Shrouded behind the opaque layers of search engine algorithms and search engine marketing strategies lays a simple fact about local search engine marketing that too many talented businesspersons forget: marketing is about customers. And how to get them? Tell stories.
Importance
Stories are powerful. Every culture relays its heritage and social values through storytelling. The Native Americans had their wigwams and longhouses, the Victorian English had their stages and the Americans have their cinema theaters. Customer reviews and feedback, pioneered online by companies such as eBay, Amazon and Epinions, tell stories: tales of hospitable service, affordable rates and superb products. In today's online world, this is more important than ever. A new internet-savvy generation of shoppers, termed "social researchers," look to peer feedback to influence their decisions. According to a a recent study, 70 percent of online shoppers consider other customer feedback as either "important" or "very important." This, by extension, means the business should do so as well.
Talk
Appealing to a prospect is difficult; gaining a customer is a godsend. Trying to get their feedback sometimes might as well be a search for the Fountain of Youth. That is why the ever-resourceful local web marketing community has invented a new way to make customers talk. Give them every opportunity to share their opinions with other people. Let the customer talk. Filling out a template, complete with preformed questions and checkboxes, is an impersonal act, and makes the customer feel robotic and inanimate. Giving a customer free reign to speak his or her mind gets the powerful truth out. Forget the e-mail surveys in favor of consumer-friendly letter invitations, website forums and easy-to-use submission text boxes. Most importantly, companies who really want to know what their customers think can utilize customer relationship management (CRM). The business should make sure the customer knows he or she has an attentive listener.
Things Not Anticipated
A word of caution, however, is that the customer may say things the company does not necessarily want others to see or hear. There is always one bad apple. One may wonder how to keep the barrel unspoiled. Internet marketing firms and public relations agents have found a way to help with the rants of irate customers by creating online reputation management, which monitors and partially controls an internet reputation. Thankfully, most horror stories can be removed with a kind word and understanding apology. Low-ball tactics like copyright-infringement suits or tattle-tailing to webmasters are discouraged. When this does not work, search engine reputation management can be deployed, although it does take time to be effective.
Successful Integration
Qualitative customer feedback coupled with quantitative statistical analysis, such as bounce rates, keyword accuracy, time per page and conversion rates, is a potent one-two punch for local search engine marketing.
Get customers and get reviews, which gets more customers. That is one method of effective local internet marketing.
Author is a freelance writer. For more information on local search engine marketing please visit http://www.local-marketing.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Liz_T_Jones
Google has adapted once again to help combat the ever increasing amount of spam. In lieu of a surge of questions regarding whether or not a recent Google algorithm change has gone live, Google has officially launched the change earlier last week that will target spam websites. About 2% of queries change, with less than half of a percent where people will really notice anything. This change is aimed at increasing the quality of Google searches and will give websites that wrote original content better rankings, while websites that primarily copy the content will be ranked lower. It should be noted that websites which spin or rewrite original content are being specifically targeted in this algorithm change, giving sites with the original content more authority. This is all an effort to increase the quality of search queries in order to provide a better experience for users.
Google is there to make money, and they do that by giving users good, original information. It should be noted that spam websites are sites that try to cheat their way into higher rankings with practices deemed unethical, like hacking websites and copying content over and over. The Google Algorithm Change might include review websites, or sites that make their money by promoting products and using information straight from the retailer. Since these type of sites do not really provide any value, they will be penalized, leaving the website with whom they are promoting the better rankings. In order for sites like this to continue existing, they will have to provide original content and make themselves an authority on the subject instead of dishing out rehashed information.
If you have used search engines a decade ago, you might remember how hard it was trying to find information on certain subjects. The search results were just repeating the same thing over and over, with slight changes to the queries, and it was nearly impossible to find anything original. Since then, Google has refined anti-spam methods, resulting in an unprecedented level of freshness and uniqueness. Instead of spending 5 hours trying to find something, you now spend 5 seconds. It can be said that this will only get better with time, and spam may now be a thing of the past.
How Using Long Tail Keywords Can Rank You In The Top 3 Spots of Google!
Good keyword research is paramount in landing you on the first page of a Google search. Often times people choose keywords that are far too generic, leaving themselves no chance of being found on the first page of Google Search.
Long tail keywords are keywords that contain more than three or four words that someone would type in a Google search.
These longer tail keywords may not be as common or searched for as often as a single keyword, but long tail keywords will have a lot less competition, attract a more targeted audience, and give you a better chance of ranking on the first page of Google.
Generic keywords such as: Home Based Business and Work At Home are going to produce a larger number of searches each month and at the same time, there will be millions of websites competing for that same keyword.
Work At Home for instance has 1,900,000,000 results, or nearly two billion websites competing for that keyword. Yes, you read that right, billion with a B. Your chances of landing on page 157, let alone the first page are pretty bleak when the competition is that stiff.
Long tail keywords properly chosen should yield search results of 30,000 or less, a much more manageable competitive number to deal with.
Keyword research requires you to dig deep when choosing your keywords. As an example I would like to breakdown the long tail keyword research I used for a previous article about Forwarding and Masking a Domain. Google offers a free keyword tool that will assist you in your keyword research called, Google Keyword Tool.
This tool will breakdown monthly global searches as well as local searches done each month on a particular keyword. It also lists other relevant words and their stats, giving you a choice of keywords that you may not have thought of.
I started my research with Forwarding a domain which produced about 5 million search results. Meaning there are 5 million websites talking about forwarding a domain.
Forwarding and masking a domain produced 250,000 results, still more competition than I care to go up against. In digging a bit deeper I tried, forwarding and masking your domain, which produced 47,000 results. Digging deeper still I tried, How To Set Up Forwarding and Masking Your Domain which produced only 26,300 results. Bingo, I found the long tail keyword to build my article around.
After just a couple of weeks I now have the second and third spot on the first page of Google for the long tail keyword, how to set up forwarding and masking your domain.
To illustrate this process I created a video that is posted on my blog which is listed below.
In closing, long tail keywords will reach a far more targeted audience than generic keywords. You won't generate as much traffic to your site using a them, but you will generate quality people looking for what you have to offer.
Labels: effective SEO approach