The article caught my attention, that’s for sure. The promise was bold and incisive. It’s as easy as 1-2-3. Get high rankings at Google. All you have to do is three easy-to-do things. Only it’s not that easy.

Here are three things you have to do to get those high rankings (the author of the article promises):

• Pick the best keywords and place them in your web page content
• Then you need to “find, get, and manage” great inbound links
• Finally, you need to monitor your progress

I agree that these are the three things you need to do to rank well in the search engines, but it’s not so easy. It’s hard work.

Picking the best keywords is not so cut-and-dry. You have to do some research. You have to look at the availability of the keywords and not just their traffic value. The best keywords are those keywords that get a lot of searchers trying to find information on them and where few webmasters are targeting them. That isn’t too many keywords. Plus, to add a kink in the garden hose, it changes from month to month.

This month, “auto repairs” might be a valuable search term. Next month, it could “tire rotation”. I wouldn’t suggest you change your website content every month to capture the latest high value search term.

To be sure, constant keyword research is necessary and finding the best keywords isn’t always easy. Even if you find high value keywords with little competition, you still are going to do better with keywords that are relevant to your business and if those are the keywords with the most content you are in for a long, hard drive to the top of search engine rankings!

Inbound links. Yes, you need them. Getting links isn’t hard. Getting valuable links consistently is hard work. Directory submissions are good, but even better are relevant sites within your niche that have authority. Getting them to link to you voluntarily is a difficult task, but it can be done. And when you do it those links can help propel you to search engine ranking success!

Monitor your progress. This is actually the easiest step. The hard part is finding the best keywords, developing great content, and building valuable links. But once you get the hard part out of the way, monitoring what happens on your site and using that information to make important tweaks that benefit you is much easier.

Need help with your goals. Try an Internet Marketing Blueprint before you go too far.

Local businesses have special needs, or do they? Well, whether your business is local or global you’ll still need to perform search engine optimization on your website, blog, and other online marketing collateral. But how you go about it will be different.

An online florist only needs to optimize her website for words like “florist,” “flowers”, and related terms. But a local florist in Flint, Michigan will have to optimize her website to receive local traffic also. How do you do that?

There are several ways to perform local optimization on your website. The most obvious way is to include your brick and mortar address on your website. But are there other things you can do as well?

First, let’s clarify what we mean by including your address on your website. Just adding it to your Contact page isn’t enough. It needs to be on every page of your website. If you create a footer and include your footer on every page of your website then that will take care of that. Your footer should include physical address including zip code, phone number, a link to your contact form, mailing address (if different than your physical address), and links to other web properties like your blog.

Other than your footer, however, there are other ways to optimize your local business website:

• Include your local geotargeting terms in your keywords meta tag
• In your description, include your primary geotargeted keyword
• Add your zip code to your keywords meta tag
• Mention all the local communities you serve by name on at least one page of your website
• Set up a separate landing page for each community or zip code that you do business in
• When link building, use local geotargeted phrases for anchor text
• Include your city name in the URL of your web address (for instance, BooksinFlint.com)

These are some very simply ways to go about optimizing your website for local search terms. And since you are dealing with a smaller geographic area it shouldn’t that difficult to rank for your important keywords.

Greg Sterling had an interesting post on his blog, Screenwerk, which highlighted the top 50 local websites. Many of them, of course, are sites like Weather Channel, Wal-Mart, or Target that wouldn’t benefit most small business owners as places to advertise, and several of the sites wouldn’t offer advertising to local businesses anyway.

It is interesting, however, that of the top 6 businesses locally-oriented websites on the list, three of them are great resources for small business owners to use for targeted marketing. They are:

• Craigslist
• Superpages
• Yellowpages.com

Craigslist is a great resource and offers small business owners a way to advertise their local offerings for free.

Superpages and Yellowpages.com both offer free listings as well, but you can upgrade to a paid listing and be more effective. It’s just like advertising in the print yellow pages in your home town, except that you have a much broader audience and you can advertise in such a way that you increase your chances of being found someone looking for your services.

I wouldn’t ignore any of these three locally-oriented websites.

“Oh, Caroline, Caroline, wherefore art thou Caroline?”

Well, I’ll tell you where I’m going to be. On July 9th I’ll be speaking to the Business Women’s Network. I’ll be speaking on “Everything You MUST Know before creating a website.”

As usual, I’ll be drawing upon my 20 years of experience in marketing for large corporations to share with small business owners how they can get the most out of marketing their businesses with a website. You know my passion is helping small business owners find new customers and increase sales and THAT’s exactly what I’ll be talking about on July 9th.

My practical, easy-to-understand presentation should clear it all up for you. I’m as down to earth as dirt (I promise!) and I’ll help you understand “brainy” concepts like social networking, blogging, and Internet marketing tactics that have been around for years. Specifically, I’ll be sharing the following insights:

• The 3 elements of every successful website
• How to ensure your site looks great
• Making sure your website is found in the search engines
• Which questions to ask any web professional before having them create your website

If you agree this is valuable information and you’d like the answers to these concerns (and much more) then I encourage you to come and hear me speak on July 9th at the Women’s Business Network at Enjoy! Restaurant located at 15435 Founders Lane, Apple Valley, Minnesota. Guests pay just $30 to attend. For more information, visit the Business Women’s Network website or e-mail reservation@businesswomensnetwork.org.

Yep, I read it here. But something else I think this article says that is helpful is right here:

1. Accurate data and information
2. Have listings on multiple services
3. Offer multilingual listings
4. Enhance your content
5. where applicable offer customers the ability to interact with ratings and reviews of your service
6. finally, a strong merchant website

According to Nick Patsiopoulos, Product Manager at Yahoo! Canada, these are the six things a local small business needs to be successful at Internet marketing. Notice that having a website is last. I found that to be interesting.

I’m not sure what he means by “accurate data and information”. If that’s on your website then I agree that it’s important, but perhaps out of order. You have to have information and data before it can be accurate.

The listings on multiple services is a good one. What many local businesses seem to miss is that off-site information can be just as valuable, or more, as your on-site information. That’s why it’s important to create profiles at directories and review sites.

The multilingual listings is optional. That won’t benefit everyone. If you live in a rural area where most of the people who would be your potential customers will speak the same language then multilingual listings might not help. But I’d say that this probably would help most small business owners, especially if you do business in a large urban area.

Again, “enhance the content” doesn’t make much sense outside of the context of a website. I think I would move having a website to No. 1 on the list because all of the off-site listings in the world are only going to do you some partial good without a website. You really want your website to appear in search engine rankings higher than any of your off-site listings, which should serve to enhance your website.

I’d probably list No. 5 at No. 2. This is very powerful. Allowing your customers to review your business and offer feedback is one of the most valuable things you can do. And, remember, 40% of search queries are local, which means you stand a greater chance of being found if you target local searches.

Local.com has been a great resource for local businesses seeking to attract consumers from their own neighborhoods for some years now. Finally, the website has added user reviews. That’s a good thing.

User reviews allow consumers to talk to consumers directly about the products and services they have an interest in. And to add to it the local geographic angle where consumers in a particular city or town, or even state, can offer up their experiences so that others can benefit and make choices based on user testimony, well, that just adds another dimension to online business - a valuable one at that. But is it any good for business?

Let’s be honest. Not all reviews are good. We’d be fools to expect every consumer to write a glowing review of our business. We just can’t make everyone happy. But should we be concerned about negative reviews on a website like Local.com? What if those reviews rise to the top of Google for all the world to see?

Admittedly, that is a danger. But I don’t think most businesses should be too concerned about negative reviews at sites like Local.com. This is especially true if you try to perform a good service. Negative reviews allow you to see what consumers are saying about you when you’re not around. They allow consumer honesty, which leads you - if you’re paying attention - to think more in-depthly about your business and how you want it to be perceived. You then have a choice: Fix the problems so that future customers don’t have the same experience (and potentially write negative reviews themselves) or decide that you are willing to live with a weakness in order to serve the market you are aiming for and meet their needs.

Business owners who care about their customers and work hard to provide a good service shouldn’t be overly concerned with negative reviews. You should welcome them.

Now here’s a Google tidbit I wasn’t aware of: Don’t end your URLs with .0. They won’t get ranked.

Evidently, this phenomenon is only true at Google. Yahoo! and MSN Live index those pages anyway, but it does seem to be a rather arbitrary rule. As Rand says, a human review might be in order to ensure that such pages aren’t spam. If they are, Google can ditch them. If not, then approve them and index them. Seems simple.

It pays to read the leading SEO blogs from time to time just to see if anything new develops. In fact, I’d say that the three most important activities for anyone interested in do-it-yourself SEO are:

• Read a handful of SEO blogs to stay on top of industry changes
• Test and experiment
• Review and analyze

I know SEOmoz does these things. Any serious SEO and any successful Internet marketer is doing all three and that’s why the .0 rule is such big news. None of us have ever seen it before.

There are two great ways to use the Google Custom Search Engine to brand your business and help your site visitors find what they want more easily.

The first way involves building a local search engine so that visitors to your site can find what they want in your local area. The second way is to create an industry-specific search engine that helps visitors to your site find what they are looking for in your industry no matter where in the world it may be located. Both types of search engines can be used as a branding tool for your business.

Let’s say you own a dentistry website in Wayzata, Michigan. You can build a local search engine to help people in Wayzata find anything they want in Wayzata and that can be an effective way to brand you to your local customers as well as keep your local visitors on your site longer and when they are in need of veneers, who do you think they’re going to call?

On the other hand, you could skip the local search angle and build a dentistry search engine. Anyone interested in finding something related to dentistry - be it a dentist in their home town, the latest technology used in dental offices, research currently being conducted in the area of teeth maintenance, etc. - and visitors to your website can find anything related to dentistry through your website.

You can brand your custom search engine using Google’s unique branding features and design your search results pages to look just like your website. Since Google Custom Search also powers AdSense for Search, you can turn the search engine into another source of revenue for your business. How cool is that?

So, to recap:

• Branding
• More Traffic
• Visitors Stay Longer
• AdSense for Search
• Customization

Why not start your own search engine?

Local internet marketing is something that the majority of business owners overlook, particularly if their products can be shipped worldwide. However, more and more people are starting to do local online searches for the stuff they want to buy . . . so if you are active with local internet marketing, chances are you´ll be the one they buy from.

Local Internet Marketing Facts

• Most people do general searches to find more information, but local searches when they feel ready to buy.
• 40% of online searching involves local searches.
• The majority of online buyers check various estores before settling on just one.

Local internet marketing is a good way to go, even if you are also advertising nation wide. Pumping your business in your local area can really boost sales and many experts agree that local search is where the money is at these days!

Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
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Did you know that 48% of online users have searched for a local venue in the previous 3 months? That makes local internet marketing a very useful tool for small business owners who are interested in boosting their sales by adverting online.

Local internet marketing is a method of reaching those who are interested in buying from someone near where they live and the best part . . . . local searchers are usually ready to buy.

You see, the majority of us do general searches online to find out more information about a product. Let´s say you´re in the market for a new camera. You´ll probably start checking out the different models available and read reviews until you´ve narrowed it down to just one or two specific cameras. Then, when you are ready to buy, what do you do?

You look for a local store that offers the camera you want. This is where local internet marketing can really be useful for a small business, especially if you don´t have a large presence in the area yet. People can find you online and see that you have what they need and they are far more likely to purchase from someone near them.

Local internet marketing is a great addition to any other marketing that you are doing and can really help boost sales.

Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
Back to the Blog