This is a quick video showing how fast a video can hit page one of Google. Online video is one of the best ways for a local small business to compete online–it gets rankings and builds your brand. In this video, I show how I repurposed a TV commercial for online marketing for an Arizona-based plumbing company.

Search engine optimization is a must for any business and mission critical for small local businesses. It gives one of the best returns on investment of any marketing medium. Online video marketing does SEO, but it also builds brands and attracts customers. Check it out…

Update: Video is ranked Number 1 on Google for Peoria Plumbing.
In less than 48 hours!

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I’m frequently asked by prospects if I can guarantee them a number one ranking in the search engines.

The prospects who typically ask for a guarantee have run into disreputable SEO companies.  The SEOs know that the layman wants to rank #1 so that is what they pitch.  The prospect, not knowing enough about SEO to make an informed decision will base their decision on price plus promise of #1.

During the consultation I have with prospects, I tease them a bit saying I will guarantee them hundreds of number one spots; however, they may never see any traffic from those rankings.  Just because your number 0ne doesn’t mean anyone is searching for that particular phrase.

Good SEO companies typically get many number one rankings for their clients, but they do it for targeted traffic without doing “black hat” tricks, which could get your site banned from the search engines.

THE KEYWORD SOLUTION

Good SEO is all about getting targeted traffic from keyword phrases that have search volume.  Targeted traffic is searchers looking to buy your type of product or service or researching information on your type of product or service. Getting traffic from people looking for Tiger Woods gossip won’t do much if anything for your business unless you sell Tiger Woods paraphernalia.

Once your targeted keyword phrases are identified, you need to determine if they have enough volume for the effort required to rank.  Volume is very important since SEO really is a numbers game (get more targeted visitors to your site you have a greater chance of making more money).  Usually, but not always, the higher the volume of searches of a keyword phrase the more effort you should put into ranking for that term.  If you have a choice between getting 1000 visitors per day or 100, you should work on the phrase that gets 1000.

Here’s where the but comes in.  If there is a lot of competition for that phrase, denoted by the number of pages returned by the search engine, you may have to work too hard to rank for those 1000 visitors where as it might be easy to rank for 10 keywords that each get 100.  For local businesses, I typically try to rank my clients for keyword phrases that have less than 350,000 pages returned before going after more competitive terms.

Note: The right mix of keywords, competitiveness and volume differs based on the client. For national clients these phrases would be more long tail/third tier keywords that we would go after much later, but for local clients there is little need to try to rank for highly competitive/high volume terms with searchers from all over the country or world (ie. not targeted).

I hope this helps you get better grasp on search engine optimization and helps you make a knowledgeable decision when you hire an SEO firm.  Any questions?  Please connect with me through the comments section.

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What if there was a way for you to get more than the average 50+% of visitors from a number one Google ranking?

I don’t know about you, but I really dislike paying a lot of money to advertise my business (or that of my clients) only to have my direct competitor’s ad show up right next to mine. Every directory that you’re business is listed in also has your direct competitors, too. In most advertising venues that get a lot of “eye balls”, you’re going to pay to show up next to your competitor’s ad. This, frankly, stinks.

But there is a new way to market your company that keeps your competitors at bay. But first let me give you some background knowledge first.

LOCAL SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

Google and other search engines want to offer searchers relevant results so that the searcher keeps coming back to their search engine. SEO is the process of manipulating content on a website and on other websites to get top search results. I’m not going to go into the mechanics of SEO or I would be cranking out a book and Larry is probably thinking this article is a bit too long already.

As local business owners, we have a window of opportunity in the search engine game. The reason I say we have just a window is that large national companies are just now waking up to the power of local search and only about 50% of small businesses have websites. Of the small businesses who have websites, most have nothing more than an electronic business card that is lost in the wilderness called the Internet.

Right now you can use search engine optimization to out compete big corporations and your local competition on all your local keyword search phrases and your brand phrases. But here is what is so amazing…you can dominate those local phrases to the point where your competition won’t show up on the first page of the search results—you can own the top ten.

There are two exceptions to you owning all of page one of Google and those are Google’s Lucky 10 (or soon to be 7 in all markets) Local Results box at the top of searches that have geographic modifiers and in the sponsored ads at the top and right. To dominate these you have to do some black hat techniques and I don’t recommend you try them because getting delisted by Google won’t help your business any.

At the time this screenshot was taken, this fitness trainer owned the entire page for his city. The only place he didn’t have a listing was in the right hand sponsored links. You can see he even got two double listings.

DOMINATING LOCAL SEARCHES ON GOOGLE

First you need to do basic search engine optimization on every page of your website. Next build optimized pages for your major local keywords and include semantically related phrases on those pages. Talk to me about getting this done for your site.

Next, set up a Google Local Business listing so your business can show up in the Google Maps local results box. Fill it out completely. Add the videos, pictures and get reviews from your customers. You should be putting almost as much effort into this one tool as you do for initially optimizing your website–it’s that important.

Your goal is to get your main website (your money site) into the top 3 organic search results before you start on the next steps. Doing everything at once will dilute your efforts. I’ll say it again. Make sure you are ranking in the top 3 of your ten most important keywords before proceeding.

The next step is to get as many double listings as possible. To get a double listing, optimize two or more pages on your site for the same keyword. With a double listing for a geo-targeted keyword, Google frequently returns 8 organic search results instead of the normal 10. That means you need to work to own at least the remaining 7 results.

You’re going to build a content network using Squidoo, Hubpages, Youtube, WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr and Posterous. There are more, but you’ll start here. You or your SEO will have used some or all of these sites to create some links to your main website to get it to rank.

Now, we want the sites in our content network to start ranking for our major keywords so we have to do all the same steps we take to rank our main site to get each of these pages to rank. See the diagram for a simplified outline of what your content network will look like.

In the Content Network Snowflake you’ll see your main website in the middle surrounded by support sites that in turn are supported by auxiliary sites. Each of these sites are content sites that reinforce the relevancy and authority of each other. What you don’t see in this diagram are the inbound links that support each of these sites. This is nothing new in SEO, but it is new for the purpose of ranking multiple content sites for the same keyword to prevent competitors from ranking.

The reason we are doing all this is to take up as many available organic search results as possible. Don’t allow weak competitors to show up next to you in the search engines. This is the only place I know of where some good ol’ fashioned elbow grease will keep your competitor’s ads (search listing) away from your ads.

In all of your content on your content network, you need to have conversion tools in place. This will include links to free reports, email opt-in boxes where possible, phone numbers, contact forms, your business location and any other way you can think up to get people to leave your content network and connect with your business.

Being better and smarter will pay off in you dominating page one of Google. Once you have control, visitors will have no choice, but to choose you.

I know this was a lot to throw at you and I left out a lot of details on how to do local search engine optimization, but please feel free to ask questions in the comments and I would be happy to answer them.

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Here is Part 1: How To Dominate Page One of Google So Your Competitors Don’t Stand A Chance 1

And here is Part 2: How To Dominate Page One of Google So Your Competitors Don’t Stand A Chance 2

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In addition to keeping clients satisfied by living up to their expectations, the most important tasks are the ones that keep business coming in your door. No matter how loyal your current customers, economic tides could change so it’s important to keep the flow of business coming in.

Don’t rely completely on print-based advertising messages, expensive ads in local papers, magazines or radio. The internet offers effective ways to prospect for new customers without the financial or time expense of other marketing methods.

Please share your comments on how you’ve been able to save time with online marketing strategies. Here are a few of our ideas to save you time and make you money.

Local online advertising offers shortcuts

Establishing and maintaining a strong Web presence help keep your company in front of people 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

What exactly is a strong Web presence? An excellent Web strategy includes taking steps to keep your Web site in front of your target customers as they search for businesses like yours on the internet. Those strategies may require the services of an Arizona SEO consultant.

There are several steps to take up-front. Careful planning and execution at the beginning will help bring the right customers to visit your site and say “yes” to your products or services.

Keywords that save time in local area marketing

Researching and selecting the exact keywords to attract your perfect client is essential to success. Things that you should do include: checking out what your competitors are doing, identifying the differentiating factors in your business and targeting the neighborhood, city or state where you want to grow your business. This will help you to select the correct keywords.

If you don’t identify the correct keywords you’ll attract the wrong type of customers to your business. You won’t make the revenue that you expected and then you’ll be required to conduct more research for new keywords, redo copy and develop other strategies to reach your revenue goals. This is not only a time-waster, but it’s also losng money that you could have been bringing in.

Videos assist your local business search

Videos are a great way to build authority and put a human face in front of prospective customers. Many search engines favor videos and will rank Web sites higher than other local Web sites.

Placing a video on the front page of your site will improve rankings, which makes your site more visible to prospects, which improves your opportunity to get more clients.

The quality of the video is not as important as the content. The content should be relevant to your customers. People enjoy feeling like they’ve gotten something for free. If you provide them with information that they can use just because they’ve visited your site, then they’ll remember you even if they don’t order from you during their first visit.

The free information may set up a sense of reciprocity—the need for the visitor to give something back—which may come in the form of referrals or orders.

And, if you provide information that your visitors and target customers will need to know in order to do business with you, you’ll reach visitors who do not like to read copy.

If you’re unsure of how to plan and implement your own video, contact a local marketing expert for help.

Final time-saving note

If you’re interested in time-savers around the office, then please visit our article, “15 Ways to Free up More Time in Your Local Business,”.

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Local Search Engine Marketing

Target your perfect customer and neighborhood with the expertise of a local marketing expert. Why?—because, drawing the right customer to your site is critical to your business and a local search engine marketing expert will have the tools to help you identify the elements that will attract the right customers to your Web site.

The element that is most responsible for helping consumers find your site are “keywords.” Keywords are like road signs that point visitors in the direction of the site.

Selecting the correct keywords is critical. They must be common words that consumers might use to search for a business like yours, but they must be specific enough to identify the unique characteristics of your business—such as identifying your business as a local company.

After the keywords have been selected, it’s time to place them on your site to attract customers and create interest in your products and services.

Keyword Placement

Some search engines will not rank Web sites that present keywords in a list (aka keyword stuffing), so it’s important to place them in copy that is still compelling and represents the product or service well.

This is a skill that individuals who are not local online marketing experts or experienced marketing copywriters do not have. If the copy is not well constructed, then you will not attract the traffic that you need and the words will not transform visitors into customers.

In today’s fast economy and with the relatively high expense of creating a traditional advertising, there’s not much room for “testing.” Businesses who use direct mail marketing campaigns test designs, words and phrases until they find the elements that have the biggest affect on their bottom line. But, it’s expensive and takes time.

As a local business owner, your website must be ready to convert someone when she or he lands upon your site. Testing your copy while maintaining your search engine optimization is key.

By comparison, a direct mail campaign can cost several thousands, depending upon the cost of the list and how many letters are sent. A large mailing will cost significantly more than a well-constructed Web site.

Save Money and Time—Do it right the first time

A smart business person will do everything that they can to do it right the first time. Delays are costing you clients and sales—and if you decide to cut corners and do it all yourself, you may not be attracting the customers that your revenue plans require.

By using the proper local search engine techniques, you’ll be able to fish off the neighborhood pier and catch a lot of local fish! Happy casting!

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Outdated Marketing Methods = Mixed Results

There are lots of ways for small business owners to attract local customers. Flyers posted to local bulletin boards, flyers under car windshield wipers or standing on a corner and flipping a sign or wearing an uncomfortable and outrageous costume while holding a sign to attract attention.

The odds for success are about as good as winning $10,000 on a nickel slot machine. Sure, it could happen—but chances are that it won’t.

Maybe sending out a postcard with a dollars-off introductory offer, or an invitation to attend an open house will do better. Not likely. Unless you’re very lucky or the card is so compelling that your reader can’t put it down, the postcard will be thrown out with the stack of postcards, mailers and junk communication that everyone in the country gets on a daily basis.

Ads in local papers might work—but they are expensive and a one-shot deal. You only get one shot to get it right. But, you’ve invested thousands of dollars that having the ad designed and placing it in a desirable spot in the local paper or magazine.

The Internet is the Perfect Local Business Directory

Because 80% of American households have a computer, it must be seen as an essential tool for living. Whether you’re using it to file taxes, keep up with friends or find information that includes local businesses, family computers don’t usually sit around gathering dust.

You can keep “searches and finds” local by selecting keywords that include the neighborhood, town or region where you’d like to find new customers. An Arizona SEO consultant can help select the words that will get the most hits for your Web site.

They will also not the best techniques to optimize internet marketing for local businesses. An expert can help you keep your local business listing high in the search engine rankings.

After an initial investment, the website is up and running with minimal costs. Plus, it’s available to your potential customers 24-7. With the right keywords and advanced strategies, you can keep traffic going to your site all day and all night.

The Internet offers the perfect opportunity for local marketing—you just have to know the right techniques and the right Arizona SEO consultant to help you get the best results every time.

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