navSEO

Brand identity via SEO

This is a guest post by Susan Smith

Seen sniffer dogs burrowing through the scene of crime in the umpteen police dramas, how their nose never lets them down and the scent trail becomes a mental map that leads them to the source/target? Well, what if the dogs cant catch a scent to follow? A similar result will befall your website if it is not search engine friendly invisibility.

I am sure you have heard of Search Engine Optimization or SEO as its more popularly known. Its one of those small business ideas that create a huge impact by make your website/blog a part of every search engines most searched list. Its no Rocket Science, and is ideal for small business owners.

Dont believe me? Read on

Keenly pursue Keywords

I am sure you have seen the hooks that cranes use to lift goods with. Keywords have a similar function. Identify those terms, phrases or keywords that your target customers are likely to search for and place them strategically in your website/blog content. A couple of pointers:

Go for specific keywords that will get your desired clients to visit you. For e.g. promotional products is a widely searched keyword, but many companies besides you also know that and will be using it on their websites. Beat competition and ensure that a relevant and exclusive clientele visits your website by incorporating specific keywords like promotional products Made in USA or eco-friendly promotional products.

Maintaining keyword density is important too. Dont flood your content with keywords as that may impact the quality of your content. Your keywords may bring your potential clients to you but badly-written, uninformative or irrelevant content will shoo them away.

You dont need to be a techie to do this

Websites like Google Adwords, KeywordDiscovery.com, wordtracker.com etc. can help you research relevant keywords and also show you the number of hits they generate locally and globally. Most of these are free resources and hence perfect for small business owners who have a tight budget.

Use keywords in the Header and Titles

Try to place your keywords in the heading. Keywords displayed prominently in the topmost space of your website will be picked up instantly by search engines as they hunt for relevant pages.

HTML

Flash may bring in the flashy element and PDF may ooze professional charm

But whom would you show all of these to cos the search engines wont find you!

Code your content in HTML as most search engines cant find the text on websites that are Flash enabled or have PDF documents.

Small business ideas are about smartness rather than style. Befriend search engines using simple SEO techniques and instantly achieve brand identity.

Image: svilen001

SEO keywords, promotional products, small business, small business owners

How to Leverage Local Search to Get Traffic

Local SEO is a way to get your website well ranked in the search engines for local listings. This article will be focusing on some effective ways to use local SEO to get your website a higher search engine ranking.

As a local SEO marketer you will need to figure out how to control your targeted information on the internet. This is a big part of local SEO because if you are able to obtain other websites’ information then you have an edge. There are lots of aggregation services that are targeted for local listings and they scour the internet to find reviews, images and any information that is available on your company. You can submit your business information to services like infoUSA and Localeze. Of course, you will want to practice caution on some things. Your local listings run the risk of incorrect information being located on other websites.

If this happens to you, you are going to need to work hard to get the original source of the bad information to correct things. This can take some time so you can’t do anything but wait for the fix to get to the local sites.

When you’re targeting local sites listing services such as Yahoo! Local, Bing Local and Google Places, you should first start off by logging into them and claiming your profile. These sites all ask you if you want to claim your profile, and to do this involves a simple verification process that has a few simple steps such as a phone call to verify your information. This is a relatively fast and easy process that gives you an advantage over the many other businesses who neglected to do it. People who search are impressed with pictures, and it makes them assume someone is more authentic, so it’s a good idea to upload pictures to your profile on these local site listings.

It isn’t hard to upload some pictures from your site, camera or desktop, and it can benefit you quite a bit. You don’t have to use gallery quality photos (unless your business is photography), but they will be reflecting on your business, so they should have some quality.

Aim at diversifying your anchor text. Every SEO marketer understands that having long tail keywords is valuable and having them in place can help you better rank your business in the search engines; when you use local SEO that’s exactly what you are trying to do. This will give you the opportunity to work with the different anchor texts and that means that you should try to have a large variety of diversified anchor text to expand your reach. For example let’s say you sell chocolate in New York: don’t just concentrate on “New York Chocolate Store”. Try to create incoming links that use other types of the same phrase like “Chocolate Store in New York” or “Chocolate Stores in Manhattan, New York.” No matter what, always remember that search engines give a lot of weight to anchor texts so you need to implement as many variations as you can so that you will be able to increase your rankings.

These are a few effective SEO practices that can help you rank well in the local search engine listings for more traffic and business.

SEO business, local listings, local seo, small business

Of course, there’s no guarantee your videos will go viral like Blendtec’s ‘Will it Blend?’ series or the Old Spice guy ads — or even Blendtec’s spoof of the Old Spice ads. But aside from creating great videos, there are steps you can take to help make sure your small business marketing videos are easily discovered.

10 Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips
1. Include a call to action at the end of each video.

What do you want your audience to do after watching the video? Take advantage of your product or service promotion? Visit your website? Call your toll-free number? Whatever it is, don’t forget to suggest a next step to your audience.

2. Shoot brief, high-definition, widescreen videos.

YouTube has evolved from the slightly grainy videos of yesterday. To put your best face forward, post high-definition videos in widescreen format. YouTube has a page explaining the best formatting options for video uploads. In a nutshell, here are some formatting recommendations to follow:

HD quality video with 16:9 aspect ratio

MP4 video file format with .H264 compression

MP3 or AAC audio compression

30 frames per second

Also, keep videos to 2 minutes or less in length. Viewership tends to drop off in videos longer than that, unless they’re extremely compelling.

3. Find potential keywords for videos by typing them into YouTube’s search box.

As with Google’s keyword suggest tool, as soon as you begin typing a query in YouTube’s search box, YouTube (which Google owns) offers suggestions. Type “silly pet,” for instance, and YouTube will complete your query with suggestions such as “silly pets,” “silly pet tricks,” and “silly pet videos.”

YouTube’s suggestions give you an idea of which terms people use more frequently in video searches at the site. Though identifying popular keywords is important, keep in mind that there may be a lot more competition for these terms, too.

4. Perform a search using your intended keyword phrases on YouTube.

Once you have some keyword ideas, use them in searches on YouTube. This will give you an idea of what the competition is like for those terms. You can customize your search results to sort by relevance, upload date, view count and rating. Limit your searches to specific categories (such as People & Blogs).

5. Place your most important keyword phrase in your title, description and tags.

As with any SEO effort, make sure your target keyword phrase is included at the beginning of your video’s title, in the description, and in the tags. Use the entire allowed space for your description, too, and make it as compelling as possible. The goal is to get people to decide to view your video from among all the other choices in the search results.

Keep your video titles within 65 characters, if possible (including spaces and punctuation). Titles longer than that get clipped in search results.

While your YouTube video description can be up to about 5,000 characters, only the first 140 characters will be displayed in YouTube search results. Make sure to put your keyword phrase within the first 140 characters, to reinforce the phrase and encourage click-throughs. And try to fill the entire 5,000 character description with good, keyword-rich details (without resorting to keyword stuffing).

6. Check the analytics of videos similar to yours.

SEO search results, small business, video, YouTube