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Posts Tagged ‘search engine’
Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
If you are a veterinarian or pet doctor, then you now have a new way to market your practice. It’s a search engine for veterinarians powered by Google.
The concept is nothing new. There have been search engines launched for specific professions for years. And the benefits are always the same.
By listing your veterinary practice in a profession-specific search engine like MyVeterinarian.com, you increase your chances of getting found by local people in need of your services. This happens in a couple of ways.
First, if someone finds the MyVeterinarian.com website and performs a search for vets in your area, they are likely to find you. Here’s the catch: That’s IF they find the MyVeterinarian.com website, which doesn’t have particularly high rankings at Google for the search term “veterinarian.” But that could change.
Secondly, with your listing in the search engine, if your website is linked to in the listing, then you’ll receiving better link popularity as a result, which can increase your own website in Google’s listings for the search term “veterinarian” and your local geographic search terms.
I always recommend listing a business in a professional directory or search engine. Unless there are serious issues with the site, it’s usually a positive. In this case, I’d say it’s definitely a positive.
Tags: geotargeting, local search, profession-specific search, search engine
Posted in Local Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
Ask.com has reported that it is leaving the search engine wars and taking up Q&A. Just as well. They were losing the war. BAD!
So what does this really mean? I don’t see this decision really affecting any of the other search engines in terms of market share or how they approach search. Do you?
The real answer to the question “what does this really mean?” is: It depends on how Ask.com implements its next phase of operation. Does it mean that Ask.com will now focus its efforts on Answers.Ask.com, or is something else going to happen instead? Let’s look to the Ask.com blog for clues.
We know that receiving answers to questions is why Ask.com users come to the site, and we are now serving them in everything we do. ?
OK, so Ask.com knows its audience. That doesn’t surprise me. However, simply stating that they plan to serve their customers in everything they do doesn’t really answer the question. Wouldn’t we expect that?
Ah, but what about this?
Unfortunately, this absolute focus means that we need to stop investing in things outside of providing users with the best answers, including making the huge capital investment required to support algorithmic web search development. This investment in independent web search is not required by our strategy, nor is it required in the marketplace. We have access to multiple third party structured and unstructured data feeds that, when integrated, can provide a web search experience on par with what we are able to produce internally, at much lower costs.
The emphasis above is mine. What this sounds like to me is that Ask.com is planning to become an aggregator. Will they just use other websites to provide answers to questions that people ask? If so, that will be an interesting thing to see.
There are already plenty of aggregators on the Internet, but what about aggregators that use data feeds to answer questions? Would it work? Do you think that’s where Ask.com is headed? Would you use it if it were?
Tags: search, search engine
Posted in search engines | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
Bing, Microsoft’s new search brand, made its initial public debut on June 1. I think the question for small business owners is whether or not Bing will solve a problem or help people find them better.
Initial impressions of Bing seem to be good. Upon first glance, it looks a lot like MSN Live did. Not much of a change. Minor cosmetic differences is all. But when you delve into Bing’s search features, that’s a different story. I must say that I am impressed.
It seems that Bing’s biggest problem may just be the fact that it took so long to happen. I mean, Google still has a sizable lead in search and that doesn’t appear to be letting up any time soon. But I do see an improvement in search results. The question is whether or not local searchers looking for local businesses to patronize will be able to use the search engine to find what they want. If that happens then I think you’ll see an increase in market share for Bing. That increase might not make a difference in overcoming Google. It may make a difference in overcoming Yahoo!
I’m interested in your opinion. Do you think Bing is going places?
Tags: bing, google, microsoft, search, search engine, yahoo
Posted in search engines | 4 Comments »
Thursday, December 11th, 2008
Everywhere you look, people are talking about the importance of getting into the first page of results in the search engines. When you are looking at millions of results, it can seem like a pretty daunting task, hitting that top ten list. So, is it really necessary?
In a word, yes. If you want to get the best traffic possible, you need to be very visible. Most people don`t change their settings, so the first page of any search engine will only include the top ten results. Some people do look further, clicking on to the next page of results, but they almost never go past the 3rd page, meaning that you have to be in the top 30 results to catch their attention.
The number of searchers who are actually going to go to page 10 or 50 and find you if you aren`t on that first page is pretty low. It won`t do you much good at all unless you can land yourself in those top results.
So, now that you know it really is very important to get into the top ten, what can you do to ensure you make it? Here are the areas you will need to cover:
- SEO on website
- Link building
- Online reputation
Obviously there are more things you can do, but these three cover everything from article marketing to blogging. The point is that it takes some work and dedication to beat out the competition on the search engines, but you can do it if you know where to start.
Tags: internet, search engine, SEO
Posted in search engines | No Comments »
Sunday, December 7th, 2008
Anchor text is what you need when dealing with link building for your business, to help increase the amount of hits you receive. It`s very simple to incorporate and can do wonders for your search engine rankings.
Link building is an activity that you need to be participating in regularly if you want great search engine results. You`ll find that using some great anchor text with well placed keywords will help.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Keep anchor text relevant. Have a few keywords that you can interchange, but don`t use them out of place.
- Mix it up. Using the exact same anchor text is a sure way to get slapped by Google, so mix it up. For example, you might use, “Christmas cookie recipes” for one article and “recipes for Christmas cookies” in another.
- Go slowly. There are services out there that claim to build hundreds of links immediately, but this isn`t what you want. Link building should be natural looking or, once again, the search engines will penalize you.
Keeping your link building natural and changing the anchor text around is the best way to go about gaining search engine popularity. Combined with other SEO techniques, it can be invaluable.
Tags: anchor text, link building, links, search engine
Posted in link building | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
How your business website is designed has a huge impact on whether or not the search engines will like you. There are a lot of little things that most people don`t even realize can affect their search engine ranking, but end up being very important.
Sidebars. If your sidebar code comes first in the template, guess what the search engine is looking at? That`s right, your feed stats or invitation to get a free ebook! Not good SEO. Either optimize your sidebars or put your body code first.
Meta tags. These little suckers are still very important when it comes to SEO. You want to ensure that the search engines have a quick way to grab your keywords and information.
Links. Do you know where your site is linking to? If you grab a free template off the web, chances are it has some hidden links built into it. This is important to check, since they could affect your SEO if you`re linking to a “bad neighborhood”.
SEO isn`t just about writing and including keywords in your titles, though that is also quite important. You will want to have your website totally optimized, as well, if you are looking to grow your business through SEO.
Tags: design, search engine, SEO, website
Posted in SEO for Small Business | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
SEO or search engine optimization is something that every small business needs to think about. You want to rank well for your keywords and get lots of search engine traffic to your business site, but often it just seems too complicated. You try and try, adding new content, revising your articles to make sure your keywords are prominent . . . but still end up on the 27th page of Google search results! There might be a good reason for this, you could be making a common SEO mistake that keeps your site in the bottom.
Using too many keywords. SEO works best if all your webpages are based around a small number of keywords. You´ll get the absolute best results by sticking to just one, but up to three is usually fine for a small business website.
Using general or overly popular keywords. Trying to get number one for “earn money online” is virtually impossible. There are many keywords that are like this . . . they simply have too much competition to make SEO a good idea. To find better keywords, look for ones that have fewer than 50,000 results when typed in quotations into Google. You can also use tools like Wordtracker (free trial works well) to get an idea of demand. Obviously you don´t want to end up with a keyword that has no competition, but no visitors either!
Using JavaScript. The search engine spiders can´t read JavaScript, so try to stick with regular code if you want the best SEO results. Making it easy for the spiders to check out your site will result in higher ranking.
Poor SEO titles. The page and article titles need to include your main keywords if you want to rank well. Also, have relevant information within the first 60 characters, so the search engines will put this information in the search results.
While you may not rank number one for a while yet, you can certainly move up in the search results by tweaking your SEO a little. It´s something that we often work on very hard, but if you are making these mistakes, it´s quite likely you never even realized it!
Tags: rankings, search engine, SEO
Posted in SEO for Small Business | No Comments »
Saturday, February 9th, 2008
Domain names can be a great way to boost your SEO. If you take a look at any particular search in Google, the first several results usually have their keywords in the domain name . . . and this is no accident. If you know which keywords are strongest for your website, you can try and get a domain name that includes them. However, with many people buying domains on spec, to resell later, it can be difficult to get your first choice.
In general, you should try to get a .com domain name, not for SEO purposes but because people tend to remember .com easier. Also a domain name that terminates in .com is usually regarded as more professional than a .net or .info. In worst case scenarios, you can go with a different domain suffix, but there are other ways to get a domain name that works for your business and boosts SEO.
Using your business name in conjunction with a keyword can be a good way to get what you want. If your business is a hair salon called Hair Love, you might try something like HairLoveSalon, ChicagoHairLove, etc. The trick is to find something with your keywords that doesn´t run too long. The experts say that three words is the maximum, but occasionally you may need to use four.
The key is to have a domain name that people will remember. Using a lot of initials and random numbers can really confuse folks, so try to keep it to real words, or at least your business name. For example, if you call your business ABC Tutors, it would be fine to use those letters. That way, if someone is looking for you in particular, the chances of your site popping up first in the search is very high, especially if you use SEO techniques to keep your name prominent on your website as well.
Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
Back to the Blog
Tags: domain, keywords, search engine, SEO
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 1 Comment »
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
By now you know that you should have a blog for your small business. It helps establish your reputation as an expert, provides valuable information to your readers and can help you presell your product or services. However, all that does you absolutely no good at all if no one reads your small business blog! You need SEO to help search engines find your blog posts and list them for all to see.
- Use keywords. Your keywords should be repeated several times throughout the blog posts, at least once in the first and last paragraph and a couple of times in between.
- Pick your titles. SEO titles should include the keyword or phrase that you are aiming to rank for, preferably at the beginning.
- Make your links count. When you link from your business blog to your website, use anchor text. The anchor text should be your main keyword phrase.
- Use SEO photos. Lots of people search for images, so if you include graphics and photos on your blog, be sure to add alt tags. In WordPress blogs, this is the text you are prompted to enter after giving the image URL. The alt tags should include your keywords as well.
- Don´t use black hat SEO. Black hat refers to illegal or frowned on SEO techniques that will get you banned from search engines like Google. For small business blogs, these are definitely taboo, since you need that search engine traffic to keep coming. If you hear of shady or sneaky practices to get higher ranks, stay away. Stick to good, old-fashioned keyword placement and links and you´ll be fine.
The right SEO techniques for small business blogs can really help boost your visibility, drawing in new clients and readers. Don´t ever underestimate the power of search engine traffic.
Caroline Melberg
Small Business Mavericks
Small Business Mavericks Blog
Tags: search engine, SEO, small business blogs
Posted in Blogging for Small Business, SEO for Small Business | No Comments »
Monday, December 24th, 2007
 TechCrunch ran a cool story two days ago about Google stats. It seems that iGoogle was the most popular Google product this past year. What that means is people are really getting into the personalization aspect of Google Search. So what does that mean for you?
Ask your customers if they use iGoogle. If they do then you want to reach them through that somehow. Find out what they are searching for and, better yet, find out what features they include in their iGoogle pages. iGoogle allows you to create your own widgets for your friends and customers to use on their iGoogle pages. Here’s a tip: Create a search engine for your industry and let your customers know. If you are a local business, create a local search engine and let all your customers know. You don’t even have to charge anyone in your area to include them. Just do it. Then let everyone in your community know that your search engine is available and can be used. People will not only use it but put it on their iGoogle pages as well.
When you name your search engine, be sure to give it an easy to recognize local name. But also make sure that people know that your business is the sponsor. If you let your customers know, they will let their friends know. Before you know it, the whole world (well, your little part of it any way) will beat a path to your door.
Caroline Melberg
Small Business Mavericks
Small Business Mavericks Blog
Tags: google, iGoogle, search engine
Posted in Local Internet Marketing, Social Media, Tools for Small Business | No Comments »
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