What is Hyperlocal?

The internet has been a highly valued vehicle to connect the world. Our globe is much smaller now thanks to the speed with which we can connect with others. Friends, family, and businesses can all connect far easier because of the web and it technologies. Email, voice-over-internet-protocol (VOIP), instate messaging, Twitter… All of these tools and so much more allows us to collaborate with someone on the other side of the world as if they are right next to us.

From global to local
But people are realizing that they’ve looked so far afield for business and relationships at a great distance that they have nearly forgotten about those right next door. To right this wrong, people reset their sites to try and cover both global and local markets in an initiative called “glocal”.

So the web – which has long been touted as a global medium – has now also become a local medium, focused on a specific and defined community (like a city, town, or smaller geographic unit).

Hyperlocal definition
That’s the trend you need to know about first, so here’s how the term “hyperlocal” fits in: According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlocal “hyperlocal” serves a very specific geographic region with content created for residents of that region by a resident of that region. In other words, hyperlocal isn’t just a distant view of a narrowly defined area. Rather, it is an extremely specific way to serve an extremely specific market.

If you run a business serving a specific geographic area and your marketing is targeting that area, you are a hyperlocal marketer. That might not change what you do or how you do it, but it’s important to know the rising trend in the concept.

Increase PageRank With This Simple Step

When people are searching for your business, they rarely go past the bottom of the second page of their Google search results. If they can’t find what they’re looking for by page 2, they’ll revise their search parameters.

What a motivator to get into the top 20 (or, better yet, the top 10) of Google search! And the way to do that is with better PageRank. The higher your PageRank, the higher you’ll appear.

One of the ways to get higher PageRank is to be linked to from higher PageRanked pages. So, if your site’s PageRank is 3, strive to be linked to from pages that have a PageRank of 4 or more.

I like to use this tool, Google PageRank Checker, before I post anything on another site.

Now, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t avoid lower PageRanked pages. But if you have to spend your time somewhere, focus on the higher PageRanked pages.

According to Google PageRank Checker, here are a few pages to link back to your site from:

Wikipedia.org (PageRank: 9/10)

Twitter.com (PageRank: 9/10)

About.com (PageRank: 8/10)

LinkedIn.com (PageRank: 8/10)

Squidoo.com (PageRank: 7/10)

Suite101.com (PageRank: 7/10)

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”.

Stake Your Claim in Google’s Top Ten Rankings

Maryland search engine marketing
Hey Maryland business owners. Have you staked your claim? The Google “top ten” is the brass ring of internet marketing. How many of those spots do you own?

In some cases, searching well for specific keywords might not be easy for you but, chances are, you have plenty of space to actively target (and achieve) Google top ten ranking on your own name or business’ trade name.

It’s easy to do once you find the right keywords to target. And, in Lisa Barone’s blog on SmallBizTrends.com, she outlines seven easy steps to help you own your top ten spots on Google. Read Barone’s tips about search engine marketing.

I’ll briefly summarize the article and build on it here:

In her first action step, she recommends that you buy your own .com. I’d suggest that you might also consider buying your own .net and .org and creating different content there. (For example, many companies use their .com website as their business website and their .net site as a separate site talking about their company.) Or, use .com for your business and .net for your blog.

In her second and third action step, she recommends that you sign up for various professional directories and social sites, including LinkedIn, Naymz, Twitter, and more. I’d suggest that you might consider going to this Wikipedia list of social networking sites and hitting all of the ones that are important to you. She also recommends that you keep these profiles active, which can take a lot of time. Fortunately, we’re seeing an increasing number of places where you can consolidate this work, including PeoplePond.

Her third, fourth, fifth, and sixth recommendations are sound ideas and things I would have recommended as well. (Read them here.) Her seventh recommendation – to find local speaking opportunities because they often come with a bio – surprised me. I think it’s an interesting take and I like the local search engine marketing aspect of it, of course. I think there might be other local opportunities, as well, including local forums. So if you’re an Maryland business looking for specific Maryland search engine marketing, you can take advantage of this opportunity by bringing in local keywords.

Barone’s article is good, and a must read for any business that has wondered how to achieve a Google top ten ranking. Barone says: “own them all!”