Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

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Getting the most out of Local Search

Wednesday, May 15th, 2013

Increasing local search traffic

A business exists because of it’s customers. Before an inquiry can convert to a customer, the store requires a certain amount of visitors who can browse and make an enquiry. Having a website may be critical, it doesn’t do a business any good unless people are actually visiting it. If your business is local and you really need only local visitors then there is really no point in trying to reach out to the entire globe.  If your business can only serve people who visit you then your efforts should be spent on getting local internet users from within your local region. For example you may be based in Houston or in Mumbai then getting an inquiry from either Herman Park Drive, Houston or getting an enquiry from from Colaba, Mumbai would be more beneficial than an inquiry from Paris.

When people search the net they want to get quick information. Over 50 percent of Internet searches are for services and products from local businesses. There are some methods that you can use to get local traffic to your website:

Google Plus local

Google plus local integrates the power of search with Google Plus. You can create your own Google Plus profile , add your location and put up reviews, feedback etc. Adding Zagat reviews gives the searcher enough information about your business prior to visiting the location. Good reviews not only result in more visits but also quality visits.

Blog Posts

When you blog add local information to the article. Identify which city or state you want to target with your post. Then make sure you mention this a couple of times within the article. If it makes sense then add the city or state name to the article headline but do’nt force it. If it fits naturally then go ahead and add the city. For example you may be writing a post about silversmith services. Sprinkling the post with keywords like – silversmith service Leeds, or – finding a silversmith in Leeds, will tell searchers that the article is about silversmith services available within Leeds.

You can also mention related local information within the post. This could be a mention of some landmark within the area – something that associates the article with the local area. Again do this if it makes sense to add it to the article.

When you add pictures to the posts use descriptive names to describe the picture. Use dashes. When you use an image name like Boston-florist, Google and other search engines will recognize that this image has something to do with florists local to that area. Lately there has been a substantial increase in searchers, searching via image search, on Google images. By tagging images correctly you increase the chances of posts and images showing up in the search results.

Coupons

Coupons are time tested sources of increasing traffic. Everyone loves a good deal and the promise of a discount adds to the excitement of the purchase. Adding a digital coupon to avail offers, discounts, giveaways will definitely attract enough attention and encourage visitors to visit the site.

Local Directories

Contributing articles to directories gets your site additional promotion. There are a number of good informative online directories that searchers use, to source information. By submitting articles to these directories you can get direct traffic to your posts. However make sure that the article you submit is available on your website and gets indexed by Google before it is published on other directories.

Videos

Videos are an engaging way to reach customers. To get maximum benefit, optimize the videos, using local keywphrases and keywords. Not all videos go viral. However a properly optimized video increase the probability of the video to show up in the local search, on Google and other search engines. Using descriptive names that specify the location, using the right tag, all contribute to the optimization of the video. Some common video sites you can use for promoting the videos locally are Viddler, Vimeo, Dailymotion and Ustream.

Guest Blogging

Blogging on other blogs beside your own gets you to reach out to more people. It further provides credibility and authority to your business. First you get to talk about your niche without promoting your product or service. This is great for establishing trust. Secondly you come across as an authority on the subject which spills over to your business. Do a search on Google to find blogs that are interested in guest writers writing for them. Check what kind of topics they would be interested in, and write out an article for them. The published article will get you a link back to your own blog or site. For a well written article this link can prove to be really valuable in the amount of traffic your post receives.

Posted in Internet Marketing, SEO | No Comments »

Guest posting made easy

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013

Guest blogging, guest writer,

With frequent Google Algo updates and changes, linkbuilding is no longer limited to just getting that high PR webpage link. The link linking to your webpage should not only be relevant but also add more information to what was initially being talked about on the initial page. Gone are the days when you could just add the keyword to the linking text and over time you would see decent ranking for the keyword. Now you need to be careful how and where you link from. Guest posting is one of the safest, most “white-hat” methods of getting valuable content links. Most guest posters are allowed a link in either the content or the bio, which is where the link benefit lies.

So how do you go about finding blogs that accept you as a guest author?
You can manually search for sites that are interested in Authors writing for them. Google limits queries to 32 words, so instead of writing one long query in the search box you can break the requirement in different chunks. You can also just simply add “guest post” or something similar to your keyword search when you’re manually searching for the Guest post sites. Some variations that you can try are:

“write for us”, ~”keyword” “write for us”
Inurl: “guest post”, ~”keyword” “guest post”
Contribute, “contribute to our site”,
Intitle: guest blogger, “become a guest blogger”, “guest column”
~”keyword” intitle:”write for” OR intitR intitle”contribute”
“submit blog post” OR “add blog post” OR “submit an article” OR “suggest a guest post” OR “send a guest post” “[keyword]” “become an author”,

Once you have list of sites, start to filter the results. Some criterion that you can use to sort out the ones to approach can be:

Domain Authority and PR of the site
It is ideal to look for guest post prospects of PR3 or higher; PR1-2 are acceptable but should be used sparingly. Domain Authority is another way to gauge a website’s authority and provides a rank on the whole domain, rather than by page like PageRank. DA ranges from 0-100, with 100 being the most authoritative. For this keep the lower limit of a DA of 30 and above.

Design of the site
The site should have been designed for human visitors and not just for spinning articles with a link to your site. Are the posts upto date. When was the last update made. Are the posts using scrolling or blinking text. Are the visuals good. Does the site have an overdose of banners.

Social following of the site
What social following does the site have. Is it interactive.

Alternately you can use blog networks to search for relevant sites that accept guest posts. Some blog networks that you can use are:
BlogDash
BlogSynergy
GroupHigh
GuestBlogIt
Blog engage
Guest Blog Genius
Guestr
MyBlogGuest
PostJoint

Once you have identified the sites what should you keep in mind when writing a post:

Write on a unique topic – one that has not been covered. If you type site:domain.com intitle:keyword in the Google search box, you will be returned with a list of results that show you any posts with that particular keyword in the title. This way you can write on something that has not been covered in the list.

Many blogs have a guideline section. Make sure you adhere to those guidelines so that your post is accepted.

Make sure that the guest post, product, or service you are about to pitch is going to be something that the blogger is actually interested in promoting on their blog.

Make sure the post is long enough and informative enough to provide value.

Make sure that you write content that has semantically related keywords that Google is looking for to determine the true relevancy. Search Engine Journal has a really good article on this.

Matt outlines some very simple principles of guest posting that everyone out there should pay attention to.

“Spinning articles for guest posting will not help. It’s just like and article farm—no rankings—and sometimes negative rankings for this.
Writing crappy articles will not help.
Writing short articles of 200, 300, and 400 words will not help as much. The longer the better.
Having no Google Authorship will not help as much, you need to be known a little better.
Quality—it all comes down to quality. Make sure you’re putting time and effort into your posts.”

To get maximum value from a guest post make sure you use the right anchor text to link back to your site. Don’t use the exact match anchor text for all links. Build links with anchor texts with descriptive and natural-looking texts. This should be varied. For example a few links can have the brand name, some with the url and some with even with the long tail anchor text. This tells Google that the site is being linked from naturally and legitimately for a variety of similar terms in the appropriate niche.

Once the request is sent expect 4 to 6 weeks for the post to be published. Not all sites publish the post immediately. Some posts can be scheduled to be published at a later date and some can also be sent back for editing.

Posted in Internet Marketing, SEO, Social Media | 2 Comments »

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