It is an obvious fact that each online business owner should know not little but a lot about search engine marketing setup. This idea involves optimizing your website for the search engines to think that your website provides useful and rich-content information and, therefore, you will be able to improve search engine ranking.

This is extremely efficient as other paid marketing methods like pay per click campaigns are really expensive and can not afforded by everyone especially the beginners who do not have that much money yet to invest. On the other hand, natural traffic gained from ethical and legal search engine optimization (SEO) is free of charge and targeted under the assumption that you avoid any black-hat SEO training.

Hence, you should not overlook the power of setting a proper search engine marketing setup when it comes to spreading the word about your home based business. To achieve this goal properly, you should consider the right keywords with the right density.

But the interesting question is: What are the proper keywords?

If you explore various articles on small business website optimization or ask any small business SEO agency that provides push promotion for websites, you will always be confronted with this sentence: “You need to consider the keywords and search terms that enjoy high traffic and have low competition”.

My personal point of view is that this answer is not clear enough as the terms low and high are very relative. Should you consider 100 searches per day a high search volume? In case you agree, then should you define 90 searches per day a relatively low search volume? Additionally, if the number of the websites that compete for your target search term is 100, should you define this competition high or low?

If we define 100 websites as low competition, is it feasible to define 150 websites as high competition? So, in other words, what is the meaning of high and low here? And this is the issue I handle in this article.

Briefly, to target the best search engine marketing setup, you should target the keywords that receive “high enough” traffic per month and at the same time enjoy “low enough” competition.

a) What should you define under the term high enough traffic?

There is no clear and unique answer as it totally depends on the type of your business and your goals. To achieve a brilliant success in online marketing, you should have a definite plan like your goals and the time needed to achieve them. I.e. you should plan how much money you like to earn and after how many months.

So, I will make a random assumption that you like to earn 00 per month. Then, you should drive visitors to your website that make you 00 per month and this traffic is your “high enough traffic”. But the exciting question is how to calculate this traffic in an accurate way?

You can definitely use such a mathematical formula:

Total Income per Month= Number of Visitors per Month x Conversion Rate x Income per Sale

In the above mentioned formula, all factors are known except the number of visitors per month. Specifically:

Income per sale is the amount of money or commission you earn when you achieve a sale.

Conversion rate is the amount of your internet surfers who may be interested to buy your product or service. For instance, 3% conversion rate means that 100 internet surfers are dropped by your website and only 3 out of these 100 decided to buy your product. This factor is totally dependent on your services, sales letter, etc.

You may calculate with 3% conversion rate, but I like to design my search engine marketing setup using a conversion rate of 1% as this is a very realistic rate.

Total money you like to make online is simply the cash you like to earn monthly, which is in our case the 00.

So, now you can calculate how many visitors per month you should drive to your website in order to achieve the desired income. In case you like to earn more you may work on increasing the amount of visitors to your website or you should try to increase the conversion rate.

Driving more traffic to your website includes:

- Ethical optimization of your website by combining online and offline optimization.

- Online submission of high quality articles to high rank web directories is a good idea to get more quality links.

- Update your website frequently.

- It is really a good idea to mix both of article marketing and Web 2.0.0 services.

Increasing the conversion rate of your website involves:

- Enrich your sales web page with promises that you can really deliver.

- It is strongly recommended to offer your website internet surfers something extra for free.

- Add a hard deadline that they should act before it in order to be qualified for the free bonus.

b) What should you define under low enough competition?

To check the competition of a certain keyword, insert your target keyword between double quotes in Google to see how many other websites that are optimized for the same keyword. It is usually expected to find 0 or thousands of websites that are optimized for the same keyword and, therefore, you have to compete against them.

The answer to the question of a “low enough competition”is depending 100% on the planed destination, where you are going to submit your articles. Yes, this is correct as it is relatively sure that Google loves some certain websites and if your article -which should be optimized around a certain keyword-, is submitted there, then it has a better chance to appear on Google’s first page.

Some of the websites that Google certainly love are: ezinearticles.com, Squidoo.com, UsFreeads.com and any Wordpress Blog. So, you should not overlook these cases in case you design your search engine marketing setup:

- Ezinearticles.com: Is the optimal choice to submit your articles, if your competitors websites do not exceed 10,000 websites.

- Squidoo.com: Is the optimal destination of your articles, if your competitors websites do not exceed 5,000 websites.

- UsFreeads: Is the optimal choice to submit your articles, if the number of competitors is approximately 3,000 websites.

- Wordpress Blog: Is the optimal choice to submit your articles, if the number of websites that are optimized for the same keyword is not more than 1000 websites.

It is important to notice that the above results are my results based on trial and error procedures and there is always no guarantee, if we talk about Google. Nevertheless, the results and experiments I mentioned in this article worked on fine bases since 6 months now and, therefore; it is a good idea to try it when you finally decided to set up your next campaign.

The key point of this article is to find a mathematical description of the very vague terms high and low. So, now it should be clear for you which keywords you should consider for your campaign when you finally decided to carry out your search engine marketing setup.

Find More Google Optimization Articles

Map search is the new local Yellow Pages and it’s a place where small businesses can shine. Together, Google Places and Google Maps represent the most exciting opportunity for small businesses ever.

Your small business probably already has a Google Place page: If you own a small business, whether you like it or not, Google has probably already mapped it in Google Maps and created a Google Places web page about it. Most of these Google Place pages have been populated with information harvested from all over the internet – often small businesses don’t realize that their customers have been talking about them on the web.

The Yellow Pages is dead:

At the same time that Google Places has been improving in functionality and data richness, there has been a decline in the popularity of the Yellow Pages. Some businesses have responded to this by reviewing their web sites in the hope their customers will find them using a standard Google Search. However, unless a customer’s search term is highly focused, businesses are unlikely to rank highly in Google search results. Google estimates that three-in-four people click on one of the top three search results and then search no further. This means that unless your business ranks in the top three search results then its unlikely to be clicked on.

Map search is the new local Yellow Pages and it’s a place where small businesses can shine: The good news can be found in another Google statistic – the one that says that one in five Google searches have local intent. This statistic makes Google Places very important to small business because the search competition is much lower for a Google Map search than it is for a Google Web search. For example, although a standard Google search for “cafe” will deliver results that at best will relate to the whole of the city the searcher is in, a Google Maps search for “cafe” will return results only for the map that’s currently on-screen, or on the basis of a location specified by the searcher (eg. café in Edithvale).

This means that the likelihood of your small business being found by your customers is much greater in Google Places. So, if you’re a cafe, you no longer need to compete with cafés on the whole of your city, just other cafés in your local area. Hence the relevance of an old saying that goes “when a lion is chasing you, you don’t need to be the fastest runner in the world, just faster than the person running next to you”!

Like this article? Have more small-business-focused geosocial articles and videos-links emailed to your inbox each month. Sign up athttp://www.geosocialian.com today.

1..What is the number one priority, objective, or goal that you want to achieve through your online marketing efforts?
- Are trying to establish your business as an “authority site”?
- Are you trying to build a community using social media?
- Are you trying to generate more leads to fill your sales funnel?
- Are you are trying to attract more customers to a retail or physical location?
- What is your desired outcome for visitors to your website?
- What is your “business model” for your online marketing?

The responses to these questions will affect the online marketing strategy, approach, or techniques that are most suitable.

2. The BIG SECRET of Internet Millionaires and virtually ALL Successful Online Businesses…
Actually, this “secret” is painfully obvious – it is one of the fundamentals of achieving success online. But, just as major league athletes focus on the fundamentals of their competitive sports, it is worth highlighting here: TRAFFIC MATTERS MOST – IT IS A FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENT.

To be more specific – targeted traffic is what matters most. Attracting targeted traffic essentially means that the visitors to your site are already pre-qualified to the extent that you are presenting them with information that is aligned with what they are searching for. This assumes, of course, that the methods used to attract them are consistent with search engine optimization and search engine marketing best practices.
Practicing “Attraction Marketing” or “Magnetic Marketing” or Customer Centric Marketing leads to “friction free marketing” and long-term relationship-building.

3. How do prospects and customers find you now – and how could you attract more?
- Which keywords do prospects use when they are searching online for what you offer?
- Where is your business currently ranked for those terms in the search engines?
- How competitive are the keywords that you are currently using to promote your business?
- How viable is it that you will be able to rank for those keywords in the near future?

4. What does “Google Page 1 Rankings” actually mean – and why does it matter?
A Google Page 1 Ranking means either that a particular web-page appears on the first page of the natural “organic” Search Engine Results Position (often referred to by the acronym: “SERP”) in response to a search for a particular keyword or keyword search term, OR that an advertiser has outbid all other advertisers to appear in the Sponsored Results.

Google Page 1 Rankings matter greatly because:
- 81% of people search online before making a purchase.
- 72% of people use Google when performing online search.
- 98% of people choose a business on “Page 1″ when making a “buying decision”.

Conclusion: If your business isn’t ranked on the first page of Google’s “natural” or “organic” search results, you will be missing out on close to 75% of potential prospects, leads, and sales.

Important Note: Recent metrics evidence that people performing online searches increasingly look beyond the Sponsored Results and directly to the “organic results” for the information they seek.

5. Generating Traffic through Paid Advertising (AdWords, Facebook Ads, CPA, CPC, etc):
Paid Traffic remains the fastest way to generate traffic for new websites, to test keywords, and to “pump” life into websites that are stuck on page 2, 3, 4, 5….157…or otherwise not prominently displayed in the search results….BUT…the value of the bought traffic may be worthless…especially if it doesn’t convert to sales.

When business owners or webmasters get frustrated with their online efforts, there is frequently a temptation to try to make up for lost time by purchasing traffic from advertising brokers (i.e. the “content network”). As tempting as it is to generate “traffic” fast using this method, it should be understood that there are very real risks associated with it.

Anyone with a valid credit card charging capacity can generate traffic fast. Beware, however, that the traffic generated from many of these sources is a total waste of money. Ask almost anyone who has tried it.

Obviously, Google and Yahoo have made literally billions of dollars by selling this kind of traffic (i.e. paid clicks). In the early days of Adwords and Adsense lot of savvy internet marketers created online advertising empires by functioning as advertising “arbitrage” agents. For the past several years, however, many of those very same marketers complain of losing vast sums on advertising campaigns.

Caution: If you choose to use paid advertising to buy traffic, proceed carefully – and limit your spending until you verify that the cost/benefit ratio of your advertising program is within your accepted tolerances, and expectations.

6. Keyword Research – and How to “re-position” your company online (if necessary).
One of the smartest things you can do, and definitely one of the first things you really should do, is to perform some basic keyword research. Only by conducting detailed keyword research can you know how to proceed with your online marketing efforts. Only after performing keyword research can you determine whether you will be wasting time and money (and lost-opportunity costs) by trying to promote your business based on words or terms or “keywords” that are either too competitive, not sufficiently searched, or otherwise non-performing.

You can begin to get a sense about all of this for free by using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
Start by entering a broad term that relates to your business or niche. Then scan the results for the keywords you are currently using.
Then review the competition, both in terms of Adwords and also in the search engine itself. If the first page of natural SERP results is dominated by major corporations, major “authority sites”, or other stiff competition, then that keyword may be difficult to rank for. This is especially true if the SERP results are for main indexed pages.

On the other hand, if the first page of Google returns a lot of “inner pages” (i.e. pages that are on the third hierarchy of the site structure, or lower), and if they are not from “authority sites”, but rather from blogs or smaller sites, then ranking for those particular keywords may be achievable, and perhaps even relatively easy).

7. Knowing Who Your Visitors Are – Capturing Visitor Contact Details for Lead Generation
The single most important missing element from most business websites may be a “lead capture form”. It’s hard to believe that with literally billions of websites published, so many websites lack such a valuable but inexpensive and easy-to-implement tool.
Lead capture forms have been available for at least 10 years. And we have all grown accustomed to using them – as consumers, or as “subscribers”. You may be reading this information as a result of having entered your email address into a basic lead capture form (sometimes referred to as a “squeeze form” or “squeeze page”, depending on how it is implemented).
Lead capture forms are typically integrated with Auto responders such as Aweber, Get Response, iContact, Infusionsoft, 1ShoppingCart, or others.
If you are trying to develop any kind of business intelligence about your website visitors, and trying to establish a follow-up rapport with them, it is essential to incorporate lead capture forms into your website.
At the most basic level, setting up a lead capture form can be accomplished in minutes.

8. Understanding Web 2.0 and How Social Media Can be Leveraged to Facilitate SEO and to Grow Your Business:
Web 2.0 and Social Media are extremely complex and dynamic developments. The easiest way to understand the potential of Web 2.0 and Social Media, in terms of how they can help you grow your business is this: Make It Easy For People to Learn About You and What You Offer – and expand your circle of influence or like-minded “friends”.

Unlike “web 1.0″ sites, Blogs are “Web 2.0 ready” – what this means is that they are preconfigured (in most cases) to allow for RSS feeds, Social Network Sharing, Commenting, etc.

It’s no secret that the way Google (and other leading search engines) rank their search results is largely based on what other people think. It follows that the more people who link to your site, the more Google will consider your site to be an “authority site”, or at least a meaningful site, within a particular niche, or for certain keyword terms.

The easiest, cheapest, and one of the most effective things that you can do to improve your search engine optimization is to incorporate a blog into your website (or make it your website), and to create meaningful and relevent content on a regular basis (e.g. 4 times a week or more).
Make it easy for other people and blogs and organizations to get your content and to derive value from you. RSS feeds and Social Bookmarking tools are ideal for this task.

Related Google Optimization Articles

What Is Google Local Business Listings

Would you like your Business appear at the top of Google Search Results, but are struggling to get there? The Google Local Search maybe the answer for you.
What is Google Local Listing
Google Local Listings is a service from Google that helps local business owners to get listed at the top of page 1 on Google for Local Search Enquiries.
With the assistance of Google Maps, Google Local Listing can help searchers find products or services of your kind in their local area effortlessly .
Google Local Search is a great way for your business to top into your local market, and to beat out your competition. Even Better you don’t even need a website to get found.
If you want to get listed you can do it yourself for free through Google Local Business Centre. Although a relatively straight forward exercise, care must be taken to ensure optimized ( Keyword Rich) description and titles are used. Let SEO Planet set up your local listing for you, and maximize your ranking benefits.
Registering your business is free through Google Local Business Centre, and reasonably straight forward to setup but also requires a Google Account. You could probably do it yourself, however, in order to maximize the ranking benefits, care should be taken that optimized ( Keyword Rich) descriptions and titles are used. Let SEO Planet set up your local listing for to maximize your ranking benefits.
By registering, Google Search not lists you at the top of the search page, but lets you add a variety of information about your business more like a mini website than a listing:
Information Such As:-

Your Business Name
Your Contact Details- Address, Phone, Fax, Mobile Number, Email, Website
When You Are Open
Payment Types Accept
Up to 10 Images and 5 Video Displayed

Its a great way to get found- and even if you don’t have a website, offers great exposure to your Business to your potential customers.

Let SEO Planet registering your business today!
SEO Planet can set up, submit and optimize your listing to Google Local Search only for $ 99. We will also create a new Google Local Search Listing for your business, and we will maintain your listing for one year on top of the 1st page without any charges for maintaining.
If you would like us to arrange your business to be listed as a Google Local Listing Business, then please email taslimali.seo@gmail.com
Once your order is confirmed we will submit your listing for you. It takes Google around 2-4 weeks to process and activate your listing before it will start appearing in Google Maps and Google Local Search Results.
So email taslimali.seo@gmail.com for your Google Local Listing, and beat out your local competition.
Note:- This doesn’t replace the need for Search Engine Optimization and shouldn’t be seen as an alternative to SEO, but as an addition to enhance your listings in Google and get found by local customers.
Further, Google Local Search is a relatively new offering by Google in India and with anything new, Google are constantly refining and updating their processes. For that reason we can’t guarantee your place in Google Local Search, but the quicker you respond, the better chances of getting listed. No-one absolutely sure of the long term effects or what changes Google might make which is why you should jump in and get the short term benefits now.

SEO for Facebook…really? Can you truly optimize your business Facebook fan page for search engines? YES!

The first step to optimizing your site for search is to identify the best keywords you should use. Keywords should be selected on the basis of how potential customers who have NEVER heard of your brand name but who NEED your goods/products/services are searching for providers. Keywords are tricky to pick out but with a little help from Google’s keyword tools (insights, trends, sets, etc) you can uncover not only the right words and phrases but the search volume itself. Try and find good keywords and link them to your company name as you choose your Vanity URL.

Make sure your Facebook Page URL represents the identity of your business and your brand. They frown on black hat behaviors so keep it above board and choose a username that represents your brand! Part of the process to get a vanity url is to have 100 fans on your page. Once you get more than 100 fans you can implement this SEO element with Facebook.

Once you have investigated and selected the best keywords and selected your vanity page URL it is time to concentrate on the actual optimization of your Facebook page. Here are some general guidelines for on page optimization:

Add keywords to your “about” box
Place your company website link url in your profile
You can add more than one URL so add your Twitter link, LinkedIn profile link, etc.
Publish interesting content on a regular basis that is related to your products or industry that is not ’salesy’
Use keywords in everything you post if possible
Be social, interact, evoke comments
Add video from YouTube, add photos or products, your store front, etc.
Find links related to your site content.
Put your Facebook page url on your email, newsletter, website, etc.

The “About” text is the place to pack your description with keywords as close to the top of the page as possible. You are limited by the amount of text you can place in her it is still the best place to add custom text. There is a 250 character limit so use keywords in your text and be selective!

The “info” tab is a critical place to include more keywords/phrases as well as your links to your website and other social networks where your brand has a presence. This is essentially where the descriptive metadata for your fan page is pulled by the search engines and really boosts your content score. Facebook has a super high page rank with all the search engines therefore it is critical to have your website on your Facebook page to provide a valuable link. To have your website displayed on your main profile page click access the information box on the left side of your profile page. Click on the yellow pencil and you will be able to edit the box. Check the box “website” for your site to be displayed. Now visitors can go directly to your website. Here are some things to add to this box:

Local Search Information – complete address for a brick and mortar business or city, state, and zip if you work from home or only have PO box.
Company Data – Mission statement, Products, Services, Brands carried
URL – add links to your website, blog, and other social networking personal pages

Facebook lets you create “static FBML” (Facebook Markup Language) boxes and tabs for large volumes of content, images, or video. The more content you have on your page the greater your content density score with Google; however, keep in mind that each tab you create has a separate URL from the search engine perspective. To add a custom tab or box to your page:

In the search box on the top right of your Facebook page type in “static fbml”
You will go to a page of listings. Select the “Static FBML” application button.
A new page will open and on the top left side are two options. Click the “add to my page” icon.
Choose the page where you wish to add the custom content box or tab.
Close the dialog box and go to your Fanpage. Just below your profile photo click “edit Page”
A new page will open. In the application list is the application “FBML 1.” Click on the pencil beside it.
Select “edit”
A new page will open with 2 fields – “Box Title” and “FBML”. Name the box or tab with a Keyword related to the content you will place there. If this will be a Tab Title you will be limited to 10 characters.
Click “save changes”
To return to your application settings page click “edit” at the top of your page.
Click the pencil next to the name you selected for the FBML application and then choose “application settings.”
To add the FBML you just created as a box select “add” next to the “box” option.
To add the FBML you just created as a tab select “add” next to the “tab” option.

Status updates are a great place to post direct links to your website; however, you want to do that judiciously. No one likes to be sold to or constantly pitched. Since Google really likes pages that link to relevant sites, posting relevant related links near the top of your page’s structure are legitimate Google boosters for your Facebook page.

Post the raw URL in the status update frame or use the “attach link” feature. Posting the raw url Facebook automatically links the text to the URL. The resulting anchor text is what it is…you can’t change it; however, the url is linked directly to the destination page and does not have Facebook.com as part of the menu bar on the destination page.

If you use the “attach link” feature Facebook pulls the title, body, and any images from your page and creates a suggested image and text to the side of your page’s link. This is great for increasing your keyword density too by changing the anchor text before “sharing” your link. This link will go through a share url that places the destination url in an iframe that has the Facebook menu bar at the top. It will also include a share feature as well as a place for comments.

Content is still king so what you post beyond URLs can influence your searchability. But highly optimized keyword rich content is useless if it is not interesting and varied. Photos are terrific but add keyword rich captions perhaps with a geo-targeted keyword for additional mojo. Post an event and include text and keywords as well. Create a discussion forum for those events and to discuss brands and product reviews, etc. All the content you share on your Facebook Pages are indexable by search engines.

There are even some offsite things you can do for your Facebook Page. One of these is getting inbound links from you website and vice versa. Reciprocal related linking from related and authoritative websites help your PageRank. Put a Facebook badge or Facebook Fan Box widget on your website to encourage your website followers to link back to your Facebook page. Links from other Facebook pages are also a form of inbound links to your page. The more fans you have the more links you have to your Facebook page thus adding to your “Google go juice.”

Encourage your followers to comment and discuss topics on your page. Get them to “like” content on your page as that links their name back to their profile page thus creating yet another back link. When Google’s spiders see that your fan is commenting on your page as it is indexed Google sees reciprocal links. This type of linking is heavily weighted.

SEO is important to all that you post on the nternet related to your business. Growing your social media connections on Facebook is greatly aided by simple search engine optimization tactics. You can do a lot to maximize your brand’s exposure to search engines through your Facebook Fanpage.

Shannon Evans is recognized in the Puget Sound as an expert in how to make your business have a web presence rather than just a web page. Her conversational marketing techniques and practices outlined by Practical Local Search, LLC you will see your small business presence on the web increase: http://www.practicallocalsearch.com/. She is a consultant for social marketing campaigns that allow you to organize your marketing and sales efforts in an inexpensive delivery platform that is easy to set up and manage. The ability to send, deliver, and track any installed resource gives you the power to c

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Find More Google Optimization Articles

Google offers a free business listing to small businesses at the top of most local search results pages. Local Google Advertising is what we’re after when we talk about Google’s local business listing center. Anatomy of a Google search result page:

• Listings on the right side bar are paid advertisements, often called “sponsored links”
• The main body of a search result page are called the “organic” or “natural” search listings
• At the very top in a colored text box are also paid advertisements, sponsored links
• Above the organic listings are “Google Local Business Listings”

This wiki deals with only with the Local Business Listings

You will notice a map associated with each listing, this is because Google used the existing infrastructure of Google Maps to implement the free business listings. It’s generally thought that Google offered this free service, and gave its location on a search result page prominence above the organic listings because of the popularity of Google’s AdWords program.

AdWords is a PPC (pay per click) advertising system where keywords and keyword phrases are bid on in an auction like system. The immense popularity of AdWords priced smaller Mom n Pop stores out of the market due to the ever escalating costs of certain keywords. Google became fearful that it’s search platform would be return search results of the “rich and famous” thus reflecting only what the rich and powerful wanted seen on Google search results.

How does Google determine which website should rank higher than another?

Google uses a computer program algorithm based on hundreds of factors as the vast size of the internet precludes any human capability of keeping the listings accurate or current. That algorithm is a closely guarded trade secret within Google. Search Engine Optimization Consultants learn what Google apparently likes and doesn’t like from the observable behavior of search results.

Local Business Listings IS Googlemaps

Google Maps algorithm is different from the algorithm that anoints one site over another. It’s also slower to update. If your customers leave glowing reviews of your product or service on the link provided your site will climb in rank. You are permitted up to 10 photos of your product or service, use as many of those slots as possible. Fill out as much information about your business as space allotted provides, being verbose is better than being succinct when it comes to Google Local Business Listings

Many small businesses get leads and interested inquiries from a local business listing even if they don’t have a website URL. Still other small businesses find it unnecessary to have their company listed anywhere other than the top local business listings. If your listing falls in ranking or is bumped out of it’s spot by a newcomer and you find your company losing sales because of it, you may want to outsource your rankings management to a local search engine optimization firm.

The fees involved for a local business listing may be less than the fees for improving your company website’s organic listing.

What Determines Rank?

Ever wonder why your companies listing in Google does OK in the main body of Google’s search results page but is not in the top 10 of those pesky Google Local Business Listings?

Ultimately what you want is to be found in BOTH sets of listings, the net effect of which would be to drive home in your prospective customers Mind’s Eye that Google apparently thinks pretty highly of your company if Google is displaying YOUR company listing in the Local Business Listings and in the Organic Search Rankings.

Well, people’s perception and Google’s reality are far, far apart.

Google didn’t *pick* you to be #1 and your competitor to be #11

A computer program picked you over the hapless fella you compete with. A person did not visit your site, take notes, compare notes, make a decision, hear the belly aching and whining of the poor fool who got bumped off of his front page listed by a website that ranked better than his…

nope, an algorithm picked you over them.

Think about it… there are what? a Gazillion webpages already indexed in Google? And how many tens of thousands of new webpages being created as we speak? Some of those tens of thousands are being “generated” by a “bot”.

There is no way on God’s Green Earth a staff of humans could possibly keep up with that kind of volume. An algorithm did it. The robot that scours the Internet (in the SEO industry we call that “spidering”) is titled GoogleBot GoogleBot Can’t Really *Read*

GoogleBot can NOT read… but it CAN count

Googlebot counts the words on your webpage, it counts the keywords and keyword phrases you use in your copy. Is y0ur company website a little light on copy? Too bad for you.

It matters little to Googlebot if the fancy flash graphic and dramatic digital photos depicting your most important product are… well the damn thing can’t decipher a photo! but it CAN read text.

What ever makes your photos good, better or best and likewise your competitors photos crappy is subjective. Art is subjective, math is not.

Either the keywords are on your webpage (Prominently placed at the top of the page I hope) or the keyw0rds are not.

He who has the most keywords (elegantly, tactfully and deftly constructed with proper enough grammar for the spell checking programmed Googlebot to index). Wins that coveted top spot!

But… the Google Local Business Listings are a different story. The algorithm that runs it is different.

What Google is looking for and rewards when it sees it for the organic search results page (the body of the page) is one thing. What Googlebot is looking to see in the Free Local Google Advertising Listings is quite another.

I’m not about to reveal the entire loophole in a “Google Secrets Revealed” post, not even for a hefty 00 fee for an ebook (I’d do it for that price if it were ticket sales to a seminar and I got a couple dozen of you to buy 00 tickets to eagerly learn how I do what it is I do) (that’s in the works by the way)

No, I’m not telling, not the whole thing but I will give you a hint, and I’m giving said hint in the form of my own Maryland search engine optimization results. This is not theory, This is not alleged, What follows is battle tested.

I’m competing against the best of the best, the top guys and gals in Maryland: other SEO professionals. Link building technicians like me:)

If your customers leave glowing reviews… and they leave them USING a gmail account, and that Gmail account is associated with a Google Profile, and the person leaving the review has a picture or avatar uploaded to that Google Profile… Your Google local business listing will climb in ranking.

There are things you can do to improve your ranking

Many of you know you have to do something, you’re reading this to research if there’s anything you can do to “make the phone ring” in this challenging economy. More than a few of you will learn that you know you want to do something about SEO (search engine optimization) but simply don’t have the time… and you’ll hire me to get YOUR company website dominating the local Google search results!

Related Google Optimization Articles

What Is SEO? It is How YOu Optimize Your Webpages To Rank High In The Search Engine Results . What You want In Search Engine Optimization is to see your site in the First Page of Google when a Person searches for a particular information. Internet Marketing Gurus usually targets a very specific niche in a keyword that can be easily dominated. What you’ll see is not only text inquiries but there are also some pictures and videos being searched. Internet Marketing has many facets that includes researching the right keywords, analysing web statistics and optimizing your content to gain top rankings. What I have here is a guide on SEO methods that work. Have a look.

SEO Tips That You Can Use For Your Business

Choosing the Right Niche Terms and Key Phrases: When one searches for information in the internet they type words known as keywords. The Search Engines place great importance in keywords because it enables them to know what the users are searching for and thus give them what they want. A good search engine ranking depends not only on the choice of keywords but also on their placement in web content as also their density. This keyword research that you need to do would result in a much greater results if you have a keyword with small competition. This means that they have less competition on the web and thus have higher chances of ranking higher in search engines. The Keywords should be found in your article’s title and page description. Another part where your keywords should be located should be in the First paragraph and sprinkled in your entire content.

Creating Backlinks: A link is a navigation element that directs a user from one web document to another. Not all links are created equal. You should get links from authority or legit websites. Simply because it plays a big role in gaining top search engine rankings. Also relevance and quality matter a lot in determining your search engine rankings. You should be wary of links that point to “bad neighborhoods” or dead sites that are already banned from Google. Google considers the outbound links from a website, as determinants of the quality of the website content.Also don’t forget to consider using internal links and using a good internal linking structure because Google sees your site as relevant and of high quality.

Creation of Unique SEO Sites: Website design plays a major role in search engine ranking. Consider making sites that are designed with users in mind, then search engines next. Many “Gurus” and Experts agree that Google and the other search engines loves content. But Text rank the highest. Websites using Flash or Javascript should make an HTML version of their website available for users. You can use your links or blogroll on the left navigation of your site for better search engine optimization. What you need to do is to create content that are very much related to the keyword you are targeting and to just create a new one that will target a new keyword. One of the greatest ways to get started with SEO is to brainstorm topics / Ideas that are extremely or relatively related. Just check wikipedia because they have lots of pages and keywords, that’s why they rank so high in the Search engines. Also, it is important for a website URL to correspond with the page content. One of the greatest investments that you could make for your website is by adding Sitemaps. The Site Map generally tells the users of your site and the search engine bots, what are the pages that you have for your site so that it could be indexed.

How To Increase Your Rankings With The Right Tags: The importance of HTML tags are not only for SEO but also for gaining increased attention by users. The most important element and key for SEO is the Title Tag, and you’ll love it simply because you’ll be able to gain more rankings if you put your keywords in your Title. Also add your keywords using H1 or H2 tags which are header tags because this improves your search engine rankings. How You Can Improve Your Search Engine Rankings With The Use of Meta Tags are always debatable. The place where you put this is on the top of your content. The meta description tags are used to influence the search engine crawlers, which support the tag. The importance of meta keywords with Meta Tags are simply because it will add to the search engine rankings.

How about Black Hat Methods: Many would argue that any attempt to “game” the search engines are considered blackhat. Previously one of the methods to “game” the search engines is to use “hidden” keywords or links that cannot be seen on the website by normal users but can be seen by the search engine bots. An excessive use of links, or the embedding of unrelated links in web pages is another black hat SEO technique.

It is important to learn SEO because of the outweigh benefits over the efforts that needs to be put up front to gain top rankings. I have been an internet marketer for most of my life and I can say that I truly need to implement SEO for my online business. Still, you need to deliver great quality content to be really successful.

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1..What is the number one priority, objective, or goal that you want to achieve through your online marketing efforts?
- Are trying to establish your business as an “authority site”?
- Are you trying to build a community using social media?
- Are you trying to generate more leads to fill your sales funnel?
- Are you are trying to attract more customers to a retail or physical location?
- What is your desired outcome for visitors to your website?
- What is your “business model” for your online marketing?

The responses to these questions will affect the online marketing strategy, approach, or techniques that are most suitable.

2. The BIG SECRET of Internet Millionaires and virtually ALL Successful Online Businesses…
Actually, this “secret” is painfully obvious – it is one of the fundamentals of achieving success online. But, just as major league athletes focus on the fundamentals of their competitive sports, it is worth highlighting here: TRAFFIC MATTERS MOST – IT IS A FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENT.

To be more specific – targeted traffic is what matters most. Attracting targeted traffic essentially means that the visitors to your site are already pre-qualified to the extent that you are presenting them with information that is aligned with what they are searching for. This assumes, of course, that the methods used to attract them are consistent with search engine optimization and search engine marketing best practices.
Practicing “Attraction Marketing” or “Magnetic Marketing” or Customer Centric Marketing leads to “friction free marketing” and long-term relationship-building.

3. How do prospects and customers find you now – and how could you attract more?
- Which keywords do prospects use when they are searching online for what you offer?
- Where is your business currently ranked for those terms in the search engines?
- How competitive are the keywords that you are currently using to promote your business?
- How viable is it that you will be able to rank for those keywords in the near future?

4. What does “Google Page 1 Rankings” actually mean – and why does it matter?
A Google Page 1 Ranking means either that a particular web-page appears on the first page of the natural “organic” Search Engine Results Position (often referred to by the acronym: “SERP”) in response to a search for a particular keyword or keyword search term, OR that an advertiser has outbid all other advertisers to appear in the Sponsored Results.

Google Page 1 Rankings matter greatly because:
- 81% of people search online before making a purchase.
- 72% of people use Google when performing online search.
- 98% of people choose a business on “Page 1″ when making a “buying decision”.

Conclusion: If your business isn’t ranked on the first page of Google’s “natural” or “organic” search results, you will be missing out on close to 75% of potential prospects, leads, and sales.

Important Note: Recent metrics evidence that people performing online searches increasingly look beyond the Sponsored Results and directly to the “organic results” for the information they seek.

5. Generating Traffic through Paid Advertising (AdWords, Facebook Ads, CPA, CPC, etc):
Paid Traffic remains the fastest way to generate traffic for new websites, to test keywords, and to “pump” life into websites that are stuck on page 2, 3, 4, 5….157…or otherwise not prominently displayed in the search results….BUT…the value of the bought traffic may be worthless…especially if it doesn’t convert to sales.

When business owners or webmasters get frustrated with their online efforts, there is frequently a temptation to try to make up for lost time by purchasing traffic from advertising brokers (i.e. the “content network”). As tempting as it is to generate “traffic” fast using this method, it should be understood that there are very real risks associated with it.

Anyone with a valid credit card charging capacity can generate traffic fast. Beware, however, that the traffic generated from many of these sources is a total waste of money. Ask almost anyone who has tried it.

Obviously, Google and Yahoo have made literally billions of dollars by selling this kind of traffic (i.e. paid clicks). In the early days of Adwords and Adsense lot of savvy internet marketers created online advertising empires by functioning as advertising “arbitrage” agents. For the past several years, however, many of those very same marketers complain of losing vast sums on advertising campaigns.

Caution: If you choose to use paid advertising to buy traffic, proceed carefully – and limit your spending until you verify that the cost/benefit ratio of your advertising program is within your accepted tolerances, and expectations.

6. Keyword Research – and How to “re-position” your company online (if necessary).
One of the smartest things you can do, and definitely one of the first things you really should do, is to perform some basic keyword research. Only by conducting detailed keyword research can you know how to proceed with your online marketing efforts. Only after performing keyword research can you determine whether you will be wasting time and money (and lost-opportunity costs) by trying to promote your business based on words or terms or “keywords” that are either too competitive, not sufficiently searched, or otherwise non-performing.

You can begin to get a sense about all of this for free by using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
Start by entering a broad term that relates to your business or niche. Then scan the results for the keywords you are currently using.
Then review the competition, both in terms of Adwords and also in the search engine itself. If the first page of natural SERP results is dominated by major corporations, major “authority sites”, or other stiff competition, then that keyword may be difficult to rank for. This is especially true if the SERP results are for main indexed pages.

On the other hand, if the first page of Google returns a lot of “inner pages” (i.e. pages that are on the third hierarchy of the site structure, or lower), and if they are not from “authority sites”, but rather from blogs or smaller sites, then ranking for those particular keywords may be achievable, and perhaps even relatively easy).

7. Knowing Who Your Visitors Are – Capturing Visitor Contact Details for Lead Generation
The single most important missing element from most business websites may be a “lead capture form”. It’s hard to believe that with literally billions of websites published, so many websites lack such a valuable but inexpensive and easy-to-implement tool.
Lead capture forms have been available for at least 10 years. And we have all grown accustomed to using them – as consumers, or as “subscribers”. You may be reading this information as a result of having entered your email address into a basic lead capture form (sometimes referred to as a “squeeze form” or “squeeze page”, depending on how it is implemented).
Lead capture forms are typically integrated with Auto responders such as Aweber, Get Response, iContact, Infusionsoft, 1ShoppingCart, or others.
If you are trying to develop any kind of business intelligence about your website visitors, and trying to establish a follow-up rapport with them, it is essential to incorporate lead capture forms into your website.
At the most basic level, setting up a lead capture form can be accomplished in minutes.

8. Understanding Web 2.0 and How Social Media Can be Leveraged to Facilitate SEO and to Grow Your Business:
Web 2.0 and Social Media are extremely complex and dynamic developments. The easiest way to understand the potential of Web 2.0 and Social Media, in terms of how they can help you grow your business is this: Make It Easy For People to Learn About You and What You Offer – and expand your circle of influence or like-minded “friends”.

Unlike “web 1.0″ sites, Blogs are “Web 2.0 ready” – what this means is that they are preconfigured (in most cases) to allow for RSS feeds, Social Network Sharing, Commenting, etc.

It’s no secret that the way Google (and other leading search engines) rank their search results is largely based on what other people think. It follows that the more people who link to your site, the more Google will consider your site to be an “authority site”, or at least a meaningful site, within a particular niche, or for certain keyword terms.

The easiest, cheapest, and one of the most effective things that you can do to improve your search engine optimization is to incorporate a blog into your website (or make it your website), and to create meaningful and relevent content on a regular basis (e.g. 4 times a week or more).
Make it easy for other people and blogs and organizations to get your content and to derive value from you. RSS feeds and Social Bookmarking tools are ideal for this task.

Summary: If any of the above sounds too technically challenging for you, or if you would simply prefer to focus on running your business, rather than trying to manage your search engine optimization costs and rankings, then you should seriously consider outsourcing your SEO Package to a trusted advisor.

Related Google Optimization Articles

 Introduced in March 2004, Google Local displays local business information at the top of many of Google’s organic search results accompanied by a map. As of June 2010, Google Places listings consist of 1, 3 or 7 businesses for most searches. Considering that most localized searches provide millions of organic search results, showing in the top 7 of Google Places can be invaluable to a business.

Breaking into the top 7 takes knowledge and time and staying there takes effort. It all starts with claiming and optimizing your Google Places local business listing.

Visit Google and search for Google Places. Register for an account. Follow the bouncing ball until you can click on the button that says “Add a Business”.

As a quick aside, it is assumed that anyone who would read this knows that Google Places only allows one listing per phone number. While you can in fact create multiple listings with the same number and reap the benefit for a short time, eventually you’ll find that all of your listings have disappeared into the void. Don’t play games with Google Places. It isn’t worth the time and effort it takes to undo the damage should you cross the dozens of arbitrary, invisible boundaries that Google has in place to try to make the entire process “fair” for every business.

The first page of the submission form is mostly fill in the blank, but there are 3 important opportunities to optimize the listing.

Company/Organization: Choose your business name wisely. No one audits the listings to verify that the company name matches your incorporation documents, but be careful. If you company’s legal name is “Paul’s Professional Services, Inc.”, you need to carefully tweak it for the purposes of Google Places optimization. Two common methods are to add a keyword descriptor or your primary city. For example: “Paul’s Professional Painting Services” or “Paul’s Painting Services of Dallas”. Monkey with your company name too much using obviously manipulative methods for cramming keywords into the field and you’ll eventually find that your Google Places listing has been relegated to a black hole by Google. Typically, this is the direct result of your competition reporting your listing to Google. Simply conduct a Google search for “locksmith google spammers” and you’ll find some insight on why you do not want to get on the bad side of Google Places.

Description: Carefully craft a 200 character description of your business focusing almost exclusively on your key products and services. Do not waste space here for marketing speak such as “Proudly serving the DFW area since 1974″. Do not waste space here by including geographic references. The geography is almost entirely controlled by the city you list for your address. Inclusion of additional cities does virtually nothing when it comes to optimizing your Google Places listing.

For our hypothetical painting company, Paul’s Professional Services, an optimized description would go something like:

Residential and commercial painter specializing in interior and exterior painting. Services include wall painting, ceiling painting, textures, faux finishes and color matching. Free estimates.

Note that the example include not only the company’s top services, but also includes multiple uses of the primary keyword in various forms – “painting” and “painter” are the top two keywords in searches according to Google’s Keyword Tool. In addition, “free” is a top search word for virtually any search phrase.

It is important to remember that the description is designed to reach a broader search audience – not win awards on Madison Avenue. Keep it simple and include your top keywords. 200 characters is not a lot of room, so make sure not to waste space.

Category: Google Places requires the use of at least one standard category. Begin by typing your top keywords and choose the most relevant category. Google Places provides the ability to include 5 categories. Use them. If your top keywords are not standard categories, then use one or two closely related standard categories and use the remaining three slots for specific keywords.

For our hypothetical company, the categories might look something like:
Painter (Standard)
Painting Contractor (Top keyword search / Custom Category)
House Painter (Top keyword search / Custom Category)
Commercial Painter (Top keyword search / Custom Category)
Handyman (Standard, but an extremely popular related search term)

NEXT. Page Two of submission form.

The Service Areas and Location Settings options are relatively new and are designed to allow a business to establish a service area if the company does not have a storefront of some sort. Initially, choosing a service area (“Yes, this business serves customers at their locations”) appeared to hinder the optimization process. While the jury is still out, Google continues to tweak this feature. If in doubt, complete the option accurately for your business.

Business hours and payment options are purely optional and serve little if any value to the optimization process. Potential customers certainly will find the information useful.

Google Places provides the ability to add up to 10 photos and 5 videos (from YouTube.com). Make sure you always use keywords to name your photos and take advantage of the “tag” functions provided by YouTube.com. The impact on Google Places traffic is limited, but any impact is good.

Additional details: Google’s examples are virtually useless and very misleading. To optimize your listing, create a table of your key products and services using as many keywords as possible. Each detail consists of two fields with a maximum space of 200 characters each. An example of an effective use of these fields for our hypothetical company would be:

Interior & Exterior Painting Contractor specializing in: Wall painting, Ceiling painting, Floor staining, Epoxy Floor coatings, Texture paint finishes, faux finishes, color matching, proper surface preparation

The colon is the separator between the two fields. Include as many additional details about your company, your products and your services as possible.

Feel free to include service areas as one of the Additional Details for informational purposes, but do not expect it to cause your Google Places listing to show in those cities.
SUBMIT.

The new Google Places local business listing will not be active until verified. Usually, verification can be completed by triggering a phone call from Google’s computers to the phone number of record for the listing. In some instances, Google requires verification via a postcard mailed to the address of record for the listing. Postcards can take up to 5 weeks to arrive. Once verified, the real work begins.

Paul Dumas has provided Internet marketing, website design and SEO services to local businesses for over 13 years. He is founder and owner of Optimized Local Search Services. Additional articles related to local SEO and Internet trends for local business are available on the blog: http://optimizedlocalsearch.com/localsearchblog

Related Google Search Articles

Search engine optimisation is something that all business owners with a website need to be aware of. If you’ve got a site and want to drive relevant traffic to that site, you need to know what to do to help the search engines get a good understanding of your business, so they can rank it for the terms you feel are most suitable for visitors. It’s not about tricking the search engines, or trying to boost traffic numbers in general. You need to see an increase in relevant traffic to you site (10 relevant visitors are far better than 1000 non relevant visitors, who leave your site straight away), and Google wants to provide searchers with a list of high quality sites, relevant to their search query.

1. Research your keywords: Make sure that you know what people type into Google and the other search engines when looking for your products or services. Research into how competitive these phrases are – are there any phrases that are relevant, but aren’t quite so competitive? These are more likely to give you the results you want. Also think about plurals and synonyms.

2. Make sure each single page on your site has a unique title tag. If you’ve done your keyword research, you should also aim to use keyword/phrases in the title tag too.

3. Additionally, make sure that all the meta descriptions for each page are unique too. Since the search engines mostly show the title and description of a page in the search results, make sure your descriptions correlates to your title, includes keywords, and has some kind of call to action that persuades the searcher to click on your link rather than the result above or below you.

4. Using your keywords and phrases, look at the headers within your pages. Headers tags are like the headlines of a newspaper – your H1 header should contain your primary keyphrases, with any H2 headers containing your secondary phrases.

5. Look at your copy- does this contain keyphrases? Make sure you don’t keyword stuff your copy though – aim for about a 3% ratio of keywords to copy. The content of your site should be written with your visitors in mind first, SEO second, so make sure it still makes sense and adds value.

6. Analyse your website structure. Do you have a lot of deep pages, hidden within subfolder after subfolder? Aim to keep the architecture of your site nice and flat – you don’t want to make it difficult for search engines or visitors to find content. Try and keep everything within two clicks of the homepage.

7. Going back to content – how fresh is the content on your site? Google and the other search engines love new and unique content. So try and update your website on a regular basis. This could be through a blog, press releases, or new product pages. Just keep it fresh – no one likes anything stale!

8. Linking…. oh linking, everyone is always going on about the number links to your site…why? Because it’s important! Each link is like a vote of confidence in your site, so the more you have (from reputable, high quality sites), the better. Building the number of quality links to your site takes time. Register with industry directories, local directories, become active in social media, make the most of social bookmarking, create amazing relevant content that people will want to link to, create articles and post them out to article sites, comment in forums… there’s so many activities you can do to increase the number of links to your site. It’s an investment – in time and sometimes money, but it’s worth it.

9. Register with Google Webmaster and submit your xml sitemap. This is an xml file includes all the pages of your website in a way that makes it easy for Google to reference and index. Google Webmaster will also tell you if there are any errors with your site, what some popular keywords are surrounding your site, some of the links pointing to your site and more.

10. Register with Google Analytics and start using it on a regular basis to monitor your site. Google Analytics is a free peice of software that enables you to track all the activity on your site. It’s actually a bit scary the amount of information it can give you. But for a small business owner, or marketing professional, it’s an invaluable tool that can help you improve your website performance and growth.

This is just the tip of the SEO iceberg – there’s so much to SEO and it’s constantly changing and evolving. At the end of the day though, it’s all about creating a quality website, adding regular quality content and being active in the world wide web. It’s not rocket science, but it does take time.

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