What’s Wrong With This Picture
December 24, 2011
Welcome to the Google Places SEO Citations blog at Tucson SEO Solutions.
This blog covers local SEO which is dominated by Google, Google Places and the need for citations. The blog also covers just about any thing related to Google search results and related topics. I hope that you might glean some useful resources while you are here.
What’s Wrong With This Picture
Lately, I have been visiting a bunch of other websites that offer SEO services. The reason for this is I am looking for design ideas for a new website. Rarely, do I bother to see what they have to offer as I like keeping my blood pressure low. I don’t want to blow a gasket when I see that they are offering “SEO Packages.” I have never sold these as they are not based on research. Thus they are likely to fail.
Today, I just came upon this website and I had to write a post and ask “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” The $49.00 a month price doesn’t bother me nearly as much as something else here. Can you guess what I am referring too here?
The problem that I have here is the optimizing for Cleveland roofers, Chicago Car Insurance, and Pittsburg used Cars. Well, these may be keywords related to these businesses, but they are the wrong ones to optimize for. A better approach is to place your products or services before mentioning the location. The correct keyword phrases would be roofer Cleavland, Car Insurance Chicago, and used cars Pittsburg. (and yes that’s likely a misspell as the city in Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh)
This represents how people actually search. Google has indicated that only 20 to 40% of searchers will ever use a location in there searches. So why put the city first? Real people will first search for roofer, car insurance, and used cars. If they do not find what they want they will include the location, as in Local SEO Tucson. But they seldom will use Tucson Local SEO.
This is basic SEO 101. Yet, everyday I see examples from people who should know better, but don’t. While it may be ok to rank well for Chicago car insurance that’s not likely going to be a real highly used keyword phrase. Analytics prove this day in and day out. Those who do use the city before the service bounce at a higher rate and they don’t stay very long as they tend to be your competitors who also don’t know any better.
When you create keywords phrases and page titles the most important word should go first. When you optimize for Pittsburg used car you are telling the search engines that Pittsburg is your most important keyword phrase. But Pittsburg is not the most important keyword here. Yet, I see this day in and day out. I ask myself how can these people be providing SEO when they do not understand search and search behaviors.
What say you?
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Do you own a local small business in Tucson, Arizona or elsewhere and you need Google Places SEO or Places Citations services? Then please call Tucson SEO at 520-505-6024 or email me Now!
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Using Location Tags With Video Sitemaps
June 12, 2011
Welcome to the Google Places SEO Citations blog at Tucson SEO Solutions.
This blog covers local SEO which is dominated by Google, Google Places and the need for citations. The blog also covers just about any thing related to Google search results and related topics. I hope that you might glean some useful resources while you are here.
Using Location Tags With
Video Sitemaps
Using a sitemap for videos is something that I have been interested in since I am now posting videos. I will admit that I am still learning about them. So when I saw a Tweet from Webmaster Tools I immediately clicked for a look see.
If you want to read what Google is saying about video sitemaps then you will want to read, Video Sitemaps – understanding location tags.
What say you?
Our Services:
If your business is located in the communities of Tucson, Yuma, Flagstaff, Tempe, Mesa , Chandler, Arizona or beyond and you need Google Places SEO Citations solutions please call Tucson SEO at 520-505-6024 Now!
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
Where People Go When Google Fails
June 9, 2011
Welcome to the Google Places SEO Citations blog at Tucson SEO Solutions.
This blog covers local SEO which is dominated by Google, Google Places and the need for citations. The blog also covers just about any thing related to Google search results and related topics. I hope that you might glean some useful resources while you are here.
Where People Go When Google Fails
I am an internet marketing SEO guy located in Tucson Arizona so my conversations are often about different aspects of search engine marketing. So I was a little bit amazed by what I learned today about what people do when Google does not provide them with the results that they want.
It all started at home when I had a very interesting conversation with my honey this afternoon. Geri has had a desire for Fish and Chips lately and she was searching a restaurant that served them. Now, keep in mind we live in Tucson, Arizona where fish and chips are not a staple as we are nowhere close to being near water in our desert habitat.
Her search turned out to be a bit frustrating for her. She started out using Google to do her search, but that didn’t work for her. The first page of the Google results was fruitless. So she then tried using the Microsoft search engine, Bing.
This turned out far better for her. She noted that she had to go to page two before she located a restaurant that serves fish and chips locally. I thought wow she is really serious about fish and chips to have used two different search engines.
The down side of this find was that it would require a 30 – 45 ride out to a suburban community that is on Tucson’s far North side. She was not familiar with this area as it is a relatively new development.
But there are no freeways to hop on from where we live to get there. This adventure would require the use of some of busiest surface streets in the metro area.
Geri, was surprised that Google didn’t provide her with the answer that she was looking for. I was surprised as well but for a different reason. I was surprised that her second choice was Bing.
Shortly thereafter, I found a post that linked to an article about where people go when Google fails to meet their search requirements. The article was produce by Chitika. This company offers an internet marketing platform and does a whole lot of research about internet marketing.
The study indicated that Yahoo is by far the first choice when Google fails to produce the desired results. Yahoo is also my standard second choice as well. What got my attention is the third choice in this study was Ask.com and not Bing. I found this to be very interesting and not at all what I had expected.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one surprised by this finding. The folks doing the research had expected that Bing would be far ahead of Ask but that wasn’t how it all played out. In the article the researchers did not speculate why they got the results that they did.
If you would like to read the study follow this link to Chikita.
What Say You?
What say you?
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If your business is located in the communities of Tucson, Yuma, Flagstaff, Tempe, Mesa , Chandler, Arizona or beyond and you need Google Places SEO Citations solutions please call Tucson SEO at 520-505-6024 Now!
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities
Blogging For Links Profit And Continuing Education V 2.0
May 31, 2011
Welcome to the Google Places SEO Citations blog at Tucson SEO Solutions.
This blog covers local SEO which is dominated by Google, Google Places and the need for citations. The blog also covers just about any thing related to Google search results and related topics. I hope that you might glean some useful resources while you are here.
Blogging For Links Profit And Continuing Education V 2.0
It is the opinion of Tucson SEO Solutions that the blog is the single most important marketing tool available. This business was built on the expertise gleaned from scouring the SEO/SEM blogging community. I have held this opinion when I got into this business about three years ago and I still do. However, I have abandoned using blogs for link building purposes. I did a small case study last year and I discovered that blogs were an ineffective link building method for me as my comment where getting caught up in spam filters.
The problem was I would often use something like Urban @ Arizona SEO. Because I used SEO the comments were getting automatically rejected. I discovered that most blog owners don’t look for good comments that may have accidentally got caught in spam filters.
The downside of this decision was that I was no longer getting new business from blog commenting. I have compensated by using almost exclusively web 2.0 social media sites. This produces lots of visitors but no direct business has been attributed to this method so far.
If given a choice between learning SEO or internet marketing between blogs or forums I would definitely choose the blog. While forums can easy produce a bunch of low quality links quickly they are generally poor sources for acquiring useful advice. Forums do generate more traffic so it depends what you wish to accomplish, but they have not been business generators for us.
Where is the original post:
It is the opinion of Tucson SEO Solutions that the blog is the single most important marketing tool available. This business was built on the expertise gleaned from scouring the SEO/SEM blogging community.
I often tell the tale of cleaning houses during the day as a one person cleaning service. Then studying SEO and SEM and for 8 to 10 hours a day every day for four straight months. I visited thousands of websites along the way. Back then (18 months ago) when we started website marketing blogging for links was easy, time consuming, but easy. That was before “No Follow’ ruined the legitimate white hat practice of blogging for links.
By the time our house cleaning website launched in January 2007 we had already gathered 1400 industry specific links. We combined the power of these links with our new knowledge of Page Titles, Page Descriptions, Geo-targeted SEO and fresh content into a winning combination.
That website landed on the first page of Google several times over within three days of launching! It has been there ever since. Its eco friendly house cleaning tips blog has been first page ranked for nearly as long.
The blog is essential for providing fresh content for the static website that the search engines crave. A blog, when used frequently can help your website obtain and maintain high search rankings.
When you blog you can:
* Still acquire links
* Learn a whole lot
* Share with others
* Profit in many different ways
* Obtain and maintain high search ranking
* And maybe even have some fun!
* Win stuff
We simply would not be here today, if it where not for blogs. It still blows me away when I visit a website marketing business’ website that doesn’t have a blog. We believe so much in blogs that they are standard issue on every website that we build. We also include training to use the software as an effective marketing tool. We believe a blog is useless if the website owner doesn’t know how to use it effectively. (I no longer offer web site development services)
We simply will not build a website that doesn’t include a blog. We feel that strongly about the subject. It is too powerful a tool to be missing, especially if you have a static website. The blog also provides a vehicle for your customers to interact beyond normal business channels. (We no longer build websites)
Many of website visitors to a service website will be doing research for a future purchase. The blog allows you to educate this group, share your expertise, and experiences. When done properly the blog can communicate a certain level of trust.
Trust is critical when the businesses service requires coming to or entering someone’s home. Dependability, reliability, and safety are paramount to this group. Again, the blogs can easily allow you to address different segments of your customer base.
We, often refer to blogs as stages, or sounding boards. If you love what you do your blog readers will easily see this; and the bonds of trust can begin to be established.
The blog also is a great tool when used to create inbound links. That is why we are working on our own “Do Follow Blog Lists.” These lists have turned out to be a great link building tool for us. When we visit SEO/SEM sites to verify their linking status, we leave a comment, pick up a link, and let the owners know that they are on our list.
It still blows me away when I visit SEO sites that haven’t implemented a blog on the own site. But then we clearly understand, that we are here today because others blogged, we read, learned, and applied what we had learned. The rest they say is history.
The only real drawback is that blogs do require a lot of time and attention to be successful.
More to the update: One of the reason that I have been updating these old posts is due to Geri’s illness. Updating old posts is much quicker that finding new material and starting with a new post. Because her illness can rock my world for one to two weeks at a time when she hospitalized it makes blogging nearly impossible. I have found that I can rewrite 4 or 5 posts in the time that it takes me to deliver a new post. For now, I am attempting to stay a week ahead of the game by scheduling a post daily. This post places me at the 7 day threshold.
Update 05/30/2011: I just wanted to report that I just acquired a new client recently. That clients indicated that the blog played a major part in their decision to hire Tucson SEO Solutions!
What say you?
Our Services:
If your business is located in the communities of Tucson, Yuma, Flagstaff, Tempe, Mesa , Chandler, Arizona or beyond and you need Google Places SEO Citations solutions please call Tucson SEO at 520-505-6024 Now!
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
Is There Such A Thing As A Perfect Link ?
April 28, 2011
Welcome to the Google Places SEO Citations blog at Tucson SEO Solutions.
This blog covers local SEO which is dominated by Google, Google Places and the need for citations. The blog also covers just about any thing related to Google search results and related topics. I hope that you might glean some useful resources while you are here.
Is There Such A Thing As A Perfect Link ?
That seems like a reasonable question to ask. After all there has been so much conflicting information written about links. We figured that since our audience comes here for small business SEO solutions they could use some clarification on the subject.
The perfect link from our perspective is:
A perfect link would be from a site with high Page Rank. The problem here is that many of our readers don’t understand PR. So here’s the skinny on PR. It is a grade that Google places on websites that correlates to trust. The scale goes from n/a through 10, with 10 being the highest score. You can find out the PR of any website if you are using a Google toolbar with Page Rank enabled.
That’s the simple answer for PR. So let’s look at a few other aspects of the perfect link.
The perfect link should offer some benefit to the person that is actually clicking on that link. So it is a good idea that the link should be industry specific or related to your website in some way. A good example of this is a doctor in Tucson linking to a doctor in Chicago. It should also include the targeted keyword phrase related to the site that it is pointed to in the anchor. In this case you might want to link to a page about flu prevention. That link then might read “flu prevention methods.”
That links should be “Do Follow” thus it will pass link juice. You control this on your website, but you can not control it on another website. If the link is what as know as “No follow” it will have no impact on search rankings but may generate traffic to your website.
The perfect link has to be “Do Follow,”and It certainly would be nice if that link came from a high PR page and with anchor text that matched the pages content. Finally, it should be in a related business field.
What’s your perfect link?
What say you?
Our Services:
If your business is located in the communities of Tucson, Yuma, Flagstaff, Tempe, Mesa , Chandler, Arizona or beyond and you need Google Places SEO Citations solutions please call Tucson SEO at 520-505-6024 Now!
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
