Thursday, March 13th, 2008
Dr. Peter Carr is a long-time reader of our blog and I have corresponded with him previously. He has done quite well performing his own SEO tactics to his Seattle Chiropractic site. He was gracious enough to write this post about his success with local search rankings. I wrote a similar blog post on posting reviews last year.
I am a small service business, (chiropractor, to be exact) and I really only make money when people come through the doors. I perform many SEO tactics for my website www.dynamicclinic.com to the point where I’m #1 for Google searching for “Seattle chiropractor”. But people don’t come to chiropractors because of an organic #1 ranking, they come because of referrals. That’s where I’ve found that companies like www.Citysearch.com (a Ticketmaster company), www.Judysbook.com and www.Yelp.com come into play.
People (customers) want to go to hair stylists and chiropractors because their friends go there, and barring that, they want someone to say they like them.
Citysearch is a better bet in my opinion, as they have linked with Google to add their reviews on Google Local, which gives customers a map to the business location and number of ratings. I’m no expert, but it seems like only Judysbook and Citysearch do this.
Google local is trying to get in on the act, too, where people can leave reviews right on Google. Google prefers you leave your ratings and reviews with them directly.
The bottom line for SEO is this: Search engines exist to give the end user the BEST result for their search. If the search engine doesn’t, then people will go somewhere else. Yahoo accomplished this using humans “back in the day” to review individual sites, and now Google is doing something very similar, as well, with these review sites. After all, Google would love to refer you to the best chiropractor in Seattle (me) and have you be happy with their recommendation. Reviews provide that opportunity much better than, or at least more “humanly,” than any algorithm that Google could possibly come up with.
To that end, I request that all my patients who had great results with my service leave a glowing review on Citysearch or other review site, so that others can see how awesome we are. If you are in a service-oriented business, this is one area you simply can’t overlook in your SEO campaign.
Dr. Peter Carr, www.dynamicclinic.com
Popularity: 12% [?]
Posted in Google, SEO Strategies, Website Conversion | 1 Comment »
Saturday, August 25th, 2007
A search engine optimization company can sometimes forget about the little guy. Sometimes working for web sites who need search results for terms that have national competition can overwhelm you and blind you to the company who is competing for search terms in a local geographic area. I wrote a post on improving local search results a few weeks ago and in doing so discovered a new tip: Add Reviews. Or better yet ask your customers to add reviews.
For example I have done a search for Home Improvement in Richmond, Virginia. Click on the screenshot to the right and you can see the #1 search result is a client of ours, Creative Energy. You can also see they have 2 reviews listed. Local reviews can help boost your search engine rankings and if they are positive reviews they can boost your sales. imagine if you were looking at the results listed, wouldn’t you read the reviews? If they were positive you might visit their site or give them call. Every advantage helps.
So how do you add reviews? Visit Google Maps and do a search for you business by name and your city and state. When you find your business click the more information link. (Or you may see a review link to click from here, it depends on your search results). From there you will see a link to write a review. You can provide this link to customers and if they have a Google account, as many people do, they can add a review. You can also add reviews through other sites, Google will find them, such as Yelp and your local CitySearch.com, but they customers will need accounts to use these as well.
So am I telling you to manufacture or make up reviews? No, of course not. But if you have clients who have given you a written letter or verbal review it might be worth it to ask them to post a review online. Give them a coupon for future work or send them a gift of Virginia peanuts. Don’t think of it as bribery, think of it as good customer relations.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, SEO Strategies, SEO Tools, Website Conversion | 7 Comments »
Friday, August 3rd, 2007
In SEO, local search should never be overlooked. It can provide a boost in traffic has a higher tendency to convert more visitors to customers since most people prefer working with local companies, even SEO companies.
Here are some factors that Big Oak SEO feels are important and should be considered when trying to get higher rankings for your site, whether or not you are marketing to a national or local market. I have tried to list them in order of importance but it really depends how important local traffic is to your site.
Location in the Title of your Pages
Including your city and state, especially if you are counting on local customers is imperative. Don’t overdue it, but be sure to include it. I talk about this in detail on my SEO Titles: Using the Title Tag post.
Link Building with City and State Keywords
When building links to your site, include some with local terms like we do in this example: Richmond Virginia Search Engine Optimization Company. You get the idea.
Tell the Search Engines Where You Work
The physical location of your site should be on the footer of every page. If you work from home, get a P.O. box and list that address. It is important for the city, state and zip code be on every page.
Submit Your Site to Google’s Local Business Center
You can’t get found in a search unless Google knows where you are. Submit your business to Google’s Local Business Center even if you don’t have a website…yet.
Keep Your Contact Page Connected
Your physical address should be at the top of the contact page, above your contact form. At the very least it should be easy to find and accurate.
Link to your address on the Google Maps and Yahoo Maps. For example, go to Google Maps and then do a search for you physical address. After finding your location you will see a “Link to this page” link. Click that and then copy and paste that link on your contact page.
Adding written driving directions will allow for many local keywords to be included so having this in addition to a link to maps.google.com is a good idea.
List Coverage Area
Big Oak SEO is located in Glen Allen, Virginia, but very few people have heard of or search for Glen Allen. We are in the Richmond, Virginia area so we use Richmond in our footer and mention it on our company page as well as other local locations. Try to include the metropolitan areas on your site if that is what people will be searching for.
Add Listings in Yellow Pages, Superpages & Similar Sites
While I don’t often feel the cost is warranted for phone book sites, if you can get a free listing or a discount because you are already paying for a printed listing it can help to have a link pointing to your site from the online listing.
Provide a Local Phone number on Every Page
It is a no-brainer to have your 800 present at the top of every page, but be sure to list your local number in the footer as well. Don’t forget to include the area code.
List your Site in Directories for Local businesses
Sites like Yelp.com and Citysearch.com are good places for local businesses. They can also provide real traffic and not just higher rankings. I’m looking more into Yelp and hope to write a post about them soon.
Get your site or business reviewed
I think this is undervalued in importance, but getting a few reviews from a site like CitySearch and Yelp is a good thing for search engine rankings. Submit your site and ask friends to review for you. Of course this isn’t applicable to all businesses, but it should be part of the marketing plan if you count on local consumers.
Google Coupons
This isn’t new but not many people are using it. Google coupons was announced in August 2006. It may help your ranking, but it can’t hurt, especially if you have actual cost savings to offer over your competition.
Do you have any ideas or have any advice that has worked for you concerning local search. If so, send us an email or submit a comment to this post. We are always looking for new ideas to share.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Google, Website Conversion, Yahoo Search | 4 Comments »
Friday, July 6th, 2007
In case you hadn’t heard, a few months back I posted about Google’s 411 service 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411). It’s a free telephone service that helps you search for businesses by voice and get connected to those businesses for free.
Now Google has upgraded this service with the addition of mapping the locations. If during your call to 800-GOOG-411, just say “map it”, and you’ll get a text message with the details of your search plus a link to a map of your results right on your mobile phone.
Now you can always have a GPS device, well kind of.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Posted in Google, Out on a Limb | No Comments »
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