Do you want to be more visible in Google search results? Here are 5 simple tips:
1. Get a free listing on Google Maps. (To do this, search for "Google maps" in any search engine.) When people search for a local product or service, a map of their geographic region is displayed ABOVE all the other search results. Even if you don't have a website, your business can appear on this map.
2. Post quality content on your website or blog, and post it often. Google ranks websites by the amount of content on a website as well the richness of content and how often it's updated. Great content is the best Google bait!
3. Try to match your keywords and key phrases with what your audience is probably typing into search engines. Use these keywords in the title and description metatags of your website or blog, and in the content you post on your website. Use the Google Keyword Tool for suggestions.
4. Post comments on other blogs and news sites. Arrange with colleagues to do a guest blog post on their sites, and invite them to do the same.
5. Get incoming links pointing to your site. Link from your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Ask noncompeting colleagues to link to you. Use contextual links that contain keywords such as marketing for professionals, rather than simply "click here." Contextual links that relate to what your website is about, are considered more relevant by search engines. If you have a lot of similar contextual links pointing to your site, you will likely get a higher ranking in search results when people search on those keywords.
Pauline Wallin, Ph.D. is a psychologist in Camp Hill, PA and 2011 President of the Division of Media Psychology of APA. She helps professional colleagues market themselves in an effective and ethical manner.
Whether your business is entirely web-based or whether you use the web as a way to build your brand offline, ranking high in the search engine results is important in getting high quality traffic to your website. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the science and art of helping websites rank highly in search engine results for certain keywords and key phrases. There's no single way to dominate the search engine rankings, but there are a number of techniques that, used together, can make an enormous difference in the amount of traffic search engines send to your website.
The most important single thing your website must have in order to do well in search engine rankings is high quality content. That content may be text, images, video, or a combination of these things, but it must be original and it must be updated regularly. Websites with stale content practically repel visitors. High quality content is what keeps people interested while they're on your site, and regular updates are what prompt people to bookmark your site and keep coming back.
Another very important factor in how prominently your website shows up in search engines is how many other sites link to yours. These are called backlinks, and they're like internet gold. While in the past unscrupulous SEO companies have used underhanded techniques like buying massive numbers of backlinks, the search engines very quickly sniffed these out and penalized the sites. Honest backlinks don't come overnight, but like general SEO, there are lots of techniques that will build them gradually and organically.
Video is becoming extremely important in the world of SEO. If your site has high quality video content, and if you submit your video content to multiple video sharing sites, you can push your videos up the search engine rankings quickly, and drive that much more traffic to your main website. Submitting video content can be tiresome, because with each video sharing site, you have to fill in certain information fields and add keyword tags. However, there are now SEO services like Traffic Geyser that automate much of the video submission process so that you can get your videos on numerous websites without it taking too much time. There is little question that video dominance is going to be important in search engine dominance for the foreseeable future.
Many business owners would much rather stick with what they do best and automate or outsource the tedious work involved with SEO. Some of the basic SEO techniques are easier to implement these days with various web hosts and website templates offering simple ways to tag content. But there are other techniques, like article and video submission that can be quite time consuming. If you want to take advantage of these SEO opportunities, particularly in relation to video content, then you can try out a service like the Traffic Geyser free trial to see if it could benefit your business.
Businesses can't afford to ignore search engine optimization, even if their primary operation is offline. You can't (yet!) print out a pizza from a place like Pizza Hut, but you can bet they have a comprehensive web strategy to get traffic to their site and ultimately to their stores. You have to take a similar approach, and if you're not quite sure where to start, there are plenty of SEO services that can help you out.
For businesses that are looking to obtain new customers, there is no better time or opportunity than today. While the majority of small businesses are spinning their wheels trying old-hat advertising and marketing methods, a new crop of businesses have discovered the power of local search engine marketing. These companies are garnering new customers on a daily basis and are making considerable profits. Here are a few of the new marketing methods they are using to achieve this tremendous new degree of success.
The first local web marketing technique these companies are using is paid local advertising. When an Internet user in their area searches for something related to their business on a search engine like Google, Bing or Yahoo, their ad pops up in front of the Internet user. One of the main reasons that this marketing method is so well liked is that the company only has to pay an advertising fee if the Internet user actually clicks on the ad. This is called pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. This means that they do not waste their time advertising to hundreds or thousands of uninterested people, as is common in newspaper or radio ads. Instead, they only pay when someone has expressed interest in their product or service. It is then up to the business owner to turn that interested prospect into a paying customer.
The second way that this new generation of entrepreneurs is leveraging the Internet to reach local customers is through the use of search engine optimization (SEO). This means that they are tailoring their website to receive free Internet traffic every time someone searches for specific keyword phrases in the major search engines. This is similar to advertising with pay per click marketing, but the difference is that they are getting a steady stream of prospects without ever having to pay for them. All it took was a bit of upfront effort to get their website optimized and patience to wait until it takes effect. Even if they do not know anything about search engine optimization, they can hire the services of one of many companies out there. These companies can optimize any website to make it appear near the top of the search engine results. It can take nine to 12 months for this strategy to work, but many believe it is well worth the wait.
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.