SEO 4 Pointers for a High Rank on Search Engines

Globalization causes people to want to reach every part of the world when advertising on the web. So, many forget to give enough attention to local business. If localized searches are ignored, a business can lose potential customers. There are 4 strategies that you should keep in mind when planning for SEO local.

1.Include your clients' website to local search engines:

Their site should be included in relevant search engines. While doing this, you should consider using directories. One directory that should be used is Google Business Center. Here , you can create a free listing with information such as hours of operation and address. Yahoo!Local Merchant and Ask Business Search are also sites that can be used. Local Merchant allows three types of listing: Basic, Advanced, and Featured. Ask Business Search is part of website.city.ask.com and it  allows the customer to see a map of the local area.


2. Submit Clients' Websites to Popular Directories and Internet Yellow Pages:
Commonly used directories: Yelp.com, mojopages.com, insiderpages.com, and citysqaures.com
Commonly used Yellow Pages: SuperPages.com, Switchboard.com, and yellowbook.com

You can also place the website on citysearch.com, which is a provider for local information sites such as MSN, Ask.com, Expedia.com, and Ticketmaster.com.


3. Set Geographic Location in Google's Webmaster Tool:
First, it is important to find detailed reports about the website's visibility so that. Then, you can submit it to Google and use the tools which can help identify problems and come up with strategies. After you submit it to Webmaster Tools, you will see the site the way Google sees it. So, you can get a clear picture of any problems and see what you need to drive more traffic to the site.

4. Add Contact Information:
You should add a physical address and phone number within an address tag on the homepage to increase your credibility.Increased credibility in the eyes of a search engine will lead to higher ranks. To achieve the best results, you can put the address on every page of the site. Using free press releases and Yahoo 360 social networks will also help to be noticed locally.

SEO Tips for Marketing Strategies

There are numerous marketing strategies that if applied correctly are beneficial for an organization. Local search marketing is one practice that has increases over the years. Webvisible and Nielson conducted a study in 2007, which showed that 74% of 2,000 adults in the U.S. used search engines as the primary source for getting local information. When someone refers to local search marketing, they are referring to a limited geographic area. Since the area is local, the keywords must also be local. In order to properly implement local search marketing, there are a few steps to follow.


To start off, you should have on page optimization. The local phone number and address should be seen across all pages and it is also helpful to have a page with directions. When optimizing, use geographical qualifiers in the title tag such as name of cities, counties, states, and streets.

The page should also have an off page optimization factor. For example, include the anchor text for incoming links so that you can hold local qualifiers. Once you complete on page and off page optimization, you can submit to major search engines. This can be done by going to a local business center. Here you enter your business information, details, location, and brief description. Then, your business listing will show up in the local section of the search engine. Other search engines such as yelp, local.com, and yellowpages.com can help drive traffic to your website.


Link baiting is another useful marketing strategy that involves using a bait or hook to attract back links. Below are some commonly used link baiting strategies.

Resource Hook: Resource hooks provide useful resources for the audience. One example is a stock exchange ticker.

News Hook: This provides the latest new first and works best over a period of time.

Contrary Hook:  This type of hook looks at contrary views and takes a contradictory view of what someone else has written. Example:5 reasons why SEO is not useful to marketers today.

Attack Hook: An attack hook is similar to the contrary hook, but more direct and provocative. Example: John Smith gets sued for blogging.

Humor Hook: A humor hook usually stands out from the others. So, it is able to gain more links.

Tip: Use Google webmaster tools. They allow you to view sites that you add and you can get an overview of index and crawling. There are different tabs such as: diagnostic tab, statistic tag, links tab, sitemaps tab, and tools section that are useful for analyzing purposes.

SEO Latest Concepts

The internet and technology are updated constantly, so trends in SEO also change. One trend that is emerging in SEO today is blogging. There are a number of ways that you can approach thhis trends, so below I will give you some basics to get started.

Almost everyone has seen of a blog, read a blog, or even written a blog, but for those of you who don't know what a blog is, it is a user-generated website with journal style entities that provides information about a particular subject. One the blog you will see text, pictures, links, and other related topics.

To optimize a blog there are a few steps that should be followed.

1)Keep the content simple, but make sure it is good quality and is interesting to the viewers.

2)When you submit it to a search engine, make sure to have as much content as possible because search engines prefer bigger sites than small ones. Just like a webpage, the URL for the blog must be submitted to the search engine for indexing.

3) Identitfy keywords and use them as offers to give you an edge over the competitors. If you need help with this process, you can check out Google AdWords or use Digital Point.

4) Optimize your blog template so that all of the post titles show up in the title tag. The actual title of your post should be used as a permalink.

5)Update the blog regularly with new and fresh information. Make sure to maintain the quality of the content and be creative.

Now that you have some basic information about blogging for SEO purposes, you might want to know why you should even bother taking these step. Well, the answer to that is simple. blog optimization helps increase ranking on search engines, which only helps the optimization process. Also, it helps to increase traffic from different sources that include social search such as Yahoo and Google.

Hubspot 7 Steps to Delighting Customers

Many businesses spend more time money and time on acquiring new customers than focusing on existing customers. As a result, the existing customers feel left out and you risk losing their loyalty. Did you know that it is 6-7 times more expensive to acquire new customers than retain the existing customers? After hearing this  you would think it is more reasonable to spend more time on existing customers, but many businesses fail to delight their customers. Only 7% of consumers say that their customer service experience exceed their expectations. So, if your business provides proper customer delight, you will have a competitive advantage. As long as you have trust with your customers, you will have lasting relationships. There are 7 customer delight guidelines that you should follow if you want to create an Inbound Experience.

1. Delight Employees: Simon Sinek said, "Customers will never love a company until the employees

love it first." If you have happy employees you will have happy customers, which are a company's greatest assets. Hiring methodology is a key feature in creating happy employees. Before you hire employees, you should test their skills, culture, beliefs, experiences, and ideas. If the employee doesn't fit well in the company's culture they will not be able to properly delight customers.

2. Educate Employees: In previous blog posts I have talked about buyer personas. EVERY employee should be able to identity the buyer persona. They need to know who they are trying to delight, so that they can best meet their needs. Small interactions with customers make a major difference in the overall experience. Employees should be able to make a customers experience the best it can be. To do this, they should attend on-going training, share experiences, and learn by doing, NOT lecturing.

3. Empower Employees: People see employees as the face of a business. So, they should be able to solve problems, provide recommendations, and be enthusiastic and fun. Most  importantly, their personalities should be able to shine. After all, you did hire them for a reason, so if you let their personalities be apparent to the customer, it will help build trust and loyalty.

4. Listen: Listening is crucial. When customers say something, repeat what they say so that you better understand what they are saying. Silence is key. Let the customers talk and you can listen to solve their problem. Collecting data also helps with this step. You can tell a lot from social media websites, so it is important to monitor them and know why the results are the way they are.

5. Ask Questions: Exploring with a customer helps to better know what you need to do to meet their needs. A way to start is by asking questions such as: how, what, where, why, when, and who. Paying attention to non-verbal cues are also important. You can tell a lot from a person from just their body language and facial expressions.

6. Help and Educate: An effective way to help and educate is by creating content just for the customer. It's not what you say, but how you deliver and make them feel about their overall experience. For instance, a customer representative might promise to have someone give the customer a call back within the hour. The customer will be expecting a call within the hour, and if they do not receive the call, they will not be delighted.

7. Follow-Up: It is important to make sure that you ALWAYS resolve the customers problem. A tip to remember is to solve for the customer, not the number. If you solve their problem, there is a higher chance that they will stay a loyal customer. As I mentioned above, being on time is important. You can promise them a number of things they want to hear, but you must deliver those promises on time.

Tip: Trust is key to lasting relationships. Promoters will help attract more strangers to your business, so you should spend more time on trying to delight existing customers.

SEO Monitoring Basics

Compared to traditional advertising methods, Search Engine marketing offers a unique advantage when it comes down to the overall return on investment. With SEO, you can achieve a better ROI and long term success because well optimized pages can be visited by thousands of targeted visitors a day.

The success of the SEO campaign needs to be measured on percentage of traffic from search engines, traffic from keywords, and rankings. It is important to remember that ranking is not the only way to measure success. A number of different elements need to be considered. Calculating the ROI can help better understand why the numbers are the way they are, and allow you to make changes and better your campaign. Once you calculate the ROI, you should analyze your visitor traffic, to do this there are a few steps to follow to get started on the right track.


Many have the mindset that having an SEO ranking in the top 10 is the most important objective of the entire SEO campaign. While having a ranking in the top 10 is ideal, the real objective of a SEO campaign is getting qualified traffic to your site. Once you have the qualified traffic, the traffic can be converted to leads or sales.  To analyze the visitor traffic, certain areas should be considered.

Traffic on Keywords: Your site will get targeted and un-targeted traffic. It is highly important to select the right keywords. Not only do you need the right keywords, but you should know the performance of each so that you can replace the ones that aren't working.

Keywords and Landing Pages: Different products should have different landing pages. This helps you to see what content and keywords are working the best. If the site is saturated, include more content to help convert viewers to leads.

Whether the CTA was followed for Conversion: If you find the Call to Action wasn't followed for conversion, find out the reasons why. You might have the wrong selection of keywords, or your content might need improvement. You can't fix something until you know what's wrong.

Qualified Traffic: In other words, qualified traffic is targeted traffic. Know the demographics behind the personas viewing your content and making purchases. Higher traffic rate will result in a higher conversion rate, which will help your campaign succeed.

Converted Traffic: Tracking converted traffic is also important. To do this, you can calculate the percent of traffic converting to actual sales made.


Tip: If you aren't comfortable doing SEO on your own, there are qualified individuals that you can hire. They can determine the success or failure of your company's online marketing activity, so make sure to do your research before hiring and chose an ethical SEO specialist.

Hubspot Tips on Perfecting the Conversion Process

The conversion process is a critical process if  you want to succeed. Why you ask? The answer is simple. This step turns an anonymous visitor into a real lead. A lead can turn to a potential customer, which only helps your business or organization. So, creating a successful conversion path is important. In order to do this there are three steps that you should follow.

Call to Action:  You may be asking what exactly a Call to Action is. Well, it is simply a button or image placed on pages. The  purpose is to drive visitors to your landing page. CTA's are important because they help get the potential leads' attention. Although their main purpose is to grab attention, they must be relevant to your content. Once a visitor clicks on the CTA, they will be taken to the landing page.

Tips: 

Use clear and concise words that encourage customers to click. 

Make the CTA's easy to notice. Do not place them below the fold!

Experiment with new elements. Do not stick with just one. 

Landing Page: The landing page will provide the specific information that the customer is searching for. Remember, the landing page is different than the homepage because it is not an overview of the entire company or product. It should be specific and meet the customers needs. Once a customer fills out a form on the landing page, they will be taken to the thank you page. 

Thank You Page: At this point, the content that was introduced by the call-to-action and landing page is delivered to the visitor. After they submit a form, they turn from an anonymous customer to a real lead. 

Tips: 

Make sure it is easy to receive the offer that you promised.

Take them further through the buyer's journey. You can use a new CTA to encourage them to go to the next stage. 

Include other social networking options. This helps your content reach additional people. 

SEO Pay Per Click Basics

Pay per click campaigns are  advertising campaigns that run on search engine result pages. You can use various programs, such as Google AdWords or Yahoo PPC Ads. It might seem a bit intimidating at first, but here are a few steps to get you started on your pay per click process.

Key Word Selection: Picking the right keywords is extremely important and is the first step in the PPC process. For this step, you can pick keywords that directly relate to your service or product. To help generate effective keywords you can use programs such as GOOGLE, Yahoo, or wordtracker. If the words you chose aren't specific enough, you can face a big loss. The goal is to generate useful and relevant traffic, so it is important to understand the product or service that is being offered.

Bidding Strategies: Where your ad gets placed depends on the amount you offer each search engine for that word. The higher the bid, the higher position you will have. There are a number of tools that can help monitor the numbers, and even adjust bids, which include: Atlas One Point, BidRank, and PPC PRO. It is highly important to constantly monitor campaigns and test how well your process is working. Ideally, a campaign should be monitored 4 times a day for at least 1 month.

Advertising Text: Having more than 1 advert is essential. You should make at least 3-4 adverts and use them at different times while observing their effectiveness. You want you ad to stand out from other competitors. People tend to mention discounts, offers, and special deals for the text, but you must have something informative in your text. After all, that is the reason they are searching the internet.

Develop Proper Landing Page: A landing page is ultimately more important than anything else.  If you are not sure what a landing page is, it is simply a web page designed for a keyword or related groups of keywords. They landing page and the advertising text needs to be relevant and consistent with the claim made.  This is where the visitor is asked to take an action. Relevance and consistency are important for your PPC campaign to be successful. People don't want to be taken to an irrelevant site or to a homepage directed towards a broad audience. If you give people what your ad promised, there is a higher chance of converting them to customers. To make your landing page the most successful it can be, you can try trail runs. For instance, have 3-4 different links with different landing pages, and see which one produces the best results.

Tracking: This is the last step, but not at all the least important. Optimization also plays a key determinant in the success of your PPC campaign. You need all of the data regarding your performance that you can get. Some tracking tools that can help you with this step include Webside Story's Hitbox Professional and Hitbox Enterprise.

Tip: Balance is important! All of the steps should be followed and go hand-in-hand if you want your PPC campaign to be successful.