This Simple SEO Step Can Dramatically Improve Search Engine Placement for Your Local Business

Let’s say that you run a small business and you want your website to appear in searches for your local keyword. For example…

• Chicago Pizza
• Cincinnati Wine store
• St. Louis Dairy
• Bethesda Chiropractor
• Bethesda Maryland Lawyer
• etc…

One of the ways to do this is to create  search engine optimized anchor text. Here’s the difference between the most frequent form of links and the superior SEO anchor text:

Let’s say you’re me. And let’s say that I’m marketing on other sites (i.e., forums, blogs, or article distribution sites). When I have the chance to include a link back to my site, I could simply link like this:

Visit LocalSEMExperts.com

When search engines see this, they think: “oh, that LocalSEMExperts.com word points to http://localsemexperts.com”… and so my site gets a “vote” which contributes to my search engine ranking. That’s what most businesses do when linking back to their site.

BUT if I instead linked my website address to the phrase:

Visit the Maryland Internet Marketing Agency

… then I get the “vote” for the link back to my site PLUS the search engines associate my website with “Maryland Internet Marketing Agency” and I can begin to appear for that phrase, too. So next time someone types “maryland internet marketing” or “maryland marketing agency” into the search engines, I’m more likely to appear.

These custom anchor texts give your local business a very powerful way to target your business to your local clients. So, identify a few keyword phrases you want to be searchable for (usually your locale and a main keyword) and create anchor links with those as I’ve shown above.

If you don’t want to do this work yourself, please see our Local Domination Service Packages

Local Google AdWords Recommended

Read a great article in the New York Times. In their Small Business section, they offer a really basic guide on Google AdWords. Most of the article is fairly basic stuff that many people already know. But I was particularly intrigued (and pleased) with the eighth paragraph, which reads:

Focus on Local Markets
“When Apple first introduced the iPhone, Matt McCormick, who runs a phone-repair business called Jet City Devices, saw an opportunity. Knowing that the iPhone’s screen was prone to damage, Mr. McCormick began bidding on keywords like “iphone repairs” and waited for business to flood in. A problem soon became apparent: while his site was swamped with traffic, very few people were actually mailing in their phones to get them repaired. But, after changing his campaign to run only on searches initiated within 50 miles of Chicago and Seattle — cities where he had physical shops where customers could drop their phones off in person — Mr. McCormick says his conversion rate jumped to 10 percent: ‘If you’re in business in only one or two cities, then Google’s localization feature can save you a ton of money, reduce AdWords competition, and bring great traffic.’“

(From the New York Times article “Real Life Lessons in Using Google AdWords“).

This is a great example of local Google AdWords in action. A broad category like “iphone repairs” would get all kinds of clicks from everywhere. But a narrower target — through the use of a local keyword ”bethesda iphone repairs” – would lower the number of clicks but dramatically increase the conversion rate. In short, adding a local modifier to your Google AdWords can reduce your costs but increase your revenue.

Check out out our pay per click search ad services and local organic search domination services.

The Evolution of Google’s Online Search

When Google swooped in a few years ago with their groundbreaking ideas and secret algorithm, website owners tweaked and adjusted their websites and slowly learned what was effective and what wasn’t.

The bottom line for Google was a very website-searcher-centric idea: Put the most authoritative sites first. The more authoritative it was, the higher it should rank. (Which makes sense for internet users who are using search to find something).

They measured authoritativeness by a variety of factors, including keywords, backlinks, and more.

Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz’s CEO, wrote a very compelling blog in which he talked about how Google’s rankings algorithm has changed over time. He even provided a handy chart which shows an estimation based on Fishkin’s experience and observations.

Essentially, he says that authoritativeness is still key at Google and they measure 4 basic things:

• The authority of the domain
• Anchor text
• Keyword usage
• Backlinks

View his chart below and read the blog post here.

Local Search Engine Marketing Basics: Long Tail Keywords

Local Search Engine Marketing Basics is an occasional series of blogs providing definitions and basic guidance on search engine marketing concepts.

Defining “Long Tail Keywords“

In order to understand “long tail keywords”, you need to first understand the “long tail” concept.

The “long tail” is a concept introduced by Chris Anderson in 2004 in which he talked about a phenomenon in business where there is an initial large amount of purchases of a product or clicks on a website (called “the short head”) but those began to trail off (the “long tail”)… however, the amount of the combined trail was equal to or greater than the short head.

In other words, a movie might make $50 million at the box office during its initial theatrical run. But it might make another $50 million or more in “cheap seat” cinemas, DVD sales, and international sales.

Read more about the long tail at Wikipedia.

This “long tail” concept has been broadened to the search engine marketing world.

Common keywords, like “marketing” or “restaurants” are the short head. Millions of people type these into searches every day. Not surprisingly, large companies invest millions of dollars each year to appear at the top of Google searches for these terms.

The local business may have a very challenging time appearing at the top of those “short head” searches. But, for local businesses, the long tail provides some serious possibilities!

Short head keywords might be “marketing” or “restaurants”. Long tail keywords are very specific. On their own they might be searched as much as the short head keywords, but the cumulative amount of search for long tail keywords is dramatic.

So, a local Maryland-based marketing company might forgo the short head keyword “marketing” in favor of several “long tail” keywords like “Maryland marketing”, “Maryland advertising”, “Maryland marketing company”. A Boston-based restaurant might not have  a prayer of achieving a top Google ranking for “restaurant” but they have a much better chance of getting to the top of Google for a long tail keyword like “Boston restaurant”.