Posts Tagged ‘local’
Tampa SEO Consultant – Local Search 101
Last Updated on Tuesday, 17 January 2012 05:33 Written by Mike Friday, 24 July 2009 12:37
For any local brick and mortar store or service provider, it is important to submit your business to the local business directories. A complete local business profile on Google, Yahoo, and Bing’s local business directories can bring in high converting traffic to your business.
Claim Your Listing!
The first thing you will want to do is sign up for Google LBC, Yahoo LBC, and MSN LBC and claim your listing. By claiming your listing you verify that you are the businesses owner. For Google they allow you to verify your listing by calling your phone and entering the pin code they provide, or you can wait for a pin number to be mailed. Yahoo & Bing will manually verify the business listing by mailing you a letter with a PIN code.
Tags: local, Local Search, search, SEO | Posted under Local SEO, Showcase, Tampa SEO | No Comments
Ethical SEO
Last Updated on Saturday, 26 November 2011 06:24 Written by Mike Thursday, 23 July 2009 09:21
Something is bothering me. With increasing regularity I am hearing SEO horror stories. This saddens me to the point of writing about it. I want to point out how SEO should work and what kind of results you should be getting.
The reason I am using the term Ethical SEO is pretty obvious. A SEO consultant should have your businesses best interest at heart. Internet marketing is big business. That is one of the reasons you get rather unscrupulous chracters delivering sub-standard work.
A common practice for shady SEO ‘expert’ is to promise you first page search results. No matter or discussion of your business or keywords, they just guarantee you first page results. Immediately this should set off warnings signs for anyone that has even a remote inkling of what SEO is.
Just the other day I heard a story from a potential customer. A ‘seo’ guy paid them a visit recently, pretty much guaranteed first page Google results for them. They took the bait. Signed a contract and paid the fees. After a period of time they received a report stating that the work was complete. What they saw next completely shocked them, they were indeed in first position, for completely wrong keywords. Keywords that do not receive much search traffic. Money wasted on pure crap SEO. Unfortunately, this happens a LOT. Don’t let it happen to you.
Typically these people will charge an arm and a leg. $5000 is not an uncommon price. Often times they deliver really bad results often hurting businesses more than helping them. Consider this for just a moment. If you spend no time researching keywords, understanding the clients business and what people are searching for, how in the heck can you deliver results. The answer to that is pretty simple, you cannot.
If your thinking of hiring an SEO consultant here are a few things to look out for.
- Takes the time to talk to you about your business. A great SEO consultant will take the time to learn what it is your business does. How you make a living, what type of products and/or services you specialize in. I wont need your entire businesses history, typically I can learn enough in about 30 minutes.
- Understands how to read keyword tools. This is very important as this pertains directly to what people actually search for. This will help them determine if they can meet your SEO goals.
- In addition to understanding keyword tool usage, explains what people search for and what keywords you should be targeting. An Ethical SEO specialist will tell you if there is not enough search volume to warrant the expense. SEO types cannot make people search for your product.
- Makes no promises of guaranteed first page results for highly competitive keywords. The ethical SEO specialist will explain what keywords they think they can get you to rank for.
- Will tell you if you are fighting a losing battle. Even though a SEO consultant is a sales person, the ethical SEO guru will tell you if they CANNOT help your business. It is rare but there are some cases where there is too much competition and not enough funding available to accomplish the desired goals.
- Will make you sign an agreement outlining very specific details of their work, and you’re expected results.
That’s about it for now, if you have something to add I would love to hear your comments.
Local Community is Alive and well in Tampa
Last Updated on Thursday, 30 July 2009 03:12 Written by Mike Monday, 20 July 2009 07:01
After my last tweetup at @brighteyestampa facility in Westchase, I left with a much stronger sense of community involvement in twitter. Previous tweet-ups were a little different. Maybe because the size was a tad smaller everyone was a little closer to each other. Maybe it was the wine tasting. Either way I wanted to thank Dr. Nathan Bonilla-Warford of Bright Eyes Family Vision Care for organizing a fabulous event.
Just maybe it was the participants themselves. Almost each and every individual I talked to was very receptive and seemed to have a genuine interest in local community building and awareness. From listening to speaking about who’s doing what, that’s a major kudos for the Tampa Bay area. For having the businesses that encourage and foster that community spirit.
I had the pleasure of meeting Michele Northrup of Intensity Academy and For some seriously delish hot sauce you absolutely have to check out her Hot Sauce Company their philosophy is really very simple “the highest belief in intense flavors”. After taking home a bottle of Chai Tea chipotle, I can happily report it is quite interesting tangy and mellow, with enough zing to wake the tastebuds.
The twitter universe expands my sense of community and social connections more and more each day. It is indeed a great time to be alive. At least in the Tampa Bay area community involvement continues to grow. There is hope for us after all.
Tags: Community, local | Posted under Best of the Web, Local SEO | No Comments
SEO Consulting – How I make it work for your local business
Last Updated on Tuesday, 17 January 2012 05:36 Written by Mike Wednesday, 17 June 2009 01:31
Are you a local business? By local I mean does the bulk of your sales come from face to face dealings with John or Jane Public? If you answered yes this article is for you.
More and more local business sales are triggered by consumers researching through Google and Yahoo, looking to purchase specific products and services. Consumers are using search engines to look for things that you sell or the services that you offer. They are looking at where to buy locally, who’s selling it, how much does it cost? If you’re not targeting your potential audience in a specific local market, how are those consumers going to find you? The answer is simple and disappointing, they’re not going to.
As with any online project, there are several factors to consider in a local SEO/PPC campaign. Strategy helps define the businesses goals, it also will help determine from an SEO experts POV, whether or not you can actually benefit from our efforts. There are some businesses that will not benefit from SEO expenditures. Let me tell you that I will be the first to point this out to you if you are one of them. I will not waste my time or yours, trying to convince you that your toothbrush recycling business will get a million visitors in a week. I’d prefer to work on a realistic project where both parties are happy with the outcome.
