Search Engine Optimization is dead. Or is it really?

How many times have we heard the complaint that somebody owned a fantastic website, did excellent onsite optimization, built up hundreds to thousands of relevant back links but had nothing to show for his results? He was simply not ranking anywhere on the face of any of the search engines for his targeted keywords.

Well, truth be told, this problem is not uncommon. Even I run into the same situation every now and then! In my years of running SEO campaigns for my clients, I’ve experienced this several times but the good news is – it is never a permanent situation.

So if you ever run into this situation don’t start freaking out. Here is a helpful checklist that can help you keep your sanity and persevere on your SEO path.

1. Are you being impatient? Are you expecting results within a week or even days? If you have been buying into the hype that SEO is something that can happen overnight, get re-educated. The only way you can get ranked really fast on search engines is through paying for it, or through implementing black hat SEO methods which will get you ranked and delisted so fast you won’t even know what happened. Pure white hat SEO takes time. Give it at least 2 weeks and beyond to see results.

2. Are your chosen keywords too generic? If the keywords you picked are very generic, expect to struggle to even get listed. Examples of generic keywords are ‘ice cream’, ‘hard drives’ and ‘computers’. The competition for these keywords is not only fiercely competitive, but so generic that the search engines have practically tens of millions of web sites to give attention to. You will have work extremely hard to even get listed for these keywords, then ten times harder to climb your way to the top. In the first place, you may want to consider selecting less generic keywords. For example, ‘ice cream in New York’, ‘reliable hard drives’ and ‘good computer reviews’.

3. Are your chosen keywords highly competitive? If the keywords you have chosen have a lot of competition, getting ranked will take more time than usual. Be patient and keep persevering.

4. If you are using article marketing as part of your SEO efforts, are you distributing too much duplicate content? There are debates whether having duplicate content will damage your website’s search engine reputation and cause them not to be ranked or even – gasp – delisted. Well, I believe that everything needs to be balanced and I think that – if you have too much duplicate content out there, it is likely to be part or all of the cause why your website is not ranking. You can remedy the situation by keeping the content on your website unique always and distributing re-written articles. Try to generate different versions of one article so that you can leverage on that single article.

5. If you are building up back links through blog commenting, are you always submitting your keywords to the same websites? Most search engines work on the basis that they will rank a website according to the number of unique back links linking back to the website. Each link from a unique domain counts as a vote. If you are indeed using blog commenting as a SEO strategy, you should build up a large list of friendly blogs to submit your keywords to so that you have more unique back links. If you have been commenting on a small pool of blogs repeatedly, it is not going to help your ranking much if your chosen keywords are competitive.

6. Are you building your links too fast? Have you been distributing articles and submitting blog comments at the speed of light? Again, there are debates about whether building links too fast will damage your reputation with the search engine spiders. But I think it will be prudent and rational to practice patience and build your SEO links with moderation. I tend to agree that moving too fast will be more damaging than helpful in many cases through my experience.

Aldric Chang is a successful serial creative entrepreneur and internet marketing expert who shares seo tips and information on how to make money online on his blog.

One great thing about listing your business in Google Local Search is that because it’s free, there’s no way to waste money. But it’s real easy to waste your time on it. As a business owner, you’d probably agree anything that doesn’t help grow your business is a waste of time. Sadly, most business owners get poor or no results from their Local Search listings because they don’t know what they’re doing.

In my experience, business owners fall prey to these four bad myths:

Bad Myth 1: You need a great location to rank highly. You don’t. Some Web weenies claim that whichever business is closest to the geographical center of town holds a trump card over all competitors. Sure, Google gives you a minor boost if you have a central location, but it’s only one factor out of many others. I’ve seen businesses from the next town over rank #1 for local searches in this town. It all comes down to this: if you have a great location, don’t get fat and happy. If you don’t have the best location, don’t despair; there are specific ways you can get found as THE local guy.

Bad Myth 2: You have to name your local listing after whatever your front sign says. Nothing says you need to use your official business name in your listing name, which is that blue link that gets displayed next to the local map. All that matters is whether that blue link of yours contains specific benefits to the customer, includes the name of your city or area, and (most of all) is something that people will actually type into Google Local Search. By the way, if your listing focuses on your name (“John A. Doe, DDS”), change it. Customers don’t care about your name or your official business name; they just want to know you’ll fix their problems.

Bad Myth 3: You can’t position yourself in the market your real customers are in. If you located in a little town or suburb that’s not too far from a larger city, there’s no rule that says you can’t position yourself as serving the larger market. Sure, you can’t say you’re in a metropolitan area you aren’t in (not that it would help you anyway). But if most of your customers are in a more populated area, you may want to get found there. On the other hand, if you’re in an area that has especially stiff competition, but your customers are in a more specific area, you’ll want to target just them. That’s where a tool called Google Neighborhood Search comes in, which lets you get found in a very specific neighborhood (in addition to being visible in your wider area).

Bad Myth 4: That Google Local Search listings are just listings, in that you just put one out there and let the customers roll in. Too many business owners are stuck in the passive phone-book mindset “All I have to do is write my little 2×4 ad square and I’ll get customers calling me up.” True, some businesses owners can pick up a few area customers by just slapping a local listing up there. But they get those customers despite their own laziness. And who knows: maybe they’re fine with having “enough” customers as opposed to more business than they can handle. The bottom line is if you want more than just a trickle of local customers who find you through Google, there are certain solutions you have to use with your local listing, which can put you way above the competition. Doing things with your local listing versus just letting it sit there is what separates the men from the boys.

For more on how to avoid “Bad Myth 2″ plus other info on how you can get visible in your local market, go to http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com There, you’ll get 3 no-cost solutions you can use today to get more local visibility than you’re getting now.

Why does local search engine optimization differ from the normal method of SEO? Hmmm, the general efforts of search engine optimization is the process of optimizing a website structure, title tags, description meta tags, keyword tags and other factors like H1, H2, H3 Tags and so on in order to improve ones overall ranking in the search results on Google, Yahoo and Bing. Normal SEO results in higher rankings for searches that appear throughout the nation but a local barber shop located in Ft. Lauderdale, Fl does not need to rank on the first page, they only need to rank on the first page for local results for consumers who live within a 5-10 mile radius of the actual business location.

If you are a local business or company then this is the best method of optimization for your company or business and would benefit from this form of optimization techniques. Local SEO takes advantage of having information on your website containing information letting the robots and spiders know your locality so that the search engines can return the best matches for local results in a particular area. There are many factors in the local search engine optimization that play you must take into effect in order to rank higher in local results and you would need to attend plenty of SEO seminars to learn all of the best techniques to outrank your local competition in your area.

The basic rules still apply for local optimization when applied to a business website like keyword research, title tags, meta description tags and a few other things that can make a small to large difference in your local search results. Ad your business to a few directories to start your local efforts and then hire a company that will make the final adjustments to shoot your local marketing results ahead of the pack and competition in your local areas.

The major search engines change the algorithm for displaying results so that they can display the most relevant results in local results so that consumers find what they are looking for quicker instead of landing on a website who is located no where near the area the consumer actually lives. This gives the local business a chance to compete with the larger companies who always show up for all of the major keywords and phrases that we all thrive to appear for in natural results.

Most internet marketing companies generally perform normal SEO services, but if you are trying to improve your rankings for local search results then it would be best to hire a internet marketing company who specializes in local search engine optimization. Get started today.

Local SEO Techniques for websites and businesses to rank higher on Google, Yahoo and Bing and all the major search engines.

Local Search Engine Optimization

For most local businesses, the world of marketing has changed over the past few years. In the past, you could depend on a combination of Yellow Pages ads, newspaper ads, circulars, and direct mail to deliver a fairly reliable stream of new and return customers to your door. But that’s just not the case anymore!

Your customers are looking for you…can they find you? If you don’t have an internet presence and maximize your local search results, the answer to that is no…they aren’t finding you! Here’s why.

The Yellow Pages are ineffective

We’re a country of people on the move. Everyone has cell phones now. And, depending on who you listen to, about 7 – 16% of homes no longer have a regular phone in their home…they rely solely on their cell phone.

So how often do you think people with no home phone look in a phone book? Do they even have a phone book?

Mobile internet access is nearly universal

I was reading the February 2010 Popular Science magazine and found an article about a new mini-laptop that’s built around a mobile phone chipset. It’s got the computing power of a netbook (or more, actually), but can last forever on a battery charge and can access the internet anywhere through its cellular service.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see where we’re headed…in the not-very-distant future, your customers will be able to Google information from anywhere and instantly get their phone/computer to give them GPS directions straight to your store…or your competitor’s if you’re not there!

Newspapers are dead

To make matters worse for local business owners trying to reach their customers, the old standby…the local newspaper has been taking a beating over the last 10 or 15 years.

So if you’ve been advertising in your local paper, you’ve undoubtedly seen increasing advertising rates and decreasing response rates. And it’s only going to get worse. Our mobile society has, by and large, stopped taking the time to read the papers.

U.S. newspaper circulation has hit its lowest level in seven decades, as papers across the country lost 10.6 percent of their paying readers from April through September, compared with a year earlier. - October 27, 2009, Washington Post

Personally, I still have a Sunday-only subscription to my local news because my wife clips and uses enough coupons in a couple weeks to pay for a couple months of the subscription! But our family’s not “normal” in that regard anymore!

Local Search to the Rescue

Let’s face it. Unless you have a ton of time and/or money, getting to the top of the search rankings is tough. And buying ads on Google, Bing, or Yahoo! is nearly useless for local businesses.

To do well in traditional search, you have to know Search Engine Optimization (SEO) well or pay someone to optimize your web site. Then you have to monitor it to make sure you stay at or near the top.

That takes even more time and money. Which you don’t have…but local search changes that!

Little known fact: There are tons of businesses that show up in local search that don’t even have a web site!

That’s right! No web site and yet they show up before all the regular search results! That should give you a pretty good idea the power local search has and how spending some time crafting your presence can pay off big time.

Of course, you still have to convert the visitors once they come to your web site or call your store, but at least you’ve got a chance now…and it’s simple. It takes some time, but nothing like traditional SEO. And you don’t have to pay for it either! The vast majority of the things you can do to get yourself at the top don’t cost a dime.

Best of all, you can almost guarantee your competitors aren’t doing this so you’ll have practically no competition in Google or Bing or Yahoo! Of course, that depends on the size of the city you live in and how competitive your market is, but the vast majority of small business owners will be behind you instead of in front of you for once!

Marketing a small, offline business on the internet is different than marketing a purely online business. And you don’t have time to modify the methods all the online marketing “gurus” teach to fit your business.

Win Your Local Market provides online marketing tips focused on small, local, primarily offline businesses. Our exclusive 5 Step Plan to Win Your Local Market shows you how to create the perfect online marketing plan to sustain and grow your small business…and how to do it without sinking much time or money into it! Make sure to grab your FREE Local Search for Small Business guide at the link above!

Most small business owners struggle with the thought of online marketing. For many it is something they are still unfamiliar with yet they seem to envy those who have mastered local search engine marketing. Below are six strategies that every business owner should consider, and in fact a few of them won’t cost anything but time.

1. Creating Local Business Profiles. Google, Yahoo, and Bing (the 3 primary search engines) offer businesses the opportunity to create free profiles for their business which can help them to show up in local searches. One key to success here is building a complete profile and not leaving any blank fields.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). To rank well locally, you need to include your city and state along with your primary keywords in both your titles and copy. Also, having your physical address on the contact page is a big plus. Second to this, you need to acquire links to your site from other sites such as directories and related websites. Using this combination of on page optimization and link building will pay off over time as you develop strong local search engine rankings.

3. Pay Per Click (PPC) Search Marketing. Through PPC, you can target local website visitors immediately. The key here is using the geo-targeting feature so you don’t get visits from other areas where people are not likely to do business with you (unless you can take orders online as well).

4. Submitting to Local City Guides. There are dozens of local city guides and most of them allow you to submit your business information for free. These include sites such as Merchant Circle, CitySquares, and Yelp for starters. There are also search engine marketing companies that can help you get submitted to these sites for a small fee as they use technology to do bulk submissions to these local city guides.

5. Engaging in Mobile Search Marketing. There are three ways to leverage mobile search. The first is to have a mobile version of your website, the second is to get listed in mobile search directories, and the third is by leveraging text message marketing which presently has a response rate much higher than email marketing.

6. Social Media Marketing. Many small business owners have done well by blogging about local community information in conjunction with their business. Also, using sites such as Facebook and Twitter can be effective, but only if you have the manpower to keep up and actually have conversations with your followers.

I hope this helps you on your quest for local customers.

Anthony Kirlew is an Online Marketing Consultant and a life long entrepreneur. He is the founder of The a.k.a. Internet Marketing, a full service Internet marketing consulting firm serving small to mid-sized businesses as well as Fortune 500 companies. Mr. Kirlew is also the author of The Internet Marketing Guide for Small Business.

You might think a thank you page is just that: it thanks the customer for the purchase. It is but it is also more than that.

1 It isn’t just another page. In fact, every page in your sales system should be doing a job of work to move towards or actually gain more profit. Your Thank You page is key in this process.

Once the customer has paid, most payment gates, such as PayPal(TM) let you send the customer to any page you want. You should send them to your Thank You page.

2 Thank the customer. Make it absolutely clear that payment has gone through and thank them for it. Some people will worry about what is happening, so put their mind at rest by stating the obvious to yourself but maybe not to them.

3 Provide the download link. You can then do one of three things. You can give the download link on that page. They click it at get to download the product there and then. Or you can tell them they’ll receive the link in an email immediately, and tell them to check their email. Or you can do both.

If you have the link on the page, it’s best to back that up with the email link. You don’t want irate customers contacting you saying they haven’t had their product, when, in fact, they haven’t checked their email. You want everything totally automated.

4 Sell them another product. Since they have their card out, having just purchased from you, offer them a cross-sell of a complementary product. You will have to sell this and emphasise the benefits to the customer, especially in relation to his first purchase.

5 URL care. Take care with what web address you use for your Thank You/download page. If it’s too obvious then your product could be stolen. Try to have a system of coding and changing of the address.

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Local listings SEO are a great way to help you make money locally. Even though people from all over the world can shop online you can also use it targeted to your own location. Many consumers love to use a search engine for what they want. Yet when they are looking for a local business they will add to their keywords information about that town by name.

You don’t need to come up with an entirely new campaign for local listings SEO. Instead, you need to be able to change some things so that common local terms that your consumers will be entering can be there. You want the flow of the words to be natural though so that it doesn’t appear you stuffed the information to be able to benefit from search engine rankings.

The reason why this works so effectively is that many consumers would love to shop locally first. If they can get the same value for the same pricing then they want to do what they can to help their local businesses thrive. Keep that in mind when you establish prices too. If your product costs more than what others out there offer that is very similar you can be passed over.

Consumers want to save money whenever possible, especially with the shape of today’s economy. Give them plenty of reasons to buy from you locally and then provide them with an amazing product. They will continue to buy from you and the will tell everyone they know to buy from you as well.

It is important that you have testing measures in place. This will allow you to determine how the local listings SEO is working out for you. Keep in mind that with SEO efforts there is always more you can do. It will continue to be a work in progress all the time and not something you can completely finish up and move on from.

You can also pair up with other local businesses by having their links on your own website. In turn, they can place links to your site on theirs. This is a great way for consumers to find out more about what is locally offered for them to consider. Try to work with those companies that cater to a similar type of target market as you do.

This is because trends in your consumer market will continue to change and to grow in new directions. If you are well prepared though and continue to do what you can in this movement you won’t get left behind. Your business will gain recognition both on a local level and in the global market.

The result of this is that your business will generate a great reputation. You will be on the top pages of search results with all of the major search engines. You can also be a contributor in many areas to your own community. Hopefully the more profit you earn the more money you will be willing to use towards various projects locally.

Information on Local SEO was found on this SEO Services website.

Billions of people use the Internet daily for various reasons. Some use it for fun, others for business and many other reasons. If you have a website or blog, there are many ways you can make it more popular so that you can have many people accessing it. Some of the most effective ways of making sure it is popular is to submit your work to directories. There are numerous well established directories which can help your work to get more traffic and increase its viewership. Look for the ones which have worked for people before so that you can be guaranteed of success. You can also use business directories to list your business as these helps it to get many back links which is a plus for you. You can use Google to search for the business directories or find out from a person who is using one to tell you one that is most efficient.

To promote your blog one can also use the classified. These are usually for free and many people use them so if you post your work there it is likely to be seen by many people. They work well for service related websites but are also good for other content. Other than this you can also use forums on the net where you can contribute to various issues that are up for discussion and then you can post your link on several forums so that you can redirect traffic to your work. Being active in the discussions will help increase your chances of being noticed and people will want to know more about your work by visiting your links.

Social networking sites are another way you can use to advertise your website. This allows a person to have access to many friends and groups which can be an easy way to contact them and tell them more about your work. Some of the most famous sites you can use are Facebook and MySpace. You can use them to your advantage by posting your work on the sites classified and forums which will help you increase traffic. Other than this you can also use social bookmarking sites to increase popularity. All you have to do is create unique and interesting content that will draw people to it and submit it.

One can also use search engines to market their work. These work well if you want to sell products or services to a specific target group. With this you have to make sure that you are ranked as the top so that people can easily access it. One can also engage in word where you tell as many people as you can about your work. You can tell the people who you have told to spread the word so that it reaches a wider market. You can also use business cards and distribute them to as many people as you can. There are other forms of advertisements you can use such as banner and text link where you create banners and texts which will convince people to visit your site.

There are many ways in which one can use to promote their blog. All you have to do is find the most appropriate form of advertising that will work for you.