Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

People searching on the internet for a local business is growing in popularity. I think you'd be very surprised by the number people who are going to their computer searching for local businesses on the Internet. Google has said about 73% of all searches now on the search engine are people looking for a local business. If you think about it, a businesses change quite often. They come and they go. They go out of business. They move to another location. So how does a local person keep up?

In the past, if you're like most people, you would've probably picked up the Yellow Pages. That was really the only way the new businesses were found in any local town. But the Yellow Pages are out of date at least a year. Plus you don't know if the business is really still there. So what you do? There is a rumour that the Yellow Pages will replace the book with a CD that you put in your computer. So what does that mean to you?

Think about it. When you're in a small town, and unless the customer has already been to your place of business, how do they know where you are. They don't know if you've moved. They might know approximately where you are but how do they find you.

When I was in the sign business many years ago, in the training session we went through, the trainers made it clear to make sure we explain to the business owner that their sign must be visible from a least a mile down the road. Why is this? Because if the local customer is driving around town looking and searching for a business like yours the sign needs to be in their line of sight or that customer will pass you by. You lose another customer. Had you ever noticed that when they put up a new McDonald's location the first in the goes up is the big sign. McDonald's knows that there are customers driving around and they want them to be aware that a new McDonald's was coming soon. Even before the buildings put up, the sign is there. Big yellow arches.

And now it's so easy for people who have computers. They don't have to get in their car. They don't have to fight traffic. They don't have to try to find you. Now they just turn to the Internet. Will they find you? What if you don't show up on Google's first page or maybe the second page. People rarely go past the second page. Say you go to Google and search right now and type in a product that you sell or the type of business you are in? Are you there? Probably not. In fact if you look at the number of pages in the top left-hand corner you're probably see hundreds of thousands maybe millions of web pages to choose from. How confusing is that for the customer?

Well things have changed. If you are a business owner you need to be on the front page of Google. Here is an example. Let's go to the Google external keyword tool and do an experiment. This tool is VERY helpful. You can access it by going to Google Search and typing in Google Keyword External. This is the tool that you can use to find out how many people type in a certain keyword or keyword phrase. For this example I am going to use the small city of Peterborough, Ontario. The population there is about 75,000 in the winter to about 100,000 or so in the summer (by comparison, the population of Toronto is around 3 million).

I am going to determine how many people in this area are using their computers to find a local pizza restaurant, so I will enter a search for: "Pizza in Peterborough" You could also put the city first and then the product afterward. For example "Peterborough Pizza". It doesn't really matter because Google will figure it out. The Google keyword tool will provide results based on the last month. According to Google, last month 5,400 searched for "pizza peterborough" on Google. That is almost 180 people a day, and this is a small city! Pretty wild eh?

Are you starting to see the potential here?

Try it out yourself. Go to the Google keyword tool and type in a product or business and add the city name to it. You can also do it for cities that are around your location. And the best part is you could walk into your local pizza restaurant armed with all this information and show them proof that there's local people in the area searching for them. But of course they can't find them if they're not on the first page of Google. Actually get on their computer and show it to them in real time.

Here is a script of what I like to say when approaching businesses:

"Hello Mr. Business Owner. As you probably already know, less and less people are using the phone book to find local businesses. They are turning to the internet to find a local business. People looking for a pizza restaurant are now turning to the Internet to find a local pizza place. If I can have 10 minutes of your time I can show you how Google is actually keeping track of what people search for? I have access to this information and can show you how to do it to. Let me give you an example.

According to Google, just last month 5,400 people used their computers to find a local pizza restaurant in Peterborough, Ontario by typing in "pizza peterborough". That is almost 180 people a day! I wanted to bring this up to you because I noticed that your website is not currently ranking on the first page for this important keyword phrase. You are missing out on all this potential business. Mr. Business Owner, it is like these people are knocking on your door and you aren't there to answer!" Do you have 10 minutes tomorrow at 9AM?"

I have found this approach to be VERY effective. This is a very effective approach to want to get in front of business owners and show them exactly what I've been showing you. Then you can offer them SEO services but better explain it to them in the way of getting more customers in their door or money in their pocket. Most businesses don't know what SEO means.

Most websites are created with an goal of providing and sharing information with targeted audiences. The most common ingredients of successful sites are the type and number of visitors they attract. Traffic generation is the key element.

Search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, recommendations, and directories are extremely valuable tools for traffic generations.

Search engines search for relevant content, Meta tags, keywords, phrases and images. When you have relevant information on your website, you attract traffic. Recommendations are what most visitors are precisely seeking when they visit your site. If you have good and relevant recommendations, you in turn get recommendations from other Internet users and search engines. Internet directories list and categorize topics to obtain such information easily available for people searching for information.

To leverage traffic from search engines, you need to achieve high rankings on their search results. Same is the case with directories. When you give exceptional service or products, you achieve recommendations from satisfied clients and site visitors.

These are some of prevalent strategies for driving traffic to your websites. Sometimes you may have to pay for some services. You have to spend some money to make money. There is a plethora of options available to generate traffic.

You can also drive traffic to your website organically. Your site is found by information seekers when you have several visitors seeking your quality recommendations; the more visitors you have, the more your site ranking goes up and results displayed higher on search engine pages. To increase your traffic organically, you need to place relevant keywords and terms in different phrases in your recommendations in on your sites that users may enter into the search engines.

While you can achieve a very high level of traffic using first three strategies, you will have to put in a lot of effort to gain traffic. You have to be extremely determined and relentless in you efforts. It may take time, but once you start seeing the benefits of your efforts, you would have achieved a very high goal that yuo set and you should be proud of your achievement.

You can complement your efforts with some simple methods such as viewer feedback forum, newsletters, blogging, affiliate marketing, videos and RSS feeds. Any additional features and contents to your websites will make your site interesting and appealing and thus increase traffic.

When you want to drive visitors to your website, you have to provide quality, captivating and engaging content that other sites do not have. You have to be at the forefront and stand out in the crowded World Wide Web. They say that to be successful in any business you have to think outside the box. This is also true of websites.

The Internet has changed everything. Billions of dollars in advertising revenue that used to go into other media are now being poured into the World Wide Web. Giants in TV, radio, and print media are scrambling for economic survival. Search engine marketing (SE marketing) is replacing the once almighty Yellow Pages.

When is the last time you opened the Yellow Pages when you were looking for a company to do business with? Ask yourself that same question about Google. Most people can't remember the last time they used that phone book, but they use Google virtually daily.

This article features three types of marketing using Google and other engines. You should be able to find one that best suits your purpose, depending on your level of marketing experience.

The kind that that requires the most experience is pay per click (PPC) advertising, like Google AdWords. This is surprising to most people because it is so often the first thing newbies try when they first attempt to make money online.

For instance, when individuals learn about the concept of affiliate marketing, where they can get free replicated websites by a simple sign up process, it's all too common for them to drive traffic to those sites in this manner. They will earn a commission when any of their traffic makes purchases.

They assume pay per click advertising can not hurt them, since they get to target any search term they choose to show their ad at. They also love the fact that they only have to pay when someone actually clicks on the ad and visits their affiliate साईट.

They don't realize that most of their visitors will never buy during their initial visit, and they usually will not get credit for any sales, if any of that traffic comes back later and makes purchases. Only experienced marketers stand a chance at making money with this strategy.

Another SE strategy is known as SE optimization, or SEO. This is mainly done with websites and blogs. It can get quite intricate, but the basics can be learned and adhered to without too much difficulty.

Website owners optimize their sites for dozens, or even hundreds of keywords, allowing them to get free search engine traffic. It requires considerable time and effort, but (if you do it yourself) it does not involve much risk of money, like PPC advertising does.

Still, it is usually not something a brand new marketer jumps in and tries. The SE strategy that is most suited for newcomers is known as article marketing. It involves some SEO, and is a great way to get experience that will help you when you are ready to create your own websites from scratch.

Instead of optimizing complete websites for a lot of different search terms, you only have to optimize the article you are writing for a single keyword. (A keyword is a search term.)

You submit your articles to article directories, which will publish them for free. You will provide links in your articles that can lead to your affiliate sites or any other destination that you choose. If you are new to online money making, this is the first kind of search engine marketing to learn.

Trying to find a local SEO expert? Then make sure you trust a real expert with years of experience and don't be fooled by other SEO companies who guarantee you SEO results that are too good to be true. Find out more today about a true link building expert and his search engine optimization experience.

Every webmasters want their website to rank on the search engine. One of the factors that influence the ranking of your site is the backlinks. Purchasing paid links can cost you to spend a lot of money. To save money, you can find free backlinks to your site. Free links can be obtained via a wide variety of ways including free classified sites, answer sites, submitting to Wikipedia and Squidoo lens.

Free classified sites allow webmasters to advertise their websites. There are many free classified sites on the internet. The advertisement will only last for a period of time. Free classified sites are different than the FFA (Free for All) sites. The FFA sites can damage the reputation and ranking of your sites because it list all types of illegal sites such as porn, and gambling. Though your site does not contain illegal content, you are affiliating with the bad sites. Hence, it is recommended that you don't submit to the FFA sites. Examples of famous free classified sites include Classifieds for Free, Blazoom, Craiglist and etc.

The answers site allows you to get free backlink for your site. Examples of answers site include Yahoo Answers, Google Groups and etc. The question in Yahoo answers always rank on top of the search result. If your answer is chosen as the best answer, a lot of people from the search engine will visit your site. When answering a question, make sure you don't include the link in the body of the message. Instead, the link should be included in the resource box. By doing so, people won't become suspicious that you are including a link to your website. If you include the link in the body message, the moderator will check it. If the moderator feels that you are trying to promote your site, he will remove the link from the answer.

You can also submit an article about your website to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is the most visited encyclopedia on the internet. Though the link is no follow, people from the search engine will still find the Wikipedia page of your company. When they want to learn more about your website, they simply click the link in the Wikipedia page. Before creating a content in Wikipedia, you are required to register for an account. Anybody can modify the entry in the Wikipedia as long as they are registered. If there is a page that is related to the topic of your site, for example list of free video hosting site, you can login to your account and add your site to list provided it is not already included.