How to Optimize Your Website for Local Search

If you have a business and want to target local business, it is important that you develop a strategy that concentrates on the local customers.

This post will help you in building your a local marketing plan for your website:

1. Always Start with Local Keywords Research: Before planning any SEO activities such as link building, profiles or any other activities, you should extensive local keywords research for your website.

There are numerous of keywords research sites on the web; too many for a single user to effectively use. One of my favorite sources is. Google Adwords Keywords Tool. It’s a simple tool to use and has numerous useful research tools that will assist you in developing your local marketing strategy.

For example, you can type a word and this tool will suggest other good choices. Since your goal is to attract local business, you can isolate a certain town or area to determine the number of searches that appear with each keyword.  This will enable you to select those keywords that you believe would most effectively lead visitors to your website, and subsequently bring more business to you.

Another feature found on Google Adwords Keyword Tool allows you to view your competitor’s websites to see which keywords they’re using to attract business, and will also enable you to see how they are developing their back links.

Once you’ve familiarized yourself with Google Adwords Keywords Tool, you will be able to use your own imagination to find keywords that will put you far ahead of your competition.

2. On Site Optimization: Once you have selected the best keywords you should then concentrate on how to best use what you’ve learned to optimize this information to local businesses. Titles and Descriptions are what most users enter in their searches. If you have optimized your website using local addresses and phone numbers on all your web pages, it is sure to maximize your position on the major search engines.

If you serve multiple local areas, you should create a specific page for each area. This is a surefire tactic that will draw visitors to your website. Since you will be dealing with many visitors who are not familiar with your area, it is imperative that you include imbedded maps of each of the areas you serve.

Use locally optimized Title Tags, Description Tags, local addresses and phone numbers to all your web page. If you have multiple local areas for your business then always try to create a specific page for all your local areas. This tactic will help you to get leads from area wise and you will get improved number of visitors to your website.

Since you will be attracting visitors to your website who are not familiar with your location, it’s imperative that you provide a recognized imbedded mapping link. I’ve found Geo Sitemap to be an excellent mapping source for this endeavor. If you’ve been using other mapping sources, you might want to do a comparison with your current mapping source against Geo Sitemap.

3. Local Classified ads: Although local classified advertising has lost a lot of its appeal because of the internet, it is still an important part of any comprehensive marketing plan. This is especially so when trying to attract local business.

4. Local Business Listings: Having your business listed on top local business websites is yet another important avenue for you to consider in attracting local business. Google Places might be the most effective means of accomplishing this task.  Entering your business on Google Places will vastly increase your chances of being listed in the top local business websites. It only takes a few minutes of your time to enter your information on Google Places, and the best part is that it’s free! Give it a try by using the free listing scan to see how your business appears on all of the premium sites.

There are several other good local business listing websites where you can list up your business to get good ROI.

1. Google
2. Bing
3. Yahoo!
4. Yelp
5. Merchant Circle
6. LinkedIn
7. YellowPages.com
9. Whitepages
10. Supermedia
11. Yellowbook
12. CitySearch
13. Mapquest
14. Biznik
15. Local.com
16. Foursquare
17. ThinkLocal
18. CitySlick
19. USYellowPages
20. SuperPages
21. Outside.in
22. Dex
23. BizJournals.com
24. TeleAtlas
25. JustClickLocal
26. Discover our Town
27. Metrobot
28. EZ Local
29. twibs
30. LocalEze
31. Kudzu
32. CityVoter
33. Manta
34. Zipweb
35. MatchPoint
36. UsCity.net
37. Local Site Submit
38. InfoUSA
39. Axciom
40. Infignos
41. Yellow Assistance
42. Get Fave
42. My Huckleberry
43. GenieKnows
44. MojoPages
45. Brownbook
46. Magic Yellow
47. CitySquares
48. TeleAtlas
49. Navteq GPS
50. Judy's Book 

Now start creating back links for your local keyword phrases. Try to use always those websites for your activity which have good PA(Page Authority), DA(Domain Authority), PR(Page Rank). Always place your business URL with proper category.

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How to Maintain Website Traffic without Google

We all know that Google is constantly changing their algorithms. It’s really very difficult for webmasters to maintain website traffic in this regular changing scenario.

I have received a lot of questions from webmasters about what to do to maintain website traffic. How can website traffic be maintained without Google? It’s not easy, but if you are persistent and use the following guidelines, you will reap the rewards of your efforts.

Following are some useful tips that will help you maintain your website traffic without depending on Google.

1. Social Bookmarking Sites: Very few SEO professionals are aware that social bookmarking websites such as Reddit and StumbleUpon are good sources for driving traffic to their websites. To ensure these websites will be useful to you, you must follow their guidelines and post informative articles, relevant to the subject to which you are posting

2. Video Marketing: Today video marketing is a great source to drive traffic to your website. For your information, YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google in driving traffic to a website. YouTube has more than a billion user searches a day. If you add Yahoo, Bing and AOL, together, you will find YouTube’s traffic is greater than all these sites combined. To help with Video Marketing, you will have to create your own channel and post high quality videos with great animations and images. Optimize your video with suitable titles and descriptions. Dailymotion, Vimeo and also excellent sources that will drive traffic from videos to your websites.

3. Community/Group Posting: In top social media websites there is an option of community/group postings. Google+, Facebook, and other top social media are excellent venues for this type of activity. In Google+, Facebook and other top social media websites try to post in your relevant communities. You can create your own but for this you will have to create groups, add members, etc. This is a very difficult task for the average webmaster. It’s much easier, and far more productive in most cases, to simply join communities designed to help you. Be sure to follow their guidelines.

4. E-Mail Marketing: E-Mail marketing is really a good way to drive traffic to websites. Most of you assume that this is time consuming and not productive, but statistics show that those who put in the time and effort to e-mail marketing will be rewarded.  Write up a good subject line which compels viewers to open your e-mail. Once they realize you know what you’re talking about, they will continue to visit your website. This is very important when Google is going through an algorithm change.

5. PPC Ads: (Pay-Per-Click) helps bring customers to your website. Since this blog is about not using Google, you are advised to not use Google PPC ads. (Google Adwords.) Bing Ads is an excellent alternative, and if used correctly, will drive traffic to your website.  The downside of PPC is that it can be expensive. Be sure you analyze what works well with this source before you commit to its use.

Always choose the best SEO Company that is using organic work in their website design process. You won’t survive long with PPC ads. Organic traffic is the key over the long haul.

Choose an organic seo services company for all your SEO needs.

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How to Use Google Alerts?

Do You want to specialize on any topic? Do you want to collect filtered information on any topic from web? If yes then Google Alert is the best tool for you to collect information and use in your practical profession.

Google Alert is a service of Google by which you can gather filtered information on any particular criteria. This service is helpful in many reasons. You will get an automated mail of your desired information with the help of Google Alert Service.

Here I am declaring some points by which you can easily create your Google Alert for you.

1. Open Google Alert: Type into your web browser "http://www.google.com/alerts". This will redirect to Google Alert Home Page.

2. Fill Text Boxes: Enter your desired topic which you would like to take alerts in first text box "Search Query". As you are going to type texts, Google will suggest you the best topics. If nothing is coming as suggestion then please re-write your texts.

3. Create the Alert: To create an alert you have a valid e-mail address. Your e-mail address is the communication mediator between you and Google. Google will send you the best results to your provided e-mail address. Once you create alert and make request confirm then after you will begin receiving alerts.

4. Choose Source Type: Google avails some additional resources to filter your search results. Suppose if you want only news type in your alert then you can choose news source there. Other additional sources are blogs, news, video, discussions, books, everything. By default it is everything which is really a good choice. So, Make sure which type of source you want to receive in Google Alert.

5. Selection of frequency: Now you will have to change frequency of receiving alerts. It means how often you want to receive alerts in your inbox. There are several options like "As it happens", "Once a Day", "Once a Week". Suppose if you choose frequency as "As it Happens", then you will receive notification multiple times in a day as it loads in news stream.So, it is likely to be annoying. Most of guys bypass this. The most suitable is once a day frequency.

6. Select Search Volume: Choose search volume to only the best results. After your selection Google will send you only the best results to your inbox.

Hope these steps fit your understandings and from now you will not have any problem in setting up Google Alert.

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