Localize those PPC efforts

There are various ways of utilizing geographic modifiers for your paid search. It can include using your city, county, etc. as a keyword or targeting your geographic area in your campaign settings. One of Google’s newer features, local ad extensions, can play a huge roll in the success of these localized campaigns. If you’re not all that familiar with it, it’s definitely worth knowing about.

A local ad extension is additional information, typically your address, which Google can show along with your ads. It’s a simple option that you can turn on within your campaign settings. The extensions can show in Google and any of their properties, including Google Maps and search results. So while maintaining your settings, these ads will also have a physical address that pops up when a searcher is close to you geographically. This does not replace regional or other geographic targeting for AdWords, but it’s a great way to target your local business and get more visitors not only to your website, but to your location as well! Having additional information will draw people’s attention to your ad. There is no price difference for using ad extensions with your ads, so feel free to experiment.

We know it’s important to target your landing pages as well, and in the local space, it’s a good idea to include your address on the landing page. Make sure that your landing page is very localized considering that continuity of content is extremely important, particularly for local searches. It helps build trust and reiterates your location while expanding on your offer.

There are many options for success with local PPC. You could try including your city name with your keyword along with geographic targeting in your settings, and then try with and without ad extensions. Then, try the reverse! Experiment with different variables and discover what works best for your business. Achieving successful results doesn’t happen over night, and there’s no fast rule to follow. The best way to get it going is to try all the opportunities at your disposal – you never know what you might find!

Emily Thompson is the Online Marketing Coordinator for Kutenda Internet Marketing Software . Kutenda offers software and services for small businesses to succeed in online marketing and grow their business.

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Expert

Google Local Ad Extensions: The Power of Localized PPC

I myself am a firm believer that truly local sites, my fellow neighbors and businesses, can rank better in the local search arena than the national and local directories if they focus on creating targeted content and getting targeted local links.

A great way to get valuable local targeted links which bring you link juice, plus drive traffic to your website, is to be a guest author on local sites. This is a very underutilized technique.

Guest authoring is a method for reaching a brand new audience and for increasing traffic and sales. In the event folks like what they read they may not only head to your site or blog, they will send your post to social media websites and link to it from various other sites as well. This all goes towards solidifying yourself on the web.

Finding Authoring Opportunities

Granted there are not that many active sites at the local level but they do exists. Finding them is a bit of a chore sometimes but the best way I’ve found to locate local sites is to use real-time data from Twitter or Google using city and state names as the search term ie; your keyword + Denver, Brighton CO, etc. This is a dead-giveaway on who’s active.

You can also use Google to look  for authoring opportunities. Use the search strings listed below to find niche related sites to guest author on.

{your keyword} “guest blogger” OR “guest post” OR “guest article” OR “guest column”
{your keyword} “become a contributor” OR “contribute to this site”
{your keyword} “write for us” OR “write for me”
{keyword} inurl:category/guest

I have set 2 simple conditions to determine whether I would take further action once I found opportunities;

• Active site – fresh content being created on a monthly basis at a minimum
• Zip codes, city’s, states or phone numbers on their site

Another way you can find a guest authoring opportunities is to simply keep your eyes open whenever you are browsing some of your favorite blogs. The #1 way to guest author on someone’s site is to simply ask! You might be surprised by the answer.

Things To Remember

Once you’ve found site that you can contribute to make sure to keep 2 things in mind:

• When writing bear in mind that the post should not be an ad for your own services or products
• Concentrate on a few great keywords in your posts including some long-tail keywords

Guest authoring is one of the best forms of free advertising available online today. Not to mention you are building up your brand and getting authoritative links pointing back to your website. And to top it all off – you are building relationships with your fellow bloggers.

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Expert

Guest Author On Local Sites

And of course wouldn’t you know it – the users Google profile is a junk junction.

An here’s a kicker…the users Google profile ask: Something I still can’t find on Google
Answer- friendship

Well with a profile like this and jumping buzz post it really smells like spam to me…and to tell you the truth I don’t make friends with “spammers”

I’m going to have to learn a ton about Google Buzz, but I’m to so sure how to contrl buzz jumpers like this.

Any thoughts?

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Expert

Google Buzz Jumping

If your website doesn’t possess a very good placement in the rankings then it may be hard, if not impossible, to find.

Considering that the majority of searchers simply click on the first couple of results, you want to make certain that your web site is ranked highly enough so that people can easily discover it on the very first page of search engine results.

Although no search engine optimization firm can guarantee a high rankings for your site forever, often times hiring a web marketing business will pay off many times over. For those of you performing your SEO yourself or those of you that would like to help ensure your marketing firm is doing the things that really matter, here are some tips for raising the search engine rankings of your website.

Optimize your web site for your target audience, not the search engines. Think of exactly what impression your web site gives your users—you’ll create a significantly better site the search engines will love.

Produce compelling content for pages of your site based on your chosen keyword phrases. Pick out a couple keyword phrases that apply towards the certain page you’re writing and work those phrases into the copy.

Incorporate your keyword phrases into each page’s unique title tag. Title tags are given significant weight with search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. The title tag is the text shown in the engines search results, so it’s crucial that it be alluring, not just crammed with keywords and phrases.

Make certain your website is link-worthy. Search engines like Google and Yahoo judge a site’s popularity by the number of links pointing to it. Generate great content people will wish to hyperlink to. It’s a must for your link building efforts to offer things worth linking to.

Don’t be hitched to any one keyword or phrase. Optimize for all of the relevant key phrases. If you can rank high for a good percentage of them, they’re going to add up to a lot more than just that one particular keyword phrase that you think is the big money one.

Keeping these five tips in mind when optimizing your website and you’ll be on your way to getting much better rankings and a lot of organic (free) traffic.

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Expert

5 Tips To Raise Your Rankings

There has been a lot of speculation going on over Google’s announcement late in 2009 that load times of a page will become a relevant factor in ranking web pages.

If you haven’t heard all the scuttle-butt the articles below should get you up to speed.

Page Speed May Become a Ranking Factor in 2010
I would say that based on Matt’s comments it is probably fair to assume that Google will indeed begin taking page speed into consideration as a ranking factor, although he doesn’t come right out and say that they definitely will. …

Will Google Make Page Speed a Ranking Factor
Google is obsessed with speed. A tremendous amount of corporate energy is being put into initiatives to speed up the web. Googles Lets make the web…

What do you think? Is speed really a factor when it comes to rankings?

I personally don’t think so. With unique content and link building factors being the bread and butter of “true’ results I find it hard to believe that the load time of a page will have any real effect on the serp’s.

Worried about your load time?

GTmetrix – A New Tool For Google’s Speed Factor
GTmetrix is a free tool that provides in depth information on the speed of pages on your site and what you can do to improve load time.

Sure, page speed plays a role and is important when it comes to the user’s experience but when it comes to displaying relevant search results speed is not a factor.

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Expert

Google’s Speed Ranking Factor

Search engines take numerous variables into consideration when displaying websites inside their natural search results depending on the search terms you use.

Backlinks are just one of these many factors.

Unfortunately only a small number of people,who are sworn to secrecy, know the complete algorithm that is used. This makes it real tough to know what links are worth perusing that would benefit your domain the most.

And alas not all search engines are created equal. Even though there might be some aspects of the algorithm that are comparable to say Google, Yahoo and Bing have their own ’secret sauce’ whenever figuring out rankings.

Things such as the domain age, quality of content, the actual domain name, and on and on establish where your website falls whenever people do a search.

Backlinks play a huge, but not fully known, roll in driving a ton of visitors to your website and in many cases it helps with SEO. Plus it gets you traffic from the sites you are receiving backlinks from.

If you would like to drive top quality traffic to your web site – you need backlinks. Lots of them. And if you want to be found in the search engines for short and long-tail keywords, you need backlinks from several other websites using those words as anchor text that link back to the web page you’re trying to rank for.

Don’t make the error that many people do – and that’s just focusing on building backlinks to their home page. They are missing out on a great deal extra traffic!

Don’t just build links to your home page for the main keyword(s) you’re targeting, but dig deeper and get backlinks for longer-tail keywords you’re targeting within a blog post or an individual page on your website.

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Expert

Why You Need Backlinks

I hadn’t noticed this at first so not sure how long it’s been active, but can’t be more than a few days ago.

Thanks to Chris Lang, via my social circle, I was quickly able to find a video outlining how it works.

I also follow Jack Humphrey and as usual he had something to say on the subject. His train of thought about a seo value appears to have some logic. At first glance of my social circle and content Google profile seo might well be influencing my displayed results.

Google Knows Your Social Circle

On today’s Friday Traffic Report podcast we talk about a new discovery in Google search results – and it’s pretty darned cool! You can now take a look at your entire social circle according….

I did a little leg work and found several additional reads on G’s social circle.

Google Puts Social Results in the Mix!

If you are one of those people still skeptical about the business uses of social media, you may be interested to know that Google’s Social Search is no longer just an experiment. Though it does have the beta tag on it, …

Google Social Search Goes Live, Adds New Features

Google has begun the rollout of its Social Search product, a way of seeing customized search results based upon the people in your social network. Social.

Wow, Google Is Awfully Clueless About My Social Life

What’s happening is that Google is being very cautious about clueing me in as to what it knows. The ways Google builds social circles is via your Google chat buddy list and by looking at accounts you’ve entered on your Google Profile. …

Google Social Search goes live — without Facebook results

In the battle to conquer real-time search, Gooogle has drawn a line in the sand. The search giant today went live with its Social Search feature, which adds relevant results from users’ social graph. But one thing is noticeably absent …

To use the social features of Google you must have a Gmail account and be logged in.

Oh, and if you don’t have a Google profile…make one!

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Expert

Google Social Search Results

January 14, 2010

January 14, 2010

December 8, 2009

Related articles

• Make Google Place Pages your business’ megaphone (Google LatLong)
• Current Trends and Best Practices in Search Marketing
• Google Wildcard Searches

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Expert

Top SEO News on – January 14, 2010

But it’s not gone completely. On the same day I also discovered that the real time stream is being displayed inside the search options.

If you’re not aware of Google’s search options you can look at the image below to find the options selector on Google’s search page.

After clicking the show options on the serp’s page select Latest from the sidebar menu

You don’t have a chance to review history like you do with People Browser or the like app but then again it’s all about real-time results in the moment.

Real Time search is going to play a larger role in the search results the engines will be giving us. There are many differing opinions floating around the web on the subject.

How real time search could affect SEO

Google have now started to roll out real time search. Posts from social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook will now appear in the SERPs for certain brand.

Why Real-Time Search Won’t Last

Real-time search is a hot topic right now and many claim that this is proof that social media is for real and here to stay. I agree with it adding additional validation that social media is going mainstream, but I have my doubts that …

Real Time Search Speeds up the News

Early in December Google announced that they will be including real-time news and updates in their web search pages. And soon after Yahoo followed suit. How does this affect the news cycle and PR? As you can see in this short video news …

What do you think…would real time search be of any value to you?

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Expert

Real Time Dance

The results are displayed mid page in a scrolling box.

What does this means?

If you’re looking for information on events as they are happening, you can view content posted in the past few minutes rather than outdated news articles from the past.

“Whether it’s an eyewitness tweet, a breaking news story or a fresh blog post, you can find it on Google right after it’s published on the web,” said Google fellow Amit Singhal in a announced blog post.

Very cool!

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Expert

Google Displaying Real Time Results