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Steps to Successful Local Listing

Local ListingsLocal search has become one of the most affordable and important ways for small businesses to be found by their customers. In a recent ComScore study, they found that 42% of local searchers wanted to find a business within 6-15 miles of their home or place of work*. Searchers are looking for more relevance than ever before. With statistics like this, it’s more imperative you are giving those local users every opportunity to find your business.
The reality is that there are many factors that can contribute to a successful local, online presence. In today’s market, it takes being available at different times and in varied formats to reach the right audience. One of the main ways prospects can find you is through a local business listing. With prime placement right at the top of the search results page, these listings give a previously unheard of visibility to small and local businesses.
So what can you do reach that coveted prime placement, a.k.a. the Google “7-pack”?
Submit your listing- Seems pretty simple, right? Well, it’s a crucial step. Just submitting and verifying your listing can sometimes be enough in less competitive markets. Google takes the verified information as the most trusted, so make sure your listing is claimed.
Have only one, optimized listing for your business – When you submit your information to Google, you could have the option to choose existing business information, if it exists for your company. You don’t want to have competing listings out there, so always claim the existing information and optimize it- so there is only one active listing. I have seen claiming another listing significantly help a business rank better.
Choose correct categories for your business – Google provides different industry options for you to choose from. These are one of the main factors that determine which searches your listing could show for. Make sure these accurately describe your products and services.
Put your industry and target area in the title of your listing- This information helps Google, but it also improves your visibility for those keywords.
Be sure to use a local phone number in your listing- Using a local number lets both the user and the search engine know that you are in fact located where you say you are.
Create a description that’s informative- This descriptive area provides you the chance to give the most information about your company. Use your keywords and provide the details that would be valuable for your customer base.
Reviews are important! Positive reviews are a huge factor on whether or not someone will choose you business over another. Not only that, but the presence of reviews (both negative and positive) can increase the ranking of your listing. In some industries, I have seen listings perform better by simply having more reviews than their competitors.
Keep your listing up to date- Updating the information tells the search engines that it’s relevant. It can be as simple as updating a coupon, or other details.
Make sure your listing is 100% complete! Don’t underestimate the value of having a completed listing. Google is all about the user experience, and a complete listing shows that your business is providing the most information.
Submit your info to other directories as well. Google actually pulls your business info from other sites, so it would behoove you to have accurate, standard information about your business from as many sources as possible.

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By admin – May 26, 2010

Use Back Links to Improve Your Website SEO

SEO LinksPut simply, back links are inward-bound links to a particular internet site or page. What this means is that the other site has a hyperlink “pointing” directly to your website. Regarding search engine optimisation, you want as many back links pointing to your site as you possibly can, even more so if the site is directly related to your area of interest.
As the number one goal of a website is to achieve traffic, i.e. people actually looking at the site, it follows that you must make the website visible. Generally speaking, to make your website visible, people must be able to find it when they search for keywords directly related to your product, niche, service or whatever else your website represents.
Individuals tend to be seeking such information via the big search engines, whose operators have rather complicated algorithms to help them decide whether a certain website is applicable to the searcher’s request, or not.
Although they will not divulge exactly how they go about composing these algorithms, the search engine operators do assure us that relevancy, as viewed by others, is most important. If they see that you have a back link or a number of back links from other websites that have some relevancy to yours, this is a plus. In addition, if the site linking to you has a fairly high “page rank”, this helps as well. Page rank is Google’s proprietary method of allocating a number (zero being lowest and moving up to ten) indicating how important a site is within its particular niche of operations.
There are a number of ways to achieve back links for your site:
ARTICLE MARKETING
As Bill Gates once said, “content is king”. Article marketing is known as one of the most solid Internet marketing methods. By writing highly relevant and informative articles and submitting them to high profile article directories you do several things, not the least important of which is to help establish you or your site as an expert in your niche. Within your article, published in the article directory, is a resource box which contains your details – who you are and what you do, and a link back to your site, the all important Back Link.
SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
There are many hundreds of social bookmarking sites, and their primary motive is basically to provide a way of informing people about the existence of content related to any niche or interest in a very manageable format. You can sign up and initiate a process of notifying social bookmarking sites about fresh content, including back links in many cases. You should note at this stage that some webmasters apply a “no follow” tag which can void the effect of a back link, as the tag instructs the search engine spider not to give you points, or what’s called “link love”.
SOCIAL MEDIA – TWITTER
Whilst Twitter and other similar sites are becoming increasingly more powerful in marketing terms, you should know that to include links within your “tweets” or in your URL profile box is not a powerful back linking strategy, as these are all allocated the dreaded no follow tag. However, you may find that it is possible to link within a bio box and get some link love this way. Also, if you syndicate, your Twitter feeds are updated via the RSS aggregators, earning you back links.
BLOG COMMENTING
First of all, you will have to locate blogs or forums that are relevant to your area of expertise. This is fairly simple to accomplish as a straightforward and pertinent search will locate hosts. Once you find these blogs you can sign up and create a profile. Often you will be allowed to create what is called a “signature”, and within that signature you incorporate your links. Note, you should check to see if there are any no follow tags, as these will appear occasionally.
Enter into the spirit of the place by interacting with other members and making entries and posting comments that are relevant, useful and educational. As well as a back link being displayed each time you post a comment, you’ll also create a potentially profitable bond with other members – and this has the potential to lead to all kinds of new possiblities.
Back link building remains one of the most important SEO strategies to adopt.
Online Link building success strategies that are tailored to your needs.
Contact www.mediaspawn.com

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By admin – May 25, 2010

Deep Linking

deep_linksMake sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.

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By admin – May 25, 2010

What is the difference between Natural Listings and Sponsored Listings (PPC)

There are two kinds of search engine listings. Natural and Sponsored or Paid Listings. Paid listings are usually labelled in a separate section such as “sponsored listings”, at the top or right column of the page and Natural listings are the listings that are not paid for. They are determined by the search engines’ algorithms for finding, sorting and ranking pages based on relevancy.

Natural Search Optimization is the process of improving the quality and volume of traffic to websites via search engines. It is called Natural or Organic Search Optimization because website owners do not pay the search engines to list their websites in any particular order. Natural listings are the listings that are not paid for.

Sponsored Listings or PPC (Pay-per-click) advertising, is a form of online advertising whereby visitors are directed to an advertiser’s website after clicking on an advertisement, and the advertiser pays for each visitor on a per-click basis.

Each click can be anywhere from 1 pence to several pounds in cost, depending on many factors, including the pay-per-click search engine being used to advertise on, and the search phrase that is being targeted.

Perhaps the best example of pay-per-click advertising is Google’s PPC advertising called Google AdWords.

Google Adwords, in a nutshell, works like this; when a Google search engine user types in an applicable search phrase for your business and you are bidding on that search phrase your text ad has a chance to be displayed. You are only charged when the search engine user clicks on your text ad, hence the name pay-per-click.

Mediaspawn specializes in Natural Search Optimization and can propel your website to the top pages.

Visit www.mediaspawn.com for more info

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By admin – May 24, 2010

What is a Web Directory?

Web directories are similar to the phone book directory except in this case websites across the Internet are organized into specific categories that make it easier for people to find the information they want. The Internet, namely the World Wide Web, is just a cloud of domains scattered across the world, which usually reside in web hosting servers. To organize this information, search engines have made it easier to navigate and search through the cloud of domains out there for Internet users. With web directories, it takes these websites and places them in categories, which are searchable for people who are looking for certain groups of websites.

One main use of a web directory is to help boost the page rank of a website. Webmasters would usually submit their website to web directories to gain a back link to their site. Linking to web directories with a high page rank would increase the likelihood that the site submitted would be perceived by search engines as an important site. The higher the page rank a site receives, the higher priority it receives in search engine rankings.

Another use would be to do research. This subtopic on research can go on and on but one set of users would use it for market research. If you were researching something on marketing your product like an eBook, “How to build a desk”, you can look under the category construction and see which sub categories would fit your specific niche and research what other products or services are offered. Of course this depends on how organized the web directory administrator and staff are in categorizing the websites.

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By admin – May 22, 2010