Promoting Your Business Online

Transcription

1 Chapter 3 Optimizing Your Website for Local Search If you have a service based or retail business, you should know that traffic to local search results now account for as much as 30% of total searches being conducted online on a monthly basis. This makes it essential for a business to rank high within the local maps search listings on the 3 major search engines; Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Local SEO consists of 8 major steps which are: 1. Market Research 2. Keyword Focus and Use of Local Modifiers 3. Optimizing Your Website for Local SEO 4. Creating or Claiming Existing Local Business Listings 5. Optimizing Local Business Profile Listings 6. Building Citations and Links to Enhance Listing Rankings 7. Encouraging Customer Testimonials and Reviews 8. Staying Up to Date with Changes in Local SEO In this chapter, I am going to focus on optimizing your website for Local search. I will cover creating and claiming your Local business listings and your business profile in a separate chapter. Search engine optimization consists of two tiers; On Page Optimization and Off Page Optimization.

2 On page SEO means optimizing your website so that it can be indexed by the search engines. All of the major search engines rank these much better in their listings and there a number of things that need to be in place to make it happen. Have you heard of Keywords? Keywords are what people type into the search engines to find what they re looking for. There are 7 places that you need to be using keywords on your site to optimize it for the search engines to find. #1 URL (domain name) I always recommend using a keyword based domain. For instance, if you are a dentist in Jackson, MS., I would suggest a name that has all of these words in the name, not necessarily your business name. ie unless your business name contains your keywords already. #2 Title Tags Your website has a name and each page also needs to have a name. The title tag tells both the Search Engines and your users what the topic of your page is about. The contents of the title tag will usually appear in the first line of the results that is returned by the search engines, so your title needs to be relevant to what your page is about. #3 Headline Keyword loaded headlines or H1 tags are also important. They can be placed almost anywhere on the page that you want your text to stand out. It's almost certain that a searcher who's just clicked on a results link expects to see a matching headline.

3 #4 Body Text - It shouldn't be a surprise that using your primary keyword phrase (or secondary, if relevant) in the content of the page is important. Research suggests that it's not just about repetition, though. Search engines are now using advanced topic modeling algorithms to assess relevance and quality, too. In fact, overuse of keywords can result in a negative impact on rankings, so be judicious. #5: Images and image alt attributes - Having images on a keyword-targeted page is wise for many, many reasons, not least among them is that these can help directly and indirectly with rankings. Most directly, your image has an opportunity to show up in an image search result. Granted, Google's new interface has dramatically lowered the traffic from image search, but I still find great value in having your brand name/site associated with production of useful graphics, photos, and visual elements. For search engines, the image's title, filename, surrounding text, and alt attribute all matter from a ranking perspective. In particular, those doing SEO should know that when an image is linked, the alt attribute is treated similarly to anchor text in a text link. #6: Internal and external links - A page within your site should be accessible through no more than three clicks from any other page on the site, and it should also provide useful links to relevant information on any topics that are discussed. Some SEOs have questioned whether linking externally, especially to sites/pages that might compete for a visitor's time/attention or a search engine's rankings is wise. Some search engine representatives have subtly

4 hinted on multiple occasions that there are elements in the algorithms that reward external links to quality sites/pages. #7: Meta description - A page's meta description isn't used directly in search engine ranking algorithms (according to representatives from Google and Bing), but that doesn't mean they're not critical. The meta description tag, if it employs the keyword query, usually shows up in the search results, and is part of what searchers consider when deciding whether to click. As you can see from the snippet above, when keywords appear in the meta description, they also get bolded, which can help with visibility. The primary goal of a meta description should be to earn the searcher's click. Think of them like ad copy, and work to make searchers care about your page. Off Page Optimization Although we know that Google is the number one search engine most people don t realize that there are more than 50 other key online locations that your business needs to be found! You need to be using these other places to help Google rank your business so that your target audience can find you. We call these places Influence Engines and they include:

5 Local Search Engines and review sites like Google Places, Yahoo Local, Yelp, and Bing Business Portal Social Networking Sites like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter Online Business Directories specific to your region or metropolitan area Internet Business Directories like Superpages.com and Merchants Circle Online Directory Assistance sites like 411.com AND, many category-specific directories relating to your industry They all matter to your business because they can have a huge impact on how easily people find you online and because they will create links back to your site. You need to get your information listed with as many of these influencers as possible and encourage customers to post comments and reviews. This is one of the first things you should do to get leads and customers from the Internet. This is an excerpt from my book, Promoting Your Business Online, which will be released later this year. If you enjoy what you ve read, please drop me a line at [email protected] or visit my facebook page and leave a comment.