other articles on your own website). Links will help you to achieve high search engine rankings, especially if they are links to popular websites.
  • Remember: Content is King. If the quality of your article isn’t good, no one will read it-and, therefore, no one will click on any of the links. Make your article interesting and readable.

What to do After the Article is Written

Once you have finished the article, there are still a few ideas you can try that can help to get your article to the top of the search engines:

  • Submit your articles to the several article directories.
  • Submit your article to ezine editors that accept articles on your topic.
  • Look for blogs related to your topic, and ask if they accept outside articles for submission.
  • Post a link to the article on Twitter and Facebook.
  • Submit the article to social bookmarking websites, such as StumbleUpon and Digg.
James Trent is a mentor and business coach that assists serious entrepreneurs in building a profitable online business with multiple incomes streams. James and his team have assisted hundreds of people in generating huge profits in their very first year. For more information and to contact James, visit his website.http://thesevenfigurepro.com

Source: http://www.submityourarticle.com

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