Mobile Marketing Opportunities For Local Businesses

When Brian Niccol, chief marketing officer at Pizza Hut, says that mobile marketing will account for over 50% of sales- business owners should pause and listen.

A vast percentage of Pizza Hut’s market share uses mobile phones, not to call their local pizza hut, but to order and pay via online mobile websites and SMS messages.  Pizza Hut has gone to their market share by adapting to their use of everyday technology.  Does your business?

Every interaction with a customer is a chance to market to them.  Many Fortune 500 companies, including Pizza Hut (owned by yum) are aggressively targeting mobile platforms.  Your cell phone is your new inbox.  And they know it.

Anyone can market with email, but it’s increasingly ineffective.  People change email addresses regularly. They also have junk email accounts they give instead of their real one.  However, most people only have one or two cell phones.  Getting that number to target them with SMS coupons, Cardless Loyalty Programs, and business promotions is where businesses are increasing their profits.

Mobile Marketing IS Effective

Mobile Marketing Is In The Mass Media

Better still, mobile marketing, has one of the most inexpensive entry prices of almost any medium.  Small businesses are dumping their expensive email servers and services (constant contact, aweber, etc) in favor of the lower cost of SMS and mobile marketing.

From two way texting capabilities for restaurants (and Doctor’s offices) with long lines, to text to go ordering (a lunch customer SMS’s their order 15 min in advance to their favorite restaurant so that the order is ready upon arrival), to those cardless loyalty programs that interface with social media and gives the business the ability to send mobile coupons (and track the conversion stats)- mobile marketing for local and small businesses has exploded in 2010.

One of the best Mobile and SMS service providers we use is Sundrop.  They have a patent pending process that integrates mobile marketing with most social media.

Mobile is not going anywhere soon.  Is your business?  Contact us now to find out more about how mobile marketing is taking 2010 by storm.

Related posts:

1. Mobile Marketing, Bing catches up, and what it means to local businesses
2. Local Marketing Campaigns Changing…
3. Local Businesses Benefit From Google Places

SEO business expenses, what no one really talks about

A common concern that many businesses approach us with is the overall cost of their SEO and SEM marketing efforts.  Through due diligence, the owners or managers have already contacted several SEO or SEM companies or consultants for quotes to find out that not only is there a huge disparity in prices, but also that SEO/SEM companies or consultants offer vastly different services.

What most have in common is that a monthly service fee ($275 – $1500) is involved and no guarantees on results are made.

You can’t game Google for the long term. If your SEO/SEM consultant doesn’t understand this, then they could be using methods and tactics that violate Google’s TOS and cause your site to become de-indexed, or, no longer ranking for any keyword.  SEO/SEM consultants that understand this, also understand the relation long term and lasting keyword rankings have with consistent, qualitative, and authoritative content.

Since we creatively tailor our SEO/SEM solutions to each business and vertical we work with, we spend a lot of time explaining and educating them on what our services are, and what they can realistically expect.  The following should assist you in evaluating the costs of SEO and SEM, as applied to your business

Do Local Businesses Really Need SEO and SEM?

Using SEO and SEM to promote local businesses is still a relatively new form of marketing, however, within the last three years it’s become mainstream. Quickly.  It offers the following advantages over traditional forms of marketing:

• Ability to track marketing adspend and ROI (you can establish as many KPI’s and metrics as you’d like)
• More levels of social interaction with current and potential clients/customers (and we should all still remember that every interaction with a customer is a form of marketing)
• Costs less than traditional forms of advertising (yellow pages, television, radio)

Does your SEO/SEM Consultant make this distinction?

One clear distinction that any SEO/SEM consultant should make for you, without smoke and mirrors is that  SEO (Search Engine Optimization)  is work done on your website to make it easier for the search engines to index your site while SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is all the work done off of your website to promote it.  Understanding this one distinction should make it easier for any business owner to more accurately gauge the prices they are being charged.

SEO can be automated using Content Management Systems (WordPress or Joomla) and certain plug-in’s or extensions.  It’s far less  expensive to pay a SEO consultant a one time fee to convert your website to a CMS and have your SEO automated than it is to maintain a static website.

SEM is manhour intensive as it involves actively promoting your website for the targeted keywords.  Successful SEM is done on a consistent and daily basis and is generally not automated with software tools unless they can be scheduled, humanized, and appear natural.

SEO is not SEM.  SEO alone does not drive traffic to your website, SEM does.  SEM does not optimize your website, SEO does.  While not codependent, better results can be obtained by using both SEO and SEM.  When SEO and SEM are done correctly, your business has better chances of generating local leads online.  The more leads your business has will have a direct impact on the number of sales made.

What does local Search Engine Marketing and Online Lead Generation really cost?

Rather than focus on the initial cost and outlay it’s best to focus solely on ROI.  This is the best part of SEO/SEM- the measured and demonstrable ROI to your business.  Any SEO/SEM consultant should address this main factor in their presentation or project estimate.  If not, then maybe they really don’t understand SEO and SEM as marketing tools. At the very least, they should be tracking your keyword’s rankings in organic search as compared to the volume of daily searches performed for that keyword.  Additionally, they should be tracking number of visitors to your website, bounce rate (and whether PPC or CPV efforts are contributing to this), converted sales, call tracking (using kall8 or ringcentral) and whether they’re using a mobile platform.

To know your ROI implies you also know what the value of a customer is to you.  Of course, the value is relative to the vertical your business is in.  For instance, one client of ours, a plastic surgeon in DC averaged his client value to be at least $2780.92.  If his online lead generation efforts (through SEO/SEM) generate enough leads that only one new client per month is achieved, then he would have generated an additional 33371.04 per year.  Our SEO/SEM project, with site redesign, competitive intelligence, keyword research and content creation was $14,700.00 for six months.  He averages six new clients, or, $16685.52 in additional revenue per month now, making the $2450.00/month for six months money well spent.  He’s happy to continue to pay us to maintain those rankings for him, at only $980.00/month.

If you look at your SEO/SEM budget solely in terms of ROI, it forces your SEO/SEM consultant to produce demonstrable results.

What should be considered when estimating a SEO/SEM project for local businesses?

The basic factors involved when looking at the costs of any SEO/SEM project:

• Number of keywords targeted
• Current levels of competition for your keywords
• Content (who’s creating it?)
• Number of backlinks being created per month
• Estimated ROI
• SEO/SEM Consultant’s business model
• Experience level of SEO/SEM consultant
• Geographical location
• Is PPC/CPV involved?

Number of keywords your SEO/SEM efforts are targeting: Many SEO/SEM companies charge based on the number of keywords being promoted.  For each keyword, content must be developed and then promoted.  Accounts and profiles need to be created on Web 2.0 sites to distribute your content.  And then other forms of promotion, like bookmarking, pinging, RSS feeds, etc. need to be used.  Depending on competition, expect to pay about $200 – $300, per month on each keyword you are targeting. As you achieve rankings for each keyword, ensure that your SEO/SEM consultant places these keywords on a ‘maintenance phase’, usually at a 60-70% reduction.  The reason?  It costs much more to achieve keyword rankings than it does to maintain them.

Current levels of competition for your keywords: If your keyword has over 50 million competing pages, chances are it’s one that is highly competitive.  Generally the more competitive the keyword, the longer it may take to organically rank your site for that keyword.  Be leery of any SEO/SEM consultant that says otherwise.  Sure, short term results can be achieved using borderline black hat methods, but as stated above- you can’t game Google for the long term.  A local D.C. bank could not realistically compete for the short keyword Mortgage Loans, but they could compete for D.C. mortgage loans. With competition analysis comes keyword research.  If you have never done this yourself or don’t know how to, ensure your SEO/SEM consultant does.  You want to target keywords that your customers or clients use to find your business online.  Often, what you think your keywords should be are different than what your customers are using.  Thorough keyword research should include demographics as well as levels of search volume attached to that keyword.  You can rank for a keyword that only has 2 searches a month, but would that really generate more leads to your business?  Typically, we charge $750 for a thorough and complete keyword evaluation, to include research and competitive analysis.

Content (who’s creating it?): This will be something any business owner will need to pay close attention to.  Who will develop the content, you, or your SEO/SEM consultant?  What content will be developed- videos, articles, press releases, podcasts? Will the content be outsourced?  Will the content be made available for review before distribution and syndication?  Will the content be spun and repurposed? Finally, who owns the content?  Ensure you retain data rights to the content and that this is reflected in your contract. As an example, through our pool of native english speakers, we offer authoritative articles and white papers, 1000 – 1500 words to our clients for $40.00.  They retain the data rights.

Number of backlinks being created per month?: If your business website has been online for several years and has relatively few backlinks to it, chances are that if your SEO/SEM consultant drops 5000 backlinks to it in one month that these links will be seen as spam and not natural growth. Ideally, any backlink building strategies should be done daily, consistently, and slowly.  Backlink Packets can be used, but you’d only be dropping links at the same time and place as 100′s if not 1000′s of others.  (ed. note- the first site to come up in that search obviously has some security flaws when it allows the backlink packet to be seen by the search engines….)  Is your SEO/SEM consultant using backlink packets or building your backlinks manually?  We charge $275.00/month to manually create 250 backlinks.

Estimated ROI: The single most important factor.

SEO/SEM Consultant’s business model: Many times, the price of the SEO/SEM project is dependent on the business model that the SEO/SEM consultant is using.  Are they consulting and advising you on the services and products needed, basically instructing you on how to do what they would for you?  Are they performing the work themselves or is the work being outsourced?  Are you using an Agency that is white labeling an SEO/SEM expert at an industry standard of 15%?  The differences are important.  For instance, if they are doing the work themselves and have multiple clients, then chances are they won’t be readily available to speak with you and will prefer communication through email.  They usually burn out due to the involved workload, or, are using strictly automated tools and services.  If the work is being outsourced and they are managing the project, especially the content creation, you’ll need to review the work done several times per month.  We offer consultation services starting at $197/hr; outsource management and team creation starting at $5000; and done for you solutions starting at $750/month.  We have US based project managers and account reps, and a staff of highly trained outsourcers.

Experience level of SEO/SEM consultant: Having experience with SEO/SEM does not immediately mean they understand LOCAL SEO/SEM. For about the last 18 months there has been a massive focus on targeting local businesses with SEO/SEM.  Usually, they are internet marketers expanding their own business assuming that the same SEO and SEM tactics that worked on a national level or for time based offers or sales will also work with local businesses.  They don’t.  Demand at least two years of professional LOCAL SEO/SEM experience.  If you don’t chances are you could be hiring someone that paid several thousand for a make money online course.

Geographical location: a) Generally, larger cities have more customers, and greater competition. If you’re market share is in a major metroplex there will probably be more competition for your keywords. b) SEO/SEM consultants in larger cities will usually charge more.  Does your SEO/SEM  consultant need to be in the same city as you?  Is a face to face meeting a business requirement for you?  You can often find less expensive SEO/SEM consultants in nearby towns.  

Is PPC/CPV involved? Pay Per Click advertising, Facebook Ads, Cost Per View advertising… these are all forms of online marketing that require a daily adspend. They generate paid traffic.  SEO/SEM generate free traffic. A PPC expert may not necessarily be the one you want performing your SEO/SEM marketing campaigns.

Final Considerations For Your SEO/SEM Project:

SEO/SEM are long term investments.  Rankings can not be guaranteed, but can be achieved within a few months (depending on levels of competition).  Prices should reflect the costs involved in ranking a keyword, and then maintaining those rankings.

Measure your SEO/SEM results solely in terms of ROI.

Will your SEO/SEM Consultant transfer the links or web 2.0/social media properties to a competitor once you stop paying them?  Who owns the data rights to the work being done on your behalf- yourself or your SEO/SEM consultant.  Think of it this way- unless you retain data rights your SEO/SEM consultant could offer these links and properties to your competition, at a cost, if you stop paying them.  Unethical? Yes, but it’s happening more than you would think.
Guarantees are worthless. No SEO/SEM consultant can *ever* really guarantee the results, or, that your site won’t be deindexed through their efforts.  Search Engines alter their algorithms consistently- and what may have worked before in helping promote your business online may not work later.  Also, what recourse do you have should your site become deindexed through your SEO/SEM Consultant’s efforts?
Are quotes an expense?  Will this expense be deducted if you choose to use their services?
Is your SEO/SEM consultant offering parralel marketing opportunities such as mobile marketing?  Can this person really help your business grow and do they understand marketing and lead generation?  Hire them as if you were hiring an employee.

Want to know how using SEO/SEM can help your business grow?  Call us now at 540.322.3570 or contact us for a free Google Domination consultation.

Related posts:

1. 4 Pillars Of Local Search Engine Promotion For Businesses, Pt. 1
2. 4 Pillars Of Local Search Engine Promotion For Businesses, Pt. 2
3. Local Online Marketing Starts With This Simple Step

SEM for local businesses and online leads

Local Business Online Marketing Campaigns Require Variety.

The 4th, and final, pillar of SEM activity is the variety you associate to it.  There’s several flavors of variety you’ll need to concentrate on when performing SEM for a local business:

1) Variety of locations of your incoming backlinks.

2) Variety of methods used to humanize and naturalize your efforts.

The reason variety is so important to your SEM efforts is to lessen the footprint left by the tools and/or services (whether by human outsourcers or automated) used.  To explain this, let’s look at the polar opposite of Search Engine Marketing- affiliate marketing.  The latter is usually driven by time based offers (CPA/CPV/PPC style marketing) where tools of automation for links and other things leave messy footprints.  Overnight, for example, a site may have 5000 backlinks, but this doesnt seem quite natural to the search engine algorithms.  These sites tend to lose their ranking power in several weeks, which happens to be a window of time the marketer is counting on- after all, they are promoting time based offers and sales pitches.

Using affiliate marketing methods on your local online business presence may not be the best tactic.  If a local business were to use them, chances are excellent the site would become de-indexed. Eventually.  Your site will still exist, but will never show in the search engines for any keyword.

To differentiate local SEM marketing efforts, keywords can be promoted through a variety of methods that require almost daily activity.  The number of backlinks will grow naturally using this tactic.  SEM isn’t gaming the search engines, but, rather, performing compliance with what the search engines algorithms are looking for- relevant, fresh, authoritative, and quality content that ensures your site ranks for the targeted keywords.  Your offline business isn’t going anywhere soon, neither should your online business.

Ideally, backlinks should come from as many sources as possible.  Backlinks could come from bookmark services (digg, del.icio.us,), directory listings, RSS feed directories, Photo sharing sites, social media sites, Press Release sites, Document Sharing sites, and many others.

The best way to do this for your own SMB can actually be structured with several free services online.  Of course, there are always other paid tools and services that can do the same, but the importance of humanized and naturalized SEM efforts for local SMB’s can’t be overemphasized.

SEM for Local SMBs

SEM for Local SMB's

SEM for Local SMB's

All three of the services listed above are an excellent starting point for any local SMB’s backlinking strategy.  More importantly, these services act as a distributor of your content to multiple sites, on your behalf.  Using a mobile device, you can log into ping.fm and update your twitter, facebook, linked in, etc. feeds from one location. Without getting into the details of the other SEM/SEO benefits, going to these above sites and creating accounts at the services they aggregate will start the number of backlinks to your business site rolling.

Just some of the sites you can post to via ping.fm

Pixelpipe supports over 100 popular social media services.

Creating 4 – 7 accounts each day at the 100′s of services available will also allow you to create 4 – 7 backlinks as well.  Most services you’ll be creating accounts and profiles on allow the posting of an anchor text backlink.  Additionally, the page or site being created gives the extra SEO opportunity of having your targeted keyword in the title and the URL…

http://www.squidoo.com/SmithMountainLakeVARealEstate

http://dallastexasplumber.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/dallas-texas-plumber/

http://www.zimbio.com/Health+Websites/articles/IektUvP7rRn/How+North+Dallas+Chiropractor+Provides+Safe

Summing up the 4 pillars of local search:

1. Effective Keyword Research
2. Volume of Backlinks
3. Varied Anchor Text
4. Variety of locations backlinks come from

It’s not a difficult formula, this is SEM after the smoke and mirrors and hype are removed.

Contact us now or call 540.322.3570 to find out how a few hours of consultation with us saves you time and money.

Related posts:

1. 4 Pillars Of Local Search Engine Promotion For Businesses, Pt. 2
2. 4 Pillars of Local Search Engine Promotion for Businesses, Pt. 3
3. 4 Pillars Of Local Search Engine Promotion For Businesses, Pt. 1

Local Search Engine Promotion has 4 pillars of actions, some needing to be done on a daily basis.  It starts with effective keyword research, and then a backlink building strategy.

While the volume of backlinks to any given website is important, the anchor text used in these backlinks is of a much higher SEO value.  A link may direct your browser to a new location, but the text used in that link tells Google what the site, or URL, you’re about to be directed to is all about.

An incorrect use of anchor text would be something like this.  The link will take you to an article on this site about Google social search.  The text, however, (“something like this”) tells Google that the page you’re about to visit deals with “something like this”.  A more correct way of using anchor text would be the two examples in the first paragraph of this article.

Anchor text for local search engine promotion

Understanding anchor text is easy.  It requires a modicum of HTML knowledge.  A link in HTML with correct anchor text looks something like this:

< a href=”http:www.onpointesolutions.com”>SEO and SEM in DC, Richmond, and Baltimore</a>

You’ll want to place the keywords youre targeting into the anchor text, and, ideally, the same keywords should be present in the content of the page being directed to as well as in the meta description and title tags of the html code of the page.  When the search engines see this link, it will take the anchor text and compare it to the keywords present in content and html code of the site.  If the keywords are semantically similar you’ll have more chances at ranking for that keyword.

Here’s the problem.  Building links is tedious, time consuming, and monotonous.  Because of this, many automated software programs have been developed to make backlink building more easier.  Because it’s automated, you’ll get the same anchor text pointing to the URLS in your website.  All search engines will see this as what it is, spam, and not count the links that were built.  The solution? Vary your anchor text.

In part 1 of this series, the number of initial keywords needing to be promoted for a website should be around 80 – 120.  If you’re promoting this many keywords, then use those same keywords in the anchor text of the links being built.

A common example we’ve been using is “Pain Free Dentist”.  Other keywords relevant to this would be “sedation dentistry”, “pain-free dentist”, “painless dentist”, and, “oral sedation dentistry”.   Building links to this site would require that we use our targeted keywords in the anchor text of the links we build.  Keep in mind that you’ll want to build about 60% of your links to internal pages and 40% to the main URL. This is a “natural” approach, that assumes you are adding content to your site on a regular basis- the more content you add the more pages you have that will be indexed by the search engines. So, in this example, we’d want to have pages of content relating to our keywords:

painfreedentist.com
painfreedentist.com/painless-dentistry-for-wimps
painfreedentist.com/oral-sedation-for-painfree-dentistry
painfreedentist.com/painless-dentist-in-baltimore
painfreedentist.com/sedation-dentistry-in-DC

And to build the correct anchor text to these URL’s, we’d want to include relevant keywords. Taking this a step further we’d want the following keywords in the anchor text of the links pointing to the URL “painfreedentist.com/painless-dentist-in-baltimore”:
“painless dentist”
“pain free dentist Baltimore”
“pain free dentist 21236″
“baltimore pain free oral surgeon”
“painless orthodontist baltimore”

(editorial note: these URL’s are fictitious and do not link to http://www.pain-free-dentist.com/)

Again, everything comes down to the keywords you’ve chosen. If you need some ideas of what keywords you should be using, simply turn to Google’s wonder wheel to find more:

Local Search Engine Promotion for businesses

Why is anchor text really important?  Click on the photo in this article that shows a cursor hovering over the words “Click here”.  You’ll be taken to a a google results page for the keyword “click here”.  Know who comes up first, always, for this keyword?  Adobe.

Why would Adobe rank for this keyword?  It certainly is not something they are actively targeting.  There are over 1 billion results for this keyword- making it somewhat of an oddity to compete for.

Adobe SEO/SEM usage

So, if they are not actively targeting this keyword, how is it possible that they rank for this keyword?  Simple.  Anytime you need to download their flash player or .pdf reader, the link is almost always something like this “To download adobe flash player click here“  Adobe has over 250 million incoming backlinks (from Yahoo’s linkdomain tool):

The power of anchor text

The majority of these backlinks contain the anchor text “click here”.  All major search engines have indexed the incoming backlinks to Adobe and have seen the anchor text “click here”, making Adobe relevant and authoritative for that keyword term.

While this seems to contradict the advice that your anchor text should be varied, don’t be fooled.  Different algorithms are used for SMB’s in local areas vs. national and international companies.  Make your anchor texts “natural” and “humanized” and point the links to a broad range of your site’s URL’s, not just the main page.

Linkbuilding, keyword research, and other SEO/SEM tasks are our specialties.  Call us now at 540.322.3570 or contact us

Related posts:

1. 4 Pillars Of Local Search Engine Promotion For Businesses, Pt. 1
2. 4 Pillars Of Local Search Engine Promotion For Businesses, Pt. 2
3. 4 Pillars Of Local Search Engine Promotion, pt. 4

Although the indexing process is described in a fairly complex manner, it’s clear to understand that the very nature of online search engine promotion as applied to local small and medium sized businesses is changing.

There’s something mentioned about 100 Petabytes of indexed information.  1 petabyte is equal to 1000 gigabytes.  This is about 1000 times more information indexed then Google has previously indexed.  And, it’s being updated across Google’s worldwide network of data centers on a daily basis.

Until now, local search engine promotion for businesses relied upon several factors, mainly fresh content and the volume of incoming links to the sites.    This was done because this is what Google’s algorithms favored.

When the algorithm changes, the tactics for search engine promotion must also change.

More emphasis will now be placed on the mobile platform and how well your website is integrated with it, as well as the number of social interactions mentioning your business or website on popular mobile social media such as yelp, foursquare, facebook, etc.,

What has not changed is the relevancy of fresh content, and now, it’s even more important.  Until now, more dubious online marketing consultants and agencies used tactics for fresh content that were borderline black hat.  Methods such as article spinning, paragraph shortening, article combining, and even slick text to video content.  While this was “fresh” content in one sense, it was merely duplicitious.

Google’s Caffeine makes it easier to spot such rogue tactics, making them ineffective, to a degree.  Before, each piece of “repurposed” content had to be around 30% unique for Google to consider it unique, fresh, and relevant.  Based on our in house testing, it now needs to be around 70% unique.

Many “SEO Agencies” just can’t keep up with the changes and will still use now outdated methods and techniques.  In the long run, this could jeopardize your website’s presence.

The best approach, as Al and I have always insisted on, is daily and consistent efforts in our clients online marketing campaigns.  Automated and borderline black hat methods only work for a short time.  Make your online marketing campaigns natural and humanized and you will have no problems ranking your business website for your selected keywords.

Contact Al or I to discuss your online marketing methods now.

Related posts:

1. Google Places; online marketing for local businesses serving multiple areas
2. Local Businesses Benefit From Google Places
3. 4 Pillars of Local Search Engine Promotion for Businesses, Pt. 3

With your local business keyword research out of the way, the next step of any local business search engine promotion effort should be the links built to your site.  In short, a backlink is nothing more than a vote for your site.  Conventional theory on backlinks has been that the more you have to your web site the better.  Although still somewhat correct, Google no longer counts the number of links from sites without some type of authority.  Check this article on back links for local businesses for more.

Backlinks are essential for local search engine promotions

For local businesses, the best backlink building strategy is:

1) Not the volume, but rather the anchor text used, and,

2) The pages of your website these links are directed to.

The most common mistakes Al and I see are that our clients previous SEO/SEM consultant or “guru” have built links using one keyword in all anchor text and pointed these links strictly to the main page of the client’s website.

Link building and backlink building strategies can be done very easily if automated.  Many outsourcing agencies such as odesk and elance have thousands of outsourcers that will build 100, 250, 1000, and even 10,000 links to your website, at a cost.  The main problem with this is that the software used to automate the tedious and monotonous activity of link building leaves many footprints that ALL search engines will eventually discover.  For example, a website that has been indexed and has a few hundred links built over a period of time that suddenly has 500 backlinks pointing to it, all using the same anchor text will trigger some flags in the search engine algorithms.  An extreme amount of backlinks, all pointed to the same URL will be seen as spam by the search engines.

Ideally, you’ll want to build backlinks to your website daily, consistently, and from websites with high authority.

The dangers of automated and outsourced link building strategies, especially when the website represents your real world business, is that the site will become de-indexed by the search engines.  As Google has announced a direct shift to building applications for, and servicing the mobile consumers of the world, being de-indexed by the search engines means you lose massive exposure to your market share.

Backlinks are just links from other sites to yours.

Here’s a quick checklist for your link building strategies.

1) Find the number of backlinks that your competition has using Yahoo’s free linkdomain  tool.  Build about 5 – 7% more than they have.

2) Now that you know how many backlinks they have, Yahoo will also show you where the backlinks come from.  Find out where your competition is receiving their links from, then go to those sites and build your own backlinks.

3) If your site has 400 links and your competition has 1000, don’t be tempted to dump 600 backlinks to your site in a month.  Build 600 backlinks over the course of ten to twelve weeks.

4) Observe the 60/40 rule.  A website that has 1000 backlinks pointed to their main URL (e.g., www.mainurl.com) with no links pointed to their internal links (e.g. www.mainurl.com/pageone) will be seen as nothing but spam by the search engines.  Humanize your backlink building strategy by pointing the majority (60%+) of your backlinks to internal links.  A good example of this is the last sentence in the first paragraph of this post.  Point the other (40%-) to your main URL while varying the anchor text.

5) The advantage many business owners have is their affiliations with government and educational organizations.  Backlinks from .edu and .gov websites will always have the most authority, simply because these types of links have established trust and authority with the search engines.  Business owners can easily get backlinks from their colleges, Chambers of Commerce, and local city government.

Backlink Building Service For Local Businesses

We’ll discuss more about volume of links in the last installment of this series.

On Pointe Solutions offers numerous link building strategies for our local business clients.  Of course, keyword research is the prerequisite for any link building campaigns.  Let us build your links for you.

Related posts:

1. 4 Pillars of Local Search Engine Promotion for Businesses, Pt. 3
2. 4 Pillars Of Local Search Engine Promotion, pt. 4
3. 4 Pillars Of Local Search Engine Promotion For Businesses, Pt. 1

Local Search Engine Promotion For Small and Medium Businesses In D.C., Baltimiore, Richmond, and Fredericksburg

This is the first in a four part series. There are 4 steps involved when a local business begins an online marketing campaign.  These steps are critical to the success of any campaign.  The theory is easy to understand, however, the effective implementation of this theory is what achieves rankings.

Local Search Engine Promotion shouldn’t be a smoke and mirrors affair.  As part of your marketing strategy, local search engine promotion puts your website at the top of the listings for your targeted keywords.  Done effectively, you can dominate several of the top listings, pushing your competition to page 2.  Think of it this way, your consumers are looking online for your products and services- if you’re not at the top of the search engine results for your keyword, someone is.  That someone is getting Google to drive traffic to their website.  More traffic means more leads, more leads means more chances to sell and convert.  Traditionally,  most people associate this with SEO.

While many people confuse SEO (Search Engine Optimization) with SEP (Search Engine Promotion), the two are independent and distinct.  To make things more confusing, SEP and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are basically the same thing.  SEO is the work done on and within your website to optimize it for the keywords you target.  Examples of this would be including your keyword or keyword phrase in the title and meta description of the website.  SEO alone does not, and will never, drive traffic to your site.  It just allows the search engines to better index your site.  SEP is everything that is done off your website, such as social media, videos, the links to your website that are built daily, the content that you promote, etc. SEP drives targeted traffic to your website.  A SMB utilizing both SEO and SEP will dominate their keywords ranking.

SEO is NOT that complex to understand or implement and better still- it’s a work process that can be automated with a CMS (Content Management System) such as a self hosted WordPress or Joomla blog.  There are many plug-ins and extensions for these CMS that will automate SEO for your niche/vertical.  There are even plug-ins and extensions that display a mobile version of your site when someone browses to it from a mobile platform (iphone/ipad/blackberry, etc.)

SEO and SEP rely 100% on the keywords you are targeting.  So, the trick is, knowing what keywords to target.  Obvious as it may seem, many business owners do not know the keywords that their customers use or would use to find their own business online.

If you don't optimize and promote keywords, this is what consumers see online about your business

Step 1:  Effective Keyword Research

By far, this is the most intensive step.  In the course of normal business, Al and I will often spend 1 – 4 months on this phase of our client projects monitoring and analyzing potential keywords for commercial intent, traffic viability, and conversion potential.  Everything we do for the entirety of the project  is based on the keywords we select during this phase.  Whether we are selecting keywords for PPC/PPV /CPV/Facebook Ads campaigns or keywords and keyword phrases for local search engine promotion, all successful online marketing campaigns begin with this phase.  Here’s a quick checklist of what you’ll need to :

a) Check Competition: Who now holds the #1 ranking for that keyword and what other keywords are they using and promoting?  To do this, use the free tools Google provides, the External Keyword Tool and the Search Based Keyword Tool. Although there are many other services and products that eclipse these tools in functionality and historical tracking, they are often expensive and require monthly fees.  Stick with the available free tools to start.

Google's Search Based Keyword Tool

Google's External Keyword Tool for Keyword Research

If you haven’t already, enter the URL of your businesses website into the external keyword tool to see what Google already thinks your site is about.  Additionally, you can enter in some common words or phrases relevant to your business, products, or services, and Google will give you other groupings associated with your keyword.

You’ll want to pay attention to the search volume as well.  If you’re targeting a keyword with an extremely low amount of search volume, chances are it’s the wrong keyword for your business.

Check out your competition as well to see what other keywords they are targeting that you could also target, or should already be targeting.

b)Check the patterns of usage for the selected keywords

Advanced Keyword Research

You can do this by using Google’s Insights and Trends.  You’ll want to look for repeated cycles and patterns.  For instance, compare Real Estate vs. MLS in Google Insights to see that one keyword always has a spike in volume starting every January and tapering off by April.  Knowing this, you could increase your marketing efforts to include PPC as well as intensify your SEP.

c) How competitive is your keyword?

Using some search modifiers in Google, you can check how competitive the keyword you are targeting is.  To do this, let’s remember that a broad search is one without quotations, such as Pain Free Dentist, while a narrow search would be “Pain Free Dentist”.  The broad will always return more results as it also includes derivatives of the keyword.  In our broad example, Google would also return results that combine the keyword combination such as Dentist Pain Free, Painfree Dentist, and Pain-free Dentist. In a narrow search, only that specific keyword or keyword phrase, in that precise order, is returned.

The key with onsite SEO and local SEP is to rank in both broad and narrow searches.  Sure, no one but online marketers will ever use narrow search, but the volume of results returned becomes a more accurate reflection of how many other businesses are targeting your keyword in their on site SEO.

Use modifiers such as intitle and inurl.  Such as:

intitle:Pain Free Dentist

inurl:Pain Free Dentist

You’ll see how many  other businesses are optimizing their website(s) for these terms.

As a very rough rule of thumb, if you have 50,000 or less competing pages, in narrow search, for your keyword, then it should be fairly simple with on site SEO and local SEP to have your website ranked in Google in under 2 – 3 months, often quicker.

d) Go Local

Unless your business is national, chances are excellent that you will rank better with geo-modified keywords.  Instead of “Pain Free Dentist” try “D.C. Pain Free Dentist” or “Baltimore Pain Free Dentist”.

Geo-Modified Keywords include names of cities, towns, zip codes, neighborhoods, streets, and even counties.  Not all people will search the same, so not only would you want to optimize for “Baltimore Pain Free Dentist”, but “21201 Pain Free Dentist”, “Howard County Pain Free Dentist”, “Downtown Baltimore Pain Free Dentist”.

The keywords you pick in this phase will be ones that you base your online marketing campaigns on.  Choose them wisely, and ensure they convert traffic to sales by tracking the performance associated with them.  Keyword research never really ends, it’s a constant act of refining and tuning to ensure that your business is capturing the maximum amount of market share.

Finally; you’ll want to target about 80 – 120 keywords.  At first, within a few months and with daily and consistent effort towards your SEO and SEP campaigns, about 10 -12 keywords will rank.  Slowly, over the next few months, more will float to the top of the rankings.  As it’s easier to maintain these rankings then it is to achieve them, you’ll actually be doing less work- which means you could have more time to promote more keywords.

What business owner has the time to do all this? Doing it properly, with white hat methods to ensure your site is not deindexed in Google is a time consuming and tedious process.  At On Pointe Solutions we offer a number of creative solutions to business owners; from consulting to managing campaigns to outsoure management to link building and link building management.  Contact us now to find out more.

Related posts:

1. 4 Pillars of Local Search Engine Promotion for Businesses, Pt. 3
2. 4 Pillars Of Local Search Engine Promotion For Businesses, Pt. 2
3. 4 Pillars Of Local Search Engine Promotion, pt. 4

Most SEO Companies will usually charge for this, anywhere from $197 to $495 with video.

However, it’s free if you do it yourself, and it only takes about 15 minutes.

Want to get started now?  Follow these 6 steps and you’ll have not only saved your business some money, but also made it easy for your customers to find you online…

1) Go to Google Places (Formerly Google local business center)

Google Places For Local Businesses

You’ll need a gmail account, which will also allow you to take advantage of Google’s Analytic Tools and Google’s Webmaster Tools.  Before actually doing anything, you’ll need to make sure the information for your business is the same across the internet.  You’ll want the contact information on your website, your Google Places listing, and your whois information to match.  Without getting into too much detail, Google seems to favor businesses whose information is the same across the internet- in local directory listings, in your whois information, and through cross checks of citations.  To find out what is listed for your online business presence (providing that you do have a website for this business) you’ll need to go here:

Ensure your business info is the same everywhere....

For instance, searching the above whois tool for “fredericksburg.com” returns the following listings.

WhoIs Info... What's yours?

Ideally, you’ll want your current business address and number in this information.  Hiding behind a private domain registration like this:

Private Domains Registration? Bad Idea...

Will not help your business website rank for your targeted keywords.  Hiding behind a proxy or a private registration just sends red flags to Google when it parses your business with its algorithms.

2) Click on the Add New Business Button (and even watch the video….)

Google Places For Local Businesses

3) Tell Google About Your Business

Fill in the basics, things such as name, location, contact info, and the type of business. Usually within several hours of listing your business on Google, you’ll start to see it show up in the map of the surrounding area. Be sure Google has the right location of your business before moving on…

First Steps To Online Marketing For Local Businesses

Be sure to pay close attention to the description field when entering your information.  You’ll want to include keyword rich phrases that describe what your business does and where.  Also, be sure to enter in the correct categories for your business as well.  This is important because it will associate your business with those categories any time someone searches for that specific category.

4)Get more specific about your business

Here’s your chance to enter in all the particulars about your business.  Add information that sets your business apart from other similar ones in your area with items such as Hours of Operation; Methods of Payment; Photos and videos of your business.  Ideally, this listing will differentiate you from the others… See what your competition is doing.  Are they using videos or photos?

Google Places; Online Marketing For Local Businesses

Notice the first question? If you check yes…

Google Loves Local Businesses

You’ll be able to tell Google a specific geographic service area, or, simply add a list of areas served by typing in the name of the city or town.  This was something that Local Business Center (the prior iteration of Places) could not do.  It became enough of an issue that Google now allows it- this is especially useful for smaller home based consultants, contractors, and business owners that only have one location yet service multiple cities or towns.

And, to really enhance your listing:

Fine Tune Your Google Places Listing

Add some more keyword rich features of your business.  For example, a dentist may want to add “Pain Free Sedation: Yes”.  An attorney may want to add specific areas of law they deal with, such as “DUI / DWI cases: Yes”.

5) Validate Your Listing

Now that you’ve got your listing completed, Google willvalidate your business listing by ensuring they can reach it by telephone or mail. It’s much easier to get validated over the phone, but don’t get your hopes up- it’s not a human process, Google will have an automated voice call you.

Validate Your Google Places listing

6) Finished…. Almost.

Go ahead and add an online coupon.

Google Online Coupons

Anyone visiting your business Places profile can either print out the coupon or download it to their mobile phone.

It’s a fairly simple process, and one that every business should take advantage of.  Did I forget to mention that it’s free?

This is something On Pointe Solutions does for you if we consult with you or run a local search engine promotion campaign.  If you need some help with your listing, please feel free to contact us.

Related posts:

1. Local Online Marketing Doesn’t Need The Yellow Pages
2. Google Places; online marketing for local businesses serving multiple areas
3. Buzz Helps Local Online Marketing Campaigns

Seems benign, right?  Personal Search has been easing it’s way into Google’s algorithms for years.  Besides integrating your social networks with a Google profile, personal search is also based on everything you do and search for in an open internet browser while logged in to your Google account.

The implications for local SMB’s are profound.

Let’s add in to this mix that Google has publicly declared at the Mobile World Summit in Barcelona that it will focus all development efforts on the mobile platform, while all else will be secondary.  Desktop Search and normal methods of Search Engine Promotion are slowly becoming obsolete.

More and more people are using mobile platforms to update their social networks with statuses, twitters, photos of food from a certain restaurant, reviews on yelp, becoming mayor of foursquare friendly establishments, etc.  Google has become very friendly to these billions of smart phone users around the globe and it’s mobile search algorithms reflect this.  Someone in, say, Washington D.C., searching for a nearby restaurant (on foot), can get directions, reviews, and popular opinion of the nearby eateries.

The problem was, not enough local SMB’s were being active in their online promotion.  Google has made it easier for them to get online in the new Places (formerly Local Business Center).  Listings are there to claim, for free.

The implications for local SMB’s are profound.

So how can local SMB’s take advantage of this trending social pattern?

Start using various forms of mobile marketing and SMS marketing.  There are only a few mobile SMS vendors that also offer facebook and twitter integration, but more are coming.  What is mobile marketing? Tapping into all the customers and clients that you have that also carry a cell phone.

They’re already using it, why arent you using it to market to them?

Your Clients and Customers are online and mobile

Foursquare gives your customer the chance to interact with your other customers.

PPC uses on mobile marketing platforms.

Google Gets Mobile

Mobile Marketing covers a lot of area- from mobile PPC campaigns, mobile websites, and social media integration.  Different algorithms for organic search apply, and consumer support , reviews, and local citations play an important factor.

Mobile Marketing is also… Surprisingly Cheap.  Contact us to find out more.

Related posts:

1. Buzz Helps Local Online Marketing Campaigns
2. Mobile Marketing For Local Businesses Explained
3. Local Businesses Benefit From Google Places

The local businesses, the self employed, and even consultants geo-targeting their business, can now really take advantage of the upgrades made when Google went from Local Business Center to Places.

May seem logical now, but it even 6 months ago, local businesses that only had one office could only target one geographic location in their Google Business Profile. Something important, very important, as the data in this profile is used to fuel geo-modified keywords in the local listings results, aka, the 7 box.

Local Business Listings for SEO Optimization in DC and VA

So, how do the self employed, the consultants, even the small local businesses that often do business in other geographic areas, compete? Many simply got a mail drop or mail forwarding address as close to the city centroid, as explained here.. The problem with that is the algorithms got smarter, faster. Eventually, you could no longer use a USPS post office box as your main business mailing address with Google.

When Google moved “Local Business Center” out of the long-term beta it had been in, it became “Places” and had a number of changes…. like how a certain segment of the business populace could finally join in the Google love fest.

Online Marketing Gets Bigger For Local Businesses

Capture your market share more effectively

If you work from home, you can simply tell Google not to show your “business” address in Google Maps, something that couldnt be done before.  Also, you can now expand your market reach based on a service area range around your business address, or, by just adding nearby cities to the places you service.

Whether Google sticks with this or changes it, who knows for sure- but for now, local businesses can do a lot with this feature- like cheaper PPC because they are targeting areas they service (raising the quality score of your business website), and, compete in the local search engine results in a city they do not have an office in… and more.

Still not using local search engine promotion as part of your marketing efforts?  Contact Al or I for a free initial consultation.

Related posts:

1. Local Businesses Benefit From Google Places
2. Local Online Marketing Starts With This Simple Step
3. Google Provides Local Businesses More Ways To Market Online