Local Search Watch: Local Search Trends, SEO, & Advertising.

Local Directories?

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:24:15 +0000

While local online directories are a great way to find information about businesses in your area, they fail in comparison to the big search engines. Many of these online directories are littered with advertisements and it seems every listing is a featured one. These sites simply cannot turn a profit and so they force their ads in their many disguises in your face. What is so nice about a site like Google is when you search for local information you get both high quality organic results and advertisements! That’s right even Google’s advertisements are often exactly what you are looking for. So while there is a place for online local directories, the search engines aren’t going to be giving up any local traffic anytime soon. Clearly online local directories can do better and need to focus on quality first over profit.

Siteground Hosting Review & Free Hosting

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:12:36 +0000

If you are like us you have tried countless web hosting companies throughout the years and often been disappointed. The fact of the matter is most hosting companies are out for profit alone and cram too many accounts on their servers. This results in poor service that can sometimes cause great harm to your business. We can honestly say that we have found a great web hosting provider in Siteground! If you are creating blogs and use Wordpress it really couldn’t be easier than using Siteground’s Account management tools. All their accounts offer cpanel and include fantatico which we love. We now have a good handful of sites at Siteground and couldn’t be happier with their service. They also offer a new free hosting program that we’re excited about!

Click here to learn more about Siteground’s hosting services!

Local PPC Marketing

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:01:16 +0000

Did you know that you can instantly place your local business in front of thousands of potential customers on the world’s top search engines? If you’ve ever done a search on Google you must have seen the ads to the right and sometimes top of the natural listings. These advertisers use Google Adwords and bid on clicks for particular keywords they choose. For example if you were a lawyer in New York City, you could sign up and bid on the keyword “New York City Lawyer” and put your ad in front of those searching for a lawyer in NYC on Google. It really couldn’t be easier or faster to advertise using PPC!

With local search heating up, PPC is a great way to promote your business. While SEO is in the long run the best solution, it also takes a lot of time where as PPC is instant! Many local businesses are still not yet aware of the power of local PPC advertising and your area may be open for the taking! Simply do a search on Google for your city or town + keywords relevant to your business. Then look at how many ads are showing up. Sometimes depending on where you live there is little to no competition! While you may not get thousands of customers over night, if you’re a real estate agent one great lead per month could be all the difference. You simply cannot afford to miss out on local search engine marketing. If you aren’t taking action after reading an article like this you can be sure your competitor is!

Local Search Is The Future: Get Prepared

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:49:18 +0000

If you remember about 10 years ago or even just 5 for that matter when you wanted to find a business in your area you simply looked in the yellowpages. But let’s face it, the yellow pages offer you a tiny ad with sometimes just a phone number and company name. That is hardly the information you want when selecting a doctor, attorney, or dentist. You are basically left to chance and have no way of knowing anything else about a particular business other than their name. But now we have the internet!

With the internet you can often find all the information you need when selecting a local business. For example many companies these days have a website and on their site offer a wealth of information about their company and their products and/or services. You just can’t beat a full brochure online about a business with a company name and phone number. The internet if also interactive and most sites offer other options for contacting them such as email. So the better source of information is clearly the internet, but why doesn’t everyone then search for local information on the web?

The truth is it is just a matter of time before everyone and their brother starts using the internet for local information. It is simply too powerful a medium compared with traditional forms of gathering local information. But many people believe it or not and especially the older generation still don’t have computers. Many of these same people are so accustomed to picking up the local Yellow Pages and habits can be hard to break. Computers are also expensive and in a slow economy not everyone has $500 for a new laptop. So while not everyone is yet using the internet for local information, that will soon change as the awareness increases of how useful the internet is and as computers continue to drop in price. Soon just like everyone has a TV, everyone will soon have a computer.

So what does this mean to you as a business owner? It means you want to do everything you can to position your website so it’s easily found on the internet when people are searching for local information. If you’re an attorney in Philadelphia, you want your site showing up on Google, Yahoo, and MSN for the keyword phrases ‘philadelphia attorney’ and ‘philadelphia lawyer’. By getting on top now you will be positioning yourself very nicely for some great qualified traffic and for capitalizing on the growth of local search which will continue to grow for a long time to come!