beantownseo.com

Thanks to Lee Odden for reaching out to me and publishing my thoughts regarding SEO trends and topics on his superb TopRank Online Marketing Blog. It’s nice to have people care about what you think! 

You can read my interview here:

Monster SEO: Interview with Matt Evans of Monster.com

Matt Cutts (a.k.a. GoogleGuy) has a good post reminding brands with multiple locations that they need to make sure that each location should have a unique URL and that it should be accessible to search engine spiders. This means making sure that these location pages aren’t hidden behind user interactions such as drop down menus (certain types), forms, or search boxes. Search engine spiders are dumb and need to be fed HTML links in order to find content and index it.

Full article here:http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/give-each-store-a-url/

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – SEO for Local Search from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

A new tool from GetListed.org scans your webpage and determines whether your page has a valid address that can be recognized by search engines. It may be a pretty simple tool, but it answers a very important question for all local businesses who are online: Do search engines know where my business is located? One of the ways search engines determine where your local business is located – and what location-specific terms your site is relevant for – is by the address listed on your site. If you don’t have this very basic level of targeted text on you site then you’ll be at a disadvantage.

Another way to ensure that your local business website is relevant for the cities/towns/locations that you serve is by explicitly listing the towns served on your site. Including this type of text in the header section of your site is a good way to ensure that these important keywords are on each page of your site.

Search Engine Land has great coverage of the SMX West conference session on Tips For Optimizing Your Business Listings Online. Some highlights include:

•  Ensure you’re found in the following business directories:
  •  Google Local Business Center
  • Localeze
  • InfoUSA
  • Universal Business Listing
• If you have a case where the physical location of your business does not accurately reflect the multiple neighborhoods or towns that you serve, then Chris Silver Smith recommends trying these work-arounds:
  • Creating plenty of city- or neighborhood-specific content on your own website to let the search engine spiders know you serve these additional areas.
  • Registering a PO Box and obtaining a local phone number in the additional towns or neighborhoods you serve.
  • Claiming your profile on local portals or data providers who only require a business name and phone number, or who will accept a PO Box as an address.
  • These steps should ensure that Google Maps picks up your additional “locations” in its web crawl, which you can then claim as local business listings
• Steve Espinosa also presented some excellent tips to optimize your local business listings, and increase your incoming link totals:
  • Include yourself in as many relevant categories as possible at Yahoo-this can often lead to multiple URLs, and thus multiple citations.
  • Pay the $9.95/mo. for Yahoo’s Enhanced Product.  His company has found that the little “Merchant Verified” checkmark increases phone calls by 180%.
  • Don’t forget about video, both as a citation source and a direct traffic driver. Getting a video thumbnail AND a local listing on the same search result page has led to a 340% increase in phone calls.
  • Properly constructed social media profiles, like Twitter, can be picked up as citations if they include your business name, address, and phone number.
  • Be sure to link out to your various profiles and citations directly from the landing page you list in the Google Local Business Center. This will ensure that Google is crawling your citations and correlating them with your local business listing.

Here’s an interesting article about the future of social media entitled, 10 Ways Social Media Will Change in 2009.

PS – Go Cards!

As the Web continues to expand and consumers are turning to the search engines for local content, what businesses should be satisfying that demand?

Right now most organic search results are owned by 800 pounds gorillas such as Yelp, Switchboard.com, Directory M, and other large national sites. But do they have the best information about local businesses? Maybe in time, but the small businesses themselves should be the best source for finding the information that local consumers are looking for.

So how does your small business take control of the local search results and connect directly with the consumer? Here are some tips…

• Build a website – DUH! You need to have a place to drive searchers to. All it needs to be is one page with contact information, some sort of mission statement, and imagery/branding that will make the consumer feel you are an established and trusted business. Think of it as an online brochure. Make sure to mention the cities/towns/regions your business services in all the right places (body copy, browser title, and meta descriptions.
• Submit to Google and Yahoo Local (and any other search engines with a local directory) – The major search engines are integrating and sometimes even preempting organic search results with local result. Be there or risk being missed by your potential customers.
• Get into those local directories – You know the 800 pound gorillas I mentioned above? Make sure you’re there.  There will also be a handful of town and state-specific directories that it may be worthwhile to submit to. Being included in these directories will have the benefit of increasing the number of incoming links to your website and increasing your “link popularity” or as Google calls it “PageRank“. Search engines analyze the links pointing to your site as they crawl the Web, so the more relevant links you can get, the better chance you have in being visible in the results.
• Expand your local content – As you start to get some good momentum you’ll notice that a one page site can only be relevant for so many keywords. This is why you’ll eventually have to consider expanding your site to have content/pages on each region and/or service you provide. For example, a dog walking business that services Boston and the surrounding cities should have pages that target “cambridge dog walking”, “dorchester dog walking”, etc. It’s important to note that just creating these pages isn’t enough – you’ll need to make sure you’re linking to them so they’re not “islands” with no incoming links.
• Dabble in Paid Search – You’ll find that some keywords are so competitive that you will need to put in a lot of work to show up in the organic search results, but the beauty of pay-per-click search advertising (a la Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN AdCenter) is instant visibility! Start off by only targeting the most specific terms so you’re absolutely sure that the traffic you’re paying for is valuable. Also, consider using geo-targeting and exact matches in some cases. For instance, paying for traffic on the term “dog walking” would be expensive and there is no guarantee that the searcher is in the Boston area. A better keyword target would be “boston dog walking” because you know the intent of the searcher. Bottom line: WALK BEFORE YOU RUN with PPC advertising. I would recommend consulting with a PPC expert if you want to take your campaign to the next level.

That’s it for now. Happy Holidays everyone!

So you’ve made the plunge and started a local business. GREAT! Now how are you going to promote it? How are you going to get the consumer’s feet to your business? If you’re a savvy local business owner then you know one of the most cost-effective and essential ways to grow your business is through the Internet… and the cheapest way to do that is through building a website that is SEO-friendly. This along with a few local search SEO best practices will help you to own your little niche on the Web! In the future I’ll be touching upon many local SEO best practices, but  for today I’m covering the selection of your website domain name…

Consider Search Engine Optimization (SEO) When Selecting Your Domain Name

Now, before you go and register www.JanetsHairHeaven.com for your Boston hair styling business, just take a second to consider that search engines heavily consider the keyword phrase/s used in your domain name in order to determine what your website is about. A good domain name is the first step in communicating the right keyword theme about your local business website.

JanetsHairHeaven.com would be a good SEO domain name because you’d be able to “own” your brand (“janet’s hair heaven”) in search engine results. But is anyone even searching on your brand name? If you’re a brand new business, then surely NOT. And even if you’re an established business, you’ll have a much easier time expanding your customer base by registering a domain name that uses common keywords people use to search for local businesses like yours.

So, what’s a better domain name for Janet? How about:

• BostonHairStylist.com
• HairStylistinBoston.com
• BeautyShopBoston.com
• BostonBeautyShop.com
• BostonHair-Stylist.com
• Boston-Hair-Stylist.com

But wait, is Boston too big an area for your business? Does it make sense for you to target your neighborhood of Beacon Hill in your domain name? These questions will be up to the business owner to decide on, but you get the idea. There are tons of possibilities for your domain name, so be sure to go with one that uses the best keywords to target your potential customers.

Some great resources for brainstorming keywords and domain names are:

Google Keyword Suggestion Tool: Use this tool to expand the list of keyword phrases that might be used to describe your local business. In Janet’s case she might input “boston hair stylist” and get back “beauty shop in boston” as a suggested term. Get familiar with this tool, because it’ll be used in every process of optimizing your site for search engines and more importantly, your consumers.

Nameboy: This is a great tool to brainstorm domain names and see their availability.

Happy domain name hunting!

I started in the search engine marketing (SEM) industry over 7 years ago. Wow, time flies when you’re having fun! Before my first SEO jobs I had never heard of search engine optimization (SEO) and never even considered how AltaVista and Lycos determined why one web page was a better match to my query than another. I don’t even think I used the word “query” back then!

Today I’m a full-on SEO evangelist at work and outside work for a number of reasons:

• I believe in ethical SEO and the value it brings to an organization’s brand and bottom line
• I believe it improves the search engine results
• I find it very logical and many times optimization is very much common sense
• It is a dynamic industry and the search wars make things very interesting
• Most of all, I find it very satisfying to see the results of my efforts for my clients and my own sites

The goal of the BeantownSEO blog is simple. Connect with other SEO nerds in the area, vent about industry happenings, and display some of the work that I’ve done.