This post appeared yesterday on Merchant Circle as part of their “Guest Blogger” series but Tad Chef insisted I put it up on my site so I could get a link from him and who am I to argue with that? So without further ado…
SEO, the art and science of ranking well in search engines, is one of those things that is easy to learn but hard to master, so let’s focus on the easy part. You’ve got a website and it’s not ranking in Google so well for whatever search term you are coveting. So what do you do?
Here are some (hopefully) simple things you can do, or even better tell someone else to do, to get your SEO strategy in gear:
1. Figure Out Your Target Audience
Until you know who you are targeting there is not much point in doing SEO. What words are your potential customers searching with when you want to be found? What are different modes are they in when they are searching? Are they ready to buy? Are they just doing research? Are they big spenders or are they cheapskates?
In general pick terms that match up with your service, that you think will convert well (conversion is a another five minute discussion altogether btw) and that have good search volume. To get an idea of search volume use Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool which can be found here:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Once you come up with your target keyword list…
2. Update Your Page Titles
The page title or “title tag” is perhaps the most important element of SEO. These are the words that appear at the top of your web browser when you are on a page. They are also the words that show up in the blue links in Google.
Put the search terms you are targeting in your page titles. In general keep the titles as brief as possible while at the same time making them appealing to searchers. No easy trick. Put the most important keywords at the beginning of the title. Don’t worry about getting this perfect the first time as these are very easy to change and Google usually reacts to these changes quickly. And if your website developer tells you these are really hard or expensive to change, get a new website developer.
3. Make Each Page Title Unique
It is also important that all of the pages on your site have unique page titles. A quick way to see if you have more than one page with the same title is to do the following search in Google:
site:yoursite.com intitle”the words in the title”
The results of this search will show all of the pages in Google that have these words in the title. Once you identify these problem pages you can update the titles to make them unique.
And make sure you add your city name to the titles as a lot of people search for your service in your city.
It also couldn’t hurt if you added some text to the actual page that uses the keywords you are targeting as well, in both the body of the text and the
h1 tag, which is typically the headline of the page. If you don’t have a page that targets the keywords you are using, add a new page that does.
You also should check the meta descriptions tags of each page to make sure those are unique as well.
4. Add a Few Internal Links
The number of links a page gets from its own site and which pages link to it matters. The home page is the most important on the site and so the pages that are linked to from the home page are also important. Figure out which pages you want to rank the most (and don’t say all of them) and add links from other pages to these pages. Make sure you use relevant keywords in the text of those links. For example if you want to rank the page for “pizza” use the word “pizza” in the text of the links that go to that page. Try not to use the exact same phrases in each link to make it look more “natural”. For example in some of the links use “best pizza” or “man that’s a helluva a pizza”.
5. Add Your Address to Every Page
Ideally every page should have your address and phone number. This is helpful for users but it also reinforces your location to the search engines. If your business has multiple locations then you may want to create a separate page for each location or at least a single page that lists all locations. Make sure you link to these pages from as many pages as possible on the site. It would probably be a good idea to list as many location names as possible on the home page too.
6. Claim Your Profile on Merchant Circle, Google Local Business Center, Yahoo Local, etc.
There are a huge number of yellow pages-like sites that allow you to update your business information for free. These sites get a lot of traffic and tend to rank well. At the least you should go to each one, claim your profile and make sure they are linking to your site. You may be surprised at how much business you can get from these free listings. Here’s of sites that offer a free yellow pages listing:
7. Make a Video
And I am not talking about a multimillion dollar production. Ask your kid to point the camera at you and start talking. Explain your service and try to be charming. Mention your website a lot. Then upload it to YouTube and every other free video site and title the video with your top keywords (e.g. “Best Pizza in Pleasanton”). Make sure your website is linked to from your profile. Then link to these video pages from your site with the keywords in the link text. You will be amazed at how easy it is for these pages to rank for your search terms.
If you want to do something more professional, there are a number of services that can help you including www.spotzer.com, www.mixpo.com, www.spotmixer.com , and www.turnhere.com .
8. Add a Blog To Your Site
A blog is just a simple way to add pages to your website. A good, or even bad, web developer should be able to set up a simple blog for you in a few minutes. If you don’t want it super customized it shouldn’t cost that much. Once it’s up start writing. I am not talking novels or even journalism. I am talking keywords. If you want to rank for “Pizza in Pleasanton” write a blog post called “Pizza in Pleasanton: What’s Cooking Tonight At Joe’s Pizza”. Go to http://blogsearch.google.com/ping and add your blog’s URL to Google’s blogsearch engine. Now everytime you write something on the blog it will instantly be added to Google, and each of those posts has a chance of ranking for the term you are targeting.
9. Make Sure You Don’t Have Any Technical Issues
There are a number of technical issues that could be preventing your site from ranking. An easy way to identify them is to sign up your site to Google Webmaster Tools at www.google.com/webmasters/start. By copying a short line of code to your site you can get an idea of some of the common problems that Google is having with it. Google provides you with some detail about the problem. There is not much you yourself can likely do about these problems, but you can at least show them to your website developer or a SEO guy and ask him/her to figure it out.
10. Get Links
Now none of this stuff will work very well if you don’t have any links to your site. The big search engines look at links from other sites as a sign of quality and trust. So you should spend the remainder of your five minutes thinking about what other sites you think you can get links from. Here are some of the obvious ones:
- Chambers of commerce/local business groups
- Local business directories/Local newspaper site
- Friends who have sites (including your kid’s blog)
- Partners/Vendors
There are hundreds of other ways to get links like writing articles for other sites, sending out press releases, adding your business info to social media sites, making a fool of yourself in public, etc.
It’s important to understand that SEO is not a one-time thing just like running a TV ad campaign is not a one-time thing. It’s a marketing tactic like any other. And as more people use the Web to find local services, SEO could become one of the more important components of your marketing plan. So get familiar with it today so you can master it tomorrow.
Ok, so maybe that took more than five minutes, but half the battle of marketing is just getting your attention right?
If you have any more questions about SEO or Pleasanton, but not about proctologists, please drop me a line at localseo @ localseoguide.com.
36 responses so far ↓
1 Jeff M Howard // May 13, 2009 at 7:35 am
Maybe add to #6 six use
http://getlisted.org/index.aspx
2 Don Campbell // May 13, 2009 at 10:49 am
Great tips, as usual Andrew.
I would also add Google Analytics so you can track keyword people are using to find your site, visit trends, etc. But then you’re over 5 minutes
Also totally agree that good SEO is an ongoing process.
Thanks for the great post!
3 Dave Oremland // May 13, 2009 at 10:52 am
All great advice….but seriously how do you optimize against apartments.com….anywhere?
4 Andrew Shotland // May 13, 2009 at 11:16 am
Dave I am a firm believer that truly local sites can beat the national directories if they focus on creating targeted content and getting targeted, local links. The “Pleasanton Apartments” page on Apartments.com is buried deep in their architecture and likely has very little pagerank flowing to it. Contrast that with a site that has these keywords on the home page and has local links pointing directly at the home page with these keywords in the anchor text.
5 30+ More Non-Google SEO “How to” Online Marketing Resources for 2009 | SEOptimise // May 13, 2009 at 11:28 am
[...] How To Do Local SEO For Your Website in Five Minutes (or So) | Local SEO Guide [...]
6 Jae Burnham // May 15, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Great list. I used the blogsearch straight away for my blogs. We’ll see what happens. Thanks for the info.
Jae
7 Will Scott // May 16, 2009 at 9:22 pm
5 minutes? You’re mad. Great list nonetheless.
Will
8 Andrew Shotland // May 17, 2009 at 8:35 pm
I guess I meant you could read it five minutes (or so)
9 bradleybradwell // May 18, 2009 at 5:04 pm
These are some great tips. You mentioned quite a few times that titles are a very important part to getting people to find your link on Google. I couldn’t agree more.
When I initially started my website I was wondering why my search engine traffic was so low. I then realized, after months of trying to figure it out, that my website name was appearing before my title. All I had to do was move the website tag to the back of my title to fix it. It was such a simple task that took forever to do.
There’s no doubt that linking is a very important part to getting your search engine rankings higher. The only thing I hate to see is reciprocal linking. Why? Because these links are usually irrelevant and have no connections(other than the link) to the other site. Moreover, Google frowns upon reciprocal links because they’re looking for relevant, informational content, and not random “dating sites”….
Getting a blog on your website is a great way to create more pages. In fact, my whole website is a blog. It allows me to do what I love most(writing), but it also gets me that little bit of extra traffic that I need.
Once again, great post
10 Website Video: The Key to Search Engine Optimization? « vidEstream: web video blog // May 20, 2009 at 12:27 am
[...] It’s an interesting topic and there is a wealth of information out there that has really been helping me figure out how to navigate this process. google logo render by mark [...]
11 30+ More Non-Google SEO “How to” Online Marketing Resources for 2009 « CPA Newtorks Talking // May 23, 2009 at 10:44 am
[...] How To Do Local SEO For Your Website in Five Minutes (or So) | Local SEO Guide [...]
12 My Favorite Recent Local SEO Posts from 2009 « Nashville SEO | Ethical SEO | Christian SEO and Social Media Agency // May 27, 2009 at 12:41 am
[...] How to Do Local SEO for Your Website in Five Minutes or So by Tad Chef on Andrew Shortland’s Local SEO blog has great tips for web video. [...]
13 Artur | Seo.Net // May 28, 2009 at 2:09 pm
“What words are your potential customers searching with when you want to be found?”
I would recommend to ask your customers for what they would search for when looking for your services. Do a small survey on your website.
The best source is the customer!
14 Carl // May 29, 2009 at 8:57 am
Hey Andrew, I have a question about web citations. How does one get those listed on their Google profile? I mean I am already on superpages with a listing, but their aren’t any citation to my Google listing. I have had this listing on Superpages for years, so it’s not new. Okay when someone does a review on insiderpages and that shows on google is that considered a website citation as well?
15 Sascha Kimmel // May 31, 2009 at 1:41 am
Great article, Andrew!
I think you should remove the spotmaker.com link because the page currently says “Welcome to the default website on 192.168.1.108.” Doesn’t look like the page is still available.
16 Andrew Shotland // May 31, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Thanks for the quality check Sascha. I meant “Spotmixer”. The link has been fixed.
17 Ace Of Adsense // Jun 1, 2009 at 4:00 am
Great Tips….Love to hear more from a pro like you
Cheers!
18 Brad // Jun 9, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Good post Andrew. I am just starting my own local seo here in chicago for small and medium sized businesses and you have some very good advice here. Keep up the good work. I do not have a web designer yet so I was curious to what you used to make this site? Wordpress? what plugin did you use with it? thanks again andrew
19 Chris Chong // Jun 10, 2009 at 12:28 pm
I am sure about one thing that one can not do SEO in 5 minutes daily time frame.Is this a marketing strategy?
20 vidEstream™ » Website Video: The Key to Search Engine Optimization? // Jun 12, 2009 at 3:19 am
[...] It’s an interesting topic and there is a wealth of information out there that has really been helping me figure out how to navigate this [...]
21 Website SEO // Jun 18, 2009 at 7:37 am
Search Engine Optimisation for Beginners. These articles cover SEO Basics that will help you get your website ready to be indexed properly by search engines.
22 Brad // Jun 24, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Does anyone have an opinion on this…
I found an seo consulting/company site where I noticed they had a resources page/links page where other companies could link to them and exchange links so to speak.
Then as I looked at their client list I noticed on many of those sites there was a common link as a footer called resources. Then I noticed their customers were basically linking to each other etc. That doesnt seem like great seo to me but what does anyone else think?
23 44 Local SEO & Search Resources for Business | Webmasters // Jun 26, 2009 at 5:41 pm
[...] How To Do Local SEO For Your Website in Five Minutes (or So) | Local SEO Guide [...]
24 Online Marketing Blog » Blog Archive » 44 Local SEO & Search Resources for Business // Jun 26, 2009 at 11:02 pm
[...] How To Do Local SEO For Your Website in Five Minutes (or So) | Local SEO Guide [...]
25 Bernie // Jun 29, 2009 at 7:51 am
Hey Andrew. Thanks for the post, very interesting and concise.
I would also suggest to check the new ‘Insights’ statistics feature on Google Local Business Center. It provides tons of useful information about what customers entered before clicking on your business listing, but also searches trends allowing you to know what they’re looking for. A nice tool.
26 Michelle // Jun 30, 2009 at 3:31 am
I like this list but i am sure it is not a 5 minutes job
It is better to combine link exchange and video ads to do the seo things. I know http://www.adwido.com that do the same great thing.
27 WordsmithBob // Jun 30, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Hope you don’t think my moniker is spammy. It’s what I go by.
Anyway, there’s some great information here. My SEO guy always adds the name of the communities my client is targeting in the Title, Description, and Keywords meta tags.
Most of my local clients will have several communities within the Twin Cities they want to target such as White Bear Lake or Blaine. Rather than using Minneapolis or St. Paul, we’ll create a Title like:
Goodyear Tire Repair Blaine | Sam’s Tire Mart
Because we are targeting communities within the larger metropolitan area, we often get number one listings for them for each of the communities. Just something to think about…
28 56 Local SEO & Search Resources for Business | SEOptimise // Jul 3, 2009 at 6:44 am
[...] How To Do Local SEO For Your Website in Five Minutes (or So) | Local SEO Guide [...]
29 Local SEO // Jul 10, 2009 at 4:51 am
[...] How To Do Local SEO For Your Website in Five Minutes (or So) | Local SEO Guide [...]
30 SEO в България » България » Local SEO // Jul 10, 2009 at 6:38 am
[...] How To Do Local SEO For Your Website in Five Minutes (or So) | Local SEO Guide [...]
31 Local Search Optimization continued | Image Tours Inc. - Agents // Jul 22, 2009 at 9:42 am
[...] is a good Search Engine Optimization check list to either do yourself, or to give to your web guru. It is a good starter list of about 10 things [...]
32 Local Search Optimization continued | Image Tours Inc. - Partner Agents // Jul 22, 2009 at 9:51 am
[...] is a good Search Engine Optimization check list to either do yourself, or to give to your web guru. It is a good starter list of about 10 things [...]
33 Local Seo Help | Milwaukee SEO : Local Seo Help // Sep 11, 2009 at 9:28 pm
[...] How To Do Local SEO For Your Website in Five Minutes (or So) | Local SEO Guide Blogged with the Flock Browser [...]
34 Carlos Machado // Oct 13, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Hi guys,
This article is very interesting.
Very suitable for people new to SEO segment, leading them to the true path of professionalism.
35 Business Owners: Are You Sabotaging Your Own Local Listings? // Nov 6, 2009 at 2:20 pm
[...] Here are a few important rules for you to remember about your online business listings. These rules are for local business listings, but you can find broader SEO tips for your web site on SearchEngineLand’s Local’s Only columnist Andrew Shotland Local SEO Guide. [...]
36 ewan // Jan 8, 2010 at 8:48 pm
Excellent list of the SEO essentials. I would also recommend existing clients to complete a review in the Google local business center as Google appears to be giving UGC more weighting these days
Leave a Comment
Spammy Profile Names Will Be Deleted