Local Search Engine Optimization

As the fastest growing vertical in search, many people are now starting to recognize the value of local search engine optimization can have on their site traffic. Also known as regional search, it's basically geo-targeting your audience when they search.

Local search works best for the service provider, or a retailer that has numerous locations. While the search volume won't be as great as a non-regional phrase, the person who reaches your site will be a more targeted visit and most likely ready to convert.

Another happy accident in local search is that for sites that are well optimized may also pick up rankings in mobile search.

So, here's what you need to do in order to rank for local seo:

• Be sure to have your location(s) full address
• If you have a regional number, list that as well since some people start with an area code
• Be sure to include driving directions to your location
• Use a mapping service to display your location
• Have pictures of your locations and name them with your street address
• Make sure your site appears in any regional directory that might be online
• If you can afford it, get listed in your local yellow pages
• Place the regions you want to rank for in your page titles
• Get text links that contain the regional phrase

Most of these techniques are not only common sense, but also good web design. If you're in business, you want people to be able to find you, right?

How to Create a Google Site Map

Officially announced on June 6th, 2005 at Google'e Blog, Google Site Map allows you to submit a listing of all your urls for Google to crawl.

There have been many questions concerning the procedure of creating a Google Site Map. Below is the non-Python way of creating one. (Note: Google has further documentation at their site)

First, create a file named sitemap.xml

Use the following code in any HTML editor:

<urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">
<url>
<loc>http://www.yourwebsitename.com/
<lastmod>2005-06-30T14:12:14+00:00
<changefreq>daily
<priority>1.0

<url>
<loc>http://www.yourwebsitename.com/glossary.cfm
<lastmod>2005-06-30T14:12:14+00:00
<changefreq>weekly
<priority>1.0

Here's a breakdown of those properties:

lastmod -
This is the date the document was last modified and uses the following formats:
dd.mm.yyyy
dd.mm.yyyy hh:mm
dd/mm/yyyy
dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm

changefreq -
Tells Google Sitemaps the frequently that content of a particular URL will change.

Your options are "always", "hourly", "daily", "weekly", "monthly", "yearly" or "never".

The value "always" should be used to describe documents that change each time they are accessed. The value "never" should be used to describe archived URLs.

priority -
The priority of a particular URL relative to other pages on your site.
You may select between 0.0 and 1.0, where 0.0 identifies the lowest priority page(s) on your website and 1.0 identifies the highest priority page(s) on your website.

Add as many pages as there are in your website.

Google Sitemap supports up to 50,000 pages per XML file.

Once you've completed all of those steps, you'll need to submit your site map page.

Submit to: (requires gmail account)

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

Collateral Benefits of Search Engine Marketing

Many times a client only looks at the bottom line when it comes to the performance they are getting for their investment into Search Engine Marketing.

They often only look at the selected keyword phrases that they are paying for, without fully realizing what other residual effects they are receiving.

When a site gets properly optimized, (SEO) it is being transformed into a thought-out navigational pattern to information. This is the same pattern a search engine spider looks for. Don't forget, the easier you make it for a spider to index your site, the better your chances are for getting your site a higher placement in the search engine results page (SERP's).

While W3C validation is something all sites should strive for, it is not required for better rankings. Does it help? Probably. Yahoo engineers have stated that whether a site is W3C compliant or not makes no difference to how it ranks. If it has relevant content, it will get ranked.

Another element when optimizing a site is that through proper naming of page titles, file names and placement of content make the site all the more relevant to the spider. Although Google places less value on Meta Tags, they are still used as part of the algorithm, and should not be overlooked.

After the site has coded properly, the game then goes up to the next level. Search Engine Marketing is used to drive traffic to the site through various means. Press releases, articles, blogs, RSS/XML feeds, Directory Submissions and User Groups all can bring targeted traffic to a site.

Here is where the collateral benefits of SEM begin to appear. Let's say that you have been doing a series of press releases where once a week, you talk about a new color of widget. In each press release you also list the other colors of widgets that you have for sale. Even after only the first release gets sent, you've already created a valuable In-Bound Link to your site for your Red Widget, but since you included the other colors of the widgets as well, they all pick up IBL's as well.

An even greater demonstration of a collateral benefit is ranking for keywords and phrases that you aren't targeting. Keeping to our widget example, if your site copy talks about the different uses of widgets, the available colors that they come in and the best way to preserve your widget, you've just created a multitude of various phrases that your site can get ranked on.

Example site copy:

We sell the highest-quality widget available. Our color selection ranges from red to purple, black to white and can be used in your home or for industrial needs. The widget is the most versatile tool on the market. Pick one up today!

From this one paragraph, here are the possible phrases your site could get ranked on:

• high quality widget
• red widget
• purple widget
• black widget
• white widget
• home widget
• industrial widget
• widget tool
• widget

This is only a tiny sampling of the potential your site has. Remember, each page gets ranked on it's own, so that's why it is so important to make sure every page you have on your site is optimized.

Even your contact/about page is critical because if you have a brick-and-mortar business, by listing your street address, you help the search engines geo target your site. Most search engines are already trying to focus your search results regionally. While it's not a major factor yet, it is something to be aware of.

In conclusion, the next time you start checking Google to see where your site ranks for it's keyword phrases, don't forget about all of the hidden keywords/phrases that are embedded in your site's copy. You would be surprised at how many of those forgotten about terms end up at the top of the pile....

Press Release Power

I'm sure by now you've heard about how Press Releases can help your marketing campaigns on the Internet. But besides from people telling you, do you have any quantitative evidence that it's worth the time to craft a newsworthy release?

From a search marketing perspective, this is one of the best ways of killing two birds with one stone. Besides getting exposure for your site, you are also creating web saturation. By having the possibility of your release getting picked up by multiple media outlets, you quickly and cheaply get eyeballs looking at your product or service, and ultimately, traffic to your site.

Being that the Internet has grown to being a social environment with the ultimate goal of personalization for each user, how can anyone get their message out?

With blogs, RSS readers and news aggregators becoming more popular, the user is becoming more selective to what they want to see. This is something every marketer should embrace.

Now, instead of spending thousands to blast an add that may only be relevant to 10 percent of your audience, you can now selectively target your audience and deliver your message.

Since the majority of us do not have Google's bankroll, we are left to find less expensive ways to drive visitors to your site. This is where one can get onto a level playing field with the big spenders.

To demonstrate the power of the press release, take a moment to review some stats on a campaign that was conducted in early December.

PR Service: PRWeb.com

Price: $80.00 USD
(Note: - you can submit free press releases, but you won't have access to any tracking stats, and you lose some services.)

For the above mentioned fee, the $80.00 includes:

Properly Optimized, RSS/XML Feed, Next Day Distribution, ability to attach files, featured, listing appears on: Google News, Overture, eMediaWire, Yahoo News, Excite News, DogPile, MetaCrawler, Inktomi, MSN News, Lycos News, AskJeeves News, Feedster and Topix News

Quite the bang for your buck, eh?

The Press Release in question was for a free service, and it was geared for Christmas use, so keep that in mind as you review the information.

Reads: 88,380

(This number indicates how many times the press release was accessed from the PRWeb site and other distribution points where they have the ability to measure a click through. This number does not include the number of journalists that have received the release through email.)

Estimated Pickup: 3,908

(This number estimates the number of times the press release was picked up by a media outlet. This does not indicate how many times the story appeared in the media. It simply attempts to estimate media interest in the release.)

Now how many places on the Internet can give you those type of numbers for getting traffic to your site?

To try and get an accurate number for a "typical" Press Release, another release was submitted in March of 2005, for a new paid-for service.

Reads: 80,375

Estimated Pickup: 1,362

Still pretty impressive, even if it's just to get some traffic, or brand name exposure.

If you're serious about your business, $80.00 is easily worth the investment for this type of return.