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Local Search Optimization - A Guide to Getting Started
While searching the web these days, it's hard not to notice all those little Local tabs sprouting up in the vicinity of the search field on virtually every major search engine. Within the past year, the race has been to integrate a plethora of advanced features into local search capabilities. Already we're seeing features like customer reviews and ratings, storefront and product photos, detailed maps with directions, hours of operation, forms of accepted payment, integration with cell phones, and much more is promised to follow. Picture a million paper phone books combined - on steroids and capable of providing instant results for an information-hungry and time-challenged customer base. The potential for local search is really quite staggering! So what exactly is local search, and how can you best position your business to take advantage of it? In a nutshell, local search is essentially the Internet's version of the phone book. The difference being that this "phone book" is much faster and far more responsive. For example, suppose I'm in Boston staying at the Harbor View Hotel and in need of a haircut? No problem. I Just enter haircut followed by the zip code of the hotel where I'm staying - 02114 - and I instantly find Richard's Haircutting for Men a scant 0.4 miles east and with directions. All that took about 30 seconds from concept to completion leaving me with a feeling of satisfaction that no regular phone book could ever provide. I'm now addicted to local search after only a single dose! Throw away the phone book, never mind the concierge. Now, if that little demo hasn't yet convinced you, chew on this recent finding... 70 percent of U.S. households now use the Internet as an information source when shopping locally for products and services... Findings also suggest the Internet is poised to surpass newspapers as a local shopping information resource. Source: The Kelsey Group Simply put, local search - including local search on mobile devices - is about to dominate the world of brick-n-mortar marketing. Ready or not, here it comes! ...we suggest you get ready now, before it starts costing you a fortune to negotiate the learning curve. Oh, and get used to the fact that the big yellow phone book is well on its way to becoming nothing more than a cheesy doorstop. How To Get Listed In Local Search The first step to getting your business listed in Local Search is (surprise) to buy a listing in the offline Yellow Pages (yep, that cheesy doorstop-to-be we just dis'd). Here's why: Most search engines get the bulk of their local business listings from just two companies: 1)infoUSA and 2)Acxiom. ...or else from Internet Yellow Pages sites which also derive their listings from these two companies. Both have compiled enormous databases containing detailed information on most of the businesses and consumer households in the US and Canada. And much of their data is pulled from your basic Yellow Page and Business White Page directories (aka, the cheesy doorstops). The good news may be that your business already has a listing in your local Yellow Pages - if not, then you should get one! Don't worry about taking out a big colorful ad with lots of information about your company. We haven't any reason to believe that expensive ads offer any advantage in local search rankings. Nor does lots of business information in your Yellow Pages ad seem to enhance your local search listing's comprehensiveness. It appears to us that any Yellow Pages listing at all will get you included in most local search engines just fine. By the way, InfoUSA has the more user-friendly website of the two. They provide a way for you to actually check to see if your site is listed with them by using their Directory Assistance Plus web search. And, if you find your business is not listed or is listed incorrectly, you can use their add/update page to correct your listing. How To Check Your Listing Once you have a Yellow Pages listing (the cheesy doorstop version), then chances are you'll be found in most local search engines. To check your listing, enter your business name and zip code into the search fields at the following locations: Google Local - http://www.google.com/lochp Yahoo Local - http://local.yahoo.com/ MSN Local - http://local.msn.com/ - Still not yet quite as extensive as most other search engines. Don't be surprised if you're not listed. Ask Jeeves Local - http://local.ask.com/local - Not quite as good at word parsing as Google and Yahoo. For instance, sees timeshare as different from time share. Be specific in your spelling and punctuation of your business name or category. AOL Local - http://localsearch.aol.com/ - Divides its results into directory-like categories, so you may have to drill down a few levels to find your listing. A9 Local - http://a9.com/ - Not really a local search engine, but A9 does have local features, as well as their own Yellow Pages. Type in your business name and zip code and see what comes up. If you find your business is missing from any of these local search engines, most of them provide an interface to allow you to add your site. Look around for a link that says something like "Update Your Business" or "Information for Business Owners". Chances are good that even if your site is listed, your business information may be incomplete or inaccurate and you'll probably want to update and improve your local search listing. Esoos Bobnar is a search marketing specialist and one of the head researchers at SearchEngineNews.com, a company which publishes an award-winning Search Engine Book, as well as a monthly report on the latest search engine marketing techniques.
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SEO - Google News |
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SEO Trade Secrets - 8 Great Tools for Search Engine Optimization About 80% of website traffic comes through search engines. And research shows, if you're not on the first 2 pages, most people won't find you. DIY SEO - Part 2 Tags n Things Part 2 Tips 4 tagsMeta tags are the descriptive tags used by website designers to explain to the search engines exactly what your website is all about. They look like this,title Put title of your page here, include important keywords /titlemetaname="Description"content="Put a short keyword rich description of your site here" /metaname="Keywords"content="Put your keywords in here" /metaname="AUTHOR"content="Your name or company name here" /metaname="COPYRIGHT"content=" Your name or company name here " /metaname="DISTRIBUTION"content="Global" /metaname="RATING"content="General" /metaname="robots"content="index, follow" /metaname="revisit-after"content="1 Week" /metahttp-equiv="Content-Type"content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /Note: the opening and closing brackets have been missed off to make this article compatable for publication. Monitor and Increase Your Search Engine Visibility with the DIY SEO Tools In this three part article, you'll find many tools that any webmaster can use to monitor your site's search engine position, and use to increase the visibility of your site in major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.URL Trendshttp://www. Googled The Internet may have started as the fervent brainchild of DARPA, the US defence agency - but it quickly evolved into a network of computers at the service of a community. Academics around the world used it to communicate, compare results, compute, interact and flame each other. SEO: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly I seem to have created quite a stir, on a particular SEO forum recently. In fact, rumor has it, at one point, my article, "Google's Trap, DMOZ's Nap, And Yahoo!'s Crap" was the hottest topic discussed on this particular forum. Submitting to the Search Engines and WebCrawlers When you want your brand new site to be indexed into major search engines, you usually go to their free submit page and submit your website, correct? Seems like the right thing to do, right?Well, many people fail to realize that not submitting your site is usually better than actually submitting it.Let, me explain. Link Horse Trading For The PR Challenged After 105 days Google finally updated PR. And it's about time. Five Ways To Win The Favor Of Search Engines You've got a cool new website with all the works: cool Flash presentations, eye-catching colors, informative text, easy-to-use layout, and an interesting topic. You think your site is amazing, and you know that others will agree with you. The Disease of Google Banning: Are You At Risk? Definition:Google banning occurs when Google removes your site from its index and flags your domain as 'banned', so it won't spider your site anymore. It is actually a serious disease and may be even life threatening specially for small websites. The Value of Search Engine Marketing Search engine marketing vs traditional offline marketing. Most often, traditional offline marketing such as TV and radio ads cater to the masses. The Myth of Guaranteed #1 Ranking in Search Engine Marketing You've seen the ads: Guaranteed #1 Ranking! There are no guarantees in search engine marketing and website promotion. If anyone tells you different, you should check quickly to make sure they don't have their hand in your wallet. Beyond Search Engines Some webmasters report that search engines account for 75% or more of their total website traffic. However, it's important not to become too dependent on search engines for new business. When to NOT Hire a SEO and Why When you get an e-mail from SEO Company with content similar to this:"We submit your site on X00.000 search engines and directories?"Stay far away from companies which offer you to submit your site on thousands of directories and search engines. 5 Qualities to Look for in a Search Engine Optimization Program for Your Website These days with millions of websites out there, you need a way to get noticed. When your company website is ranked highly in the major search engines, customers from all over the world can find your front door. Answers Count - Matching Keyword and Phrase Density What's more important to your business success - the question or the answer? Certainly, you want your questions to reflect what you are trying to find out. Obviously, your questions should be easily understood. SEO For Ecommerce Ranking well under the free listings in the major search engines basically mean one thing - Lots of free, recurring, and targeted traffic. Major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN can be very powerful weapons in your internet marketing, if you know how to optimize your website to rank highly for your keywords. Can Invisible Text in CSSs Slip Under Search Engine Radar? I'm literally inundated with questions on the subject of invisible text & hosting so in I thought I'd debunk some myths and give you the facts straight up.What is invisible text? Invisible text is the body text that's the same or similar color to the background. Meta Tags - What Are They and Which Search Engines Use Them? Defining Meta Tags is much easier than explaining how they are used, and by which engines. The reason is very few engines clearly lay out what they do and do not look at, and how much emphasis they put on any one factor. Are You Hung-Up on Page Rank and Back Links? It's unfortunate that many website owners are so hung-up on Page Rank, they'll rarely if ever, link to a site with a page rank lower than their own.I'm frequently approached by other website owners who it's clear want to exchange links with one of my websites for no other reason than its Page Rank and so they can get more back links to their own website. Recommended Tools When You Put On The SEO Cap For Your Web Site The name of the game is search engine optimization and there are 20 winners and a million losers. It is a massive game that is conducted each and every minute by the top search engines.
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