SEO Experts Tips

Roughly a year ago, local search engine optimization was all the rage - the new frontier in search engine marketing. For a while, it seemed that everyone was interested in the local search angle - even multi-national companies. However, for many companies selling products or services to the entire United States, or even globally, it seemed like a non-starter. Companies that counted on people looking for certain products or services that did not require close proximity to the company’s location were unaffected. As far as local search engine optimization goes, things have changed a bit since then - at least for some.

Some time ago, Google introduced a “geographic box” at the top of its search results. This is tied in to its mapping feature, and, when it was first introduced, the engine would display three results at the top of its search results whenever somebody entered a geographic modifier into the search box (”Atlanta widgets,” for example). The Google algorithm then has the intelligence to determine whether the query calls for results that are primarily local in scope.

Since that initial trial, Google has obviously found that its users appreciate the feature. The engine now displays ten local search results at the top of the listings for certain queries, provided that they have a geographic modifier attached. For example, if you type in “Atlanta gyms” in Google, you will see ten results alongside a map that shows the location of ten gyms in Atlanta.

It should be noted that you will not see local search results for all queries that contain a local modifier. In certain instances, it almost seems as if Google somehow “knows” when a geographic modifier really means that you only offer services in a particular area. Yeah, those guys are pretty good.

There are many resources on the Internet to turn to if you are looking for local search engine optimization for your regional website. However, many companies have client bases that cater primarily to a national or international field. Can they benefit from local search?

Yes, they can - in two ways (with a caveat for the first).

First, many customers prefer to deal with people that are local, even if the business is national, or even global. A businessperson that is looking for, say, marketing consulting, may be inclined to work with someone with an address in close proximity found through local search. It just feels more comfortable - if something goes wrong, he or she can request a meeting, rather than calling an 800 number.

Here’s the caveat - you may not want people showing up at your doorstep. Some companies invite people to show up at the headquarters and voice concerns or sing praises, but others would prefer to keep things at a distance. This is not a value judgment by any means. With many companies that deal with thousands, or even millions, of customers, it would be impossible to service every complaint with a human smile.

The second way, which seems more customer friendly (but actually isn’t), applies when a large company has many locations. This doesn’t mean that your company has “walk-in” locations that are open to the public. If you have locations in many cities, each serving a different function, you can still benefit from local search engine optimization.

Say, for example, you are headquartered in Toledo. You have distribution centers in several cities across the United States. Each of your physical locations is eligible to show up in local search results on Google, provided that you supply the engine with the proper information.

Of course, as mentioned earlier, not all searches with regional modifiers attached will bring up regional results. But based on recent happenings, it’s a good idea to make your regional presence known and consider the effects of local search engine optimization. After the years of talk about it, local search might finally turn out to be something that most companies can take advantage of.

author/Scott Buresh

If you are looking for improved search engine rank for any page on your website, you have to learn how to write articles in order to make use of one of the major and most useful resources online: article directories.

Just as website directories can be used to promote your website online, article directories can be used to publish your articles. These articles can in turn be used to promote a specific page on your website, and in this respect are more useful than a website directory listing that promotes only your home page.

You have few opportunities to direct search engine spiders directly to a page of your own choice, and when one arises it should be made good use of. In fact, other than article directories and links on your own website, you are unlikely to find such an opportunity, and it should be seized whenever it arises. However, very few people actually know how to make best use of such an opportunity and to use their articles intelligently to drive masses of traffic to their site.

You can use your Author’s Resource to achieve that, but in order to get the Resource read, you have to get the article read. For that to happen, you have to write a good article and then make people read it. To do that your title must be good enough to persuade people to read it. To achieve that you must be able to write a good title. So how do you achieve all of these things? That is the purpose of this article:  to teach you how to craft a title that will get you article read, and then to craft a resource that will compel the reader to visit your website - or the web page that you want them to see.

So, first the title: Before you can craft your title you will need a good topic or subject to write about. There are several ways to decide what that should be, but that is another article. Let’s assume that you have decided to write about how to cure a slice in golf. The obvious title would be: “How to Cure Your Golf Slice”.

Would that really be a good idea? How many web pages are there online with that title? A few thousand? A few hundred thousand? In fact if you use the term as a Google search you will find it is 387,000. You have 387,000 other websites competing for these keywords. Now, let’s change it to “How to Cure a Golf Slice“. You get 71,500 competing sites. Just one small word change: ‘your’ to ‘a’ reduces the competition by almost 82%.

What that means is that with fewer competing sites you have a lot better chance of having your website listed close to the top of the listings for the keyword. However, you also have to take the demand into consideration: if nobody is using these keywords in their search you won’t benefit by using them. Using Wordtracker I get three times as many people, searching for ‘cure A golf slice’ than ‘cure YOUR golf slice’. So based upon keyword research the title will be:

How to Cure A Golf Slice

This has three times the demand and over a fifth of the supply of the alternative with ‘YOUR’ in the keyword. That’s the difference that one simple word can make to the success or failure of a keyword or keyphrase.

In practice it will make little difference, unless the prospect uses the exact phrase, in which case ‘how to cure a golf slice’ is the more likely of the two terms for somebody to use. Were the term ‘cure my golf slice’ used, both would have the same number of results.

You then write the article, making it as interesting and as useful to the reader as possible, and try to persuade them that they have to find out more by visiting your website. However, the purpose of this article is not to show you how to write articles, but how to use them. You do that using your Resource Box. This is a section that some directories provide in which you have to persuade the reader to visit your site. The directory won’t describe it as such, but that is basically what it is. In fact not all directories provide a separate data box for this, so you have to add it to the end of your article, but either way you design it the same way.

Keep in mind that the resource box should not be used as a bio. Even though the directory might ask you to provide info about yourself, you should use it to promote your website. Here are some ideas for your resource box.

1. Offer more information and a free gift “For more information on this topic and a free gift check out Pete’s website at xxxxxx

2. The Second Part Offer “You will find Part 2 of this article at xxxxxx.com, in which you will learn how to put this information to practical use.”

3. The Final Offer “If this article interests you, you will find a limited period free offer on xxxxx.com, that will help you to cure your golf slice.”

These are various uses to which you can put the resource box, and they are all effective in getting the important clicks. However the format that works best for me is something along the lines of: “”For more information check out xxxxxx where I will show you how to make every article rock with cash generating pizzazz that makes you more in a month than your website does in a whole year.”

That’s how to use your articles and your resource to make money. Some people don’t want the resource to look like an advert. Why not? Advertising is your life’s blood and your resource is the only place in your article where you really can advertise.

By Peter Nisbet