Reach out to your local Customers with Local Search Optimization

The latest trend to hit the tech world of connectivity and networking is local search engine optimization. With web technologies for targeting exact geographical locations advancing at a blazing pace, everyone who needs to reach out to its local target audience is jumping on to the bandwagon of local search.

It has now become vital for everyone, from companies large and small to individual entrepreneurs and startups to promote their business in a way that their local audience can find them.

Gone are the days when people used to sift through the pages of the bulky Yellow Pages to located a local business. In today's hi-tech world, people find it much more convenient to browse the Internet-based yellow pages such as yelp, citysearch, infousa, superpages and many more such directory websites.

Especially for businesses that are typically targeting a local audience, the options for local search optimization have a been a like a boon. For instance, medical clinics and hospitals, executive coaching services, local departmental stores, restaurants, schools and training institutes, gymnasiums and beauty spas, garment shops and showrooms and other such businesses attract their maximum audience from the nearby locations.

Besides, people still think twice before buying online. Usually customers like to search for product offerings online but prefer to buy off the shelf at your business location. Even if they don't pay a visit to your business location at least they can have peace of mind that they can whenever they want to. Therefore a large number of companies now make their searches for their products and services location specific.

But what exactly is local search optimization and how can it benefit you?
We have listed a few direct benefits of local search that is helping scores of businesses reach out to their local audiences.

Benefit #1: Higher Page Rankings

Local search optimization is an Internet marketing tool which is used to attract local customers. This type of SEO strategy makes the search more specific and enables your site to achieve higher page ranking in the local searches, thereby diverting the local traffic to your site.

Even search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing are presenting users various options to enhance their search experience. For instance, if you type the keyword 'eye doctor' in search bar, you will find an option at the top of the page asking you to look for location specific 'eye doctor'. In fact the major benefit of local search optimization is that the local search results appear with a map and even rank higher than the top website on the organic search engine result.

Benefit #2: Easy update of local listings

Second major benefit of local search optimization is that you can always update your local listing on the Internet Yellow Pages any time you want. For instance, if you are offering some discounts on your products for a week or unveiling a new range of products or maybe organizing an event to promote your products/services. For any such information that has local news value, you can update your local listing.

Benefit #3: Google map

As an entrepreneur you may be running a small business and need to reach out to the local market. Local Search Engine Optimization enables you to augment your online presence among the local customers with the help of a Google map. By using the Google map, web users can easily locate your office location, office address, street name and other important information.

In order to ensure the success of local search optimization campaign, you need to increase the visibility of your site on the World Wide Web. For this you must approach a reliable Internet marketing services provider which will carry out a professional campaign to generate results.

In the coming years, local search optimization will increase as more and more people will access the net from mobile or conduct location specific search on the net. Therefore it is all the more important to be present on local search results pages and connect with the searchers in your area. In the next blog, we will be discussing how to effectively conduct the local search optimization campaign.

Video Marketing...Powerful Way To Promote Business

A picture speaks a thousand words. Imagine what a video can do. With online videos becoming a widely popular medium of content and information distribution, an increasing number of companies are now using videos for marketing and promoting their businesses, products and services.

Videos grab the attention of your target audience more quickly as they leverage both audio and visual for conveying your message. However making a marketing video is not a child's play. You can find innumerable videos on YouTube, search engines and other video directories. Question is how do you stand out from the crowd?
Here are the tips which can make your marketing video a cut above the rest.

Stick to your topic

Before making your video, find out what is it that you want your video to convey about your product or services. Be crystal clear and stick to your topic. You have a few minutes to convey your message to your audience, so you can't afford to stray from your topic. Don’t confuse visitors with lots of offers and services. Rather focus on one single benefit. The best way to make you video crisp and crystal clear is by writing a tight script and sticking to it.

Keep it short

The shorter the length of the video, the better. For maximum results keep your video up to maximum of 5 minutes long. It doesn't matter whether you are uploading a video on YouTube, your blog or your web site, the length of the video must not exceed 5 minutes. And in case your message can't be conveyed in 5 minutes time, try and break the video into various series where each part/episode can be 4 to 5 minutes long.

Incorporate relevant keywords

Apart from the content, search engines index videos too. Therefore do a thorough research and make a shortlist of the most relevant keywords. And incorporate them in the meta tags, descriptions and headings. Best is to target long tail keywords which will bring you maximum results.
Long tail keywords are more specific and have less competition. For instance, a video titled 'Spanish translations' will not take you to the top search engine ranking. On the other hand, the same video titled 'best English to Spanish translations' will have a better chance of appearing on Top 10 search engine ranking.

Video Closed Captioning

Earlier the only content we could optimize were the titles, descriptions and meta tags in a video. But all that has changed with YouTube closed captioning. YouTube is now so much more SEO friendly. According to the YouTube closed captioning, all the text spoken in the video can be read via the transcript. When you upload a video on YouTube, you can also submit a text file of the transcript which will enable the Google to index the video.

Upload videos on website and blog

In order to generate maximum leads, post a video on your website. For instance, if you have a hotel website, you can upload a captivating video on your reservations or accommodations page which will take your visitors on a tour of your hotel. Similarly uploading an accompanying video on your blog post can grab attention.

Last but not the least, encourage your visitors to leave comments on your video. Remember, the video is basically a social medium and you would like it to reach out to its widest possible target audience. Hence the more comments it attracts, the better. Increase your video exposure as much as possible by uploading on YouTube and many other popular video directories such as Metacafe, Dailymotion, and more. After uploading your video, make sure to write some forum posts or blog that provide links to your video. You can also post a link to your video on Twitter as well. This will facilitate in the viral process.

However make sure to approach only a professional Internet marketing solution provider for your video promotion. Not all companies have the efficiency or capabilities to successfully use the video marketing tool. Therefore do your research and approach a reliable search engine marketing solution provider which has a talented team of web marketers who can search the most relevant keywords for your video and optimize your video for maximum results.

Basics of social Bookmarking

Now Social media networking is not the only source from where you can get lots of traffic and back links. Presently, we also have social bookmarking which provides some good long term benefits for the site for which you are running an online promotion campaign. And it’s even easy to use it as you just need to be a regular member of those social bookmarking sites, and you need to have lots of friends and fans included in your profile. If you want to bookmark your site once and not keep track of your postings, it will not be that effective. It is not that you will not get traffic but the traffic inflow will be measely.

Social bookmarking also helps the online users to browse and share useful and interesting websites with their friends and contacts. Through social bookmarking it becomes easy for the user to access any desired webpage with just a simple login step. Social Bookmarking also helps in creating your personalized tagging by which one can easily identify the reputation of a web site and at the same time compare it with the other competitor sites.

You can save money and plenty of time through these social bookmarking sites as they always provides a platform to stay connected with your friends, family and people with whom you share the same type of interest. Some of the major sites for social bookmarking are:

1. Digg.com
2. Propeller.com
3. Stumble Upon
4. Reddit.com
5. Del.icio.us
6. Newsvine.com
7. Fark.com
8. Blinklist.com
9. Clipmarks.com
10. Shoutwire.com

If you work smartly with these sites you may expect a large traffic flow to your site which ultimately helps in the right exposure of the website.

Know Thy Customer When Researching Keywords-Part 2

In my last blog post, I discussed about how to search for the right keywords before starting an SEO campaign. Proper keywords research lays the foundation for any fruitful SEO campaign. In this post, I am going to discuss some more steps which are proven ways of searching for the right keywords.

Page explicit Keyword Research

It is a common practice for many so-called SEO experts to resort to keyword stuffing to optimize web sites, in a bid to make the web site climb up the search engine rankings. Moreover, the same meta tags are used on all the web pages of a web site, perhaps from either lack of correct knowledge about SEO techniques or poor content writing abilities.

Whatever the reason may be, keyword stuffing or repeating meta tags in not an effective technique. In fact, the search engines are now so scrupulous about picking the right kind of content that such shortcuts can actually prove to be counter productive. This is something that Search Engine Marketing Services providing companies should avoid at any cost.

Thus, it is important that keyword research should be done in a planned and focused manner and each page of the website should be optimized for 2-4 keywords. This is a good way of pushing the web site up the rankings on major search engines.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is an essential element in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for better keyword rankings in search results.

LSI is used by leading search engine Google as the scanner to look for good quality content that are informative and original. LSI also helps in controlling spam and has popularized the idea of using both primary and secondary keywords while writing content.

LSI is not at all new. Those who are doing keyword researches are using synonyms and long tail keywords. The long tail, less generic terms bring more traffic towards a site than the main keyword phrases. The bottom line is that Latent Semantic Indexing is currently a MUST in keyword research and SEO.

Keep it relevant

One must be clear while doing keyword research to find out keywords that are related to the theme of the site. Keywords can help a page rank well in search engines, but if the content is not informative or appealing enough to users or the keywords have been stuffed in only for optimizing the page, they will leave the site in seconds, and will probably never revisit the site.

Research, Research, Research

Never stop researching. Research is the ultimate MANTRA for selecting the right and most appropriate keywords. Do some indepth competitor analysis, check out social networking sites, browse forums, and blogs related to your site and make notes of the keywords that your competitors are using.

Once you are ready with your list of keywords then you can take help from different keyword research tools of your choice in order to remove irrelevant keywords and add better and more specific keywords to your keywords list.

Keep these points in mind and you will find your SEO campaign delivering outstanding results.

Know Thy Customer When Researching Keywords

An important constituent for any SEO campaign is the right keywords. But many a time people who consider themselves as SEO experts also make mistakes while choosing the keywords, as they consider the whole exercise just a matter of jumbling up few randomly chosen words or phrases relevant to the website themes.

If you want your web site or web page to show up in relevant searches, then you need to follow a proper process for keywords research. Here is a list of the few essential steps which you need to take while searching keywords for your SEO campaign:

1) Dig into your website: Before going for keyword research understand the product or services your website is providing. Dig into your site and check each and every page it's important that you take your time moving from page to page looking for anything that may be useful as a core term.

Few important areas where special attention is needed while searching for keywords:

• Product description
• Content
• Title tag
• Meta keyword tags
• Meta description tags

All these will help you in understanding what the basic theme is and what the basic key factors of the website are.

2) Brainstorm:

Brainstorming is also important and ranked on second because first of all we have to understand what our own site is all about then our next step will be to understand what the visitor is seeking in the site. Begin by asking yourself questions like ‘what questions are my visitors asking?’ or ‘what are my visitors trying to accomplish?’

Initially, keyword search must include the entire list that revolves around the subject. Brainstorm all words you think a customer would like to find in the search engines when trying for your service. Include single words, phrases and long tail keywords, those used during buying and research process. Moreover, you can get help by brainstorming ideas, from friends, colleagues or past customers.

In our next post we will talk about researching and finding what is important and where we have to pay more attention.