You are here: Home / Archives for SEO
August 5, 2024 by

Applications For Real World Metaverse And Virtual Real Estate

Recently, we were on a Twitter Space webinar to discuss the use cases of web3 NFTs, metaverses, and virtual real estate (digital real estate) associated with actual real world locations which you can visit physically. These are different than “fictional world” metaverses such as Decentraland, Sandbox, and similar virtual real estate metaverse platforms which don’t associate directly with actual locations in the physical world.

Some of the benefits web3 assets, which merge NFTs and metaverses along with existing online marketing efforts, include:

  • Existing web2 SEO efforts such as ranking in the search engines, Maps, YouTube and elsewhere
  • Local lead generation
  • Reducing advertising spending around town in order to acquire a new customer, client, patient, or event attendee/fan
  • Rewarding your existing customers, clients, and fans in new ways to foster further participation with your company
  • Repurposing your images and video content
  • Building Artificial Intelligence (AI) avatars to answer prospective customers’ questions with a good degree of accuracy while simultaneously featuring your real world location
  • Associating your company with known landmarks
  • Brand new ways to solve problems and associate your business with the easy-to-understand solution
  • Beginning to open your business to using or accepting cryptocurrency, altcoins, or other payment forms beyond your existing methods of sending/receiving funds
  • Much more

Thank you to Marcus (“wenairdrop“) at Iheartdomains.com for hosting the Twitter Space. The audio recording is available on his website, or you may play the audio recording below:

You also may play the recording from Spotify at this link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/03she1WRozgkE1TbAc4Hh8?si=8144659bf0a04f94

Filed Under: Backlinks, link building, local marketing, metaverse, nft, search engine marketing, SEO, virtual land, web3, Webinars
May 28, 2024 by

Local SEO With Reddit And Forums

How Can A SEO Consultant Help You Rank On Page 1 For Local Keywords Using Reddit And Other Forums

Since February 2024, the search engines have seen a significant shift in how the first page of results are returned after someone makes a query (search). This is especially true for Google.

What is challenging many local business owners, however, is the degree of first page search results which are showing Reddit and other local forums on the upper half of first page results. Even more concerning to them is the actual result being returned inside Reddit oftentimes is over a decade old and outdated!

Let’s take a look at some page 1 results of for a high population USA city like Dallas Texas. The first result is from the end of May 2024, and the keyword being searched is “laser hair removal Dallas”. I chose this because I have no laser hair removal clients, so there is no bias in the search history on this browser.

Another search (also in May 2024) is “best chiropractor Dallas”.

A Quick Analysis Of Reddit And Other Forums — And What Can Be Done To Help Make Your Phone Ring

In both examples, the “Discussions and Forums” section of these two local searches both appear in the first 3-4 organic rankings, coming after any Sponsored (paid) ad placements and the local Maps section. At the time of this post, the “Discussions and Forums” each have two of their three spots dedicated to Reddit; and the other spots (respectively) are City-Data.com and Quora.

This is very useful information for a number of reasons:

  • It means that you can participate on the platforms which are appearing in the “Discussions and Forums” section.
  • If the particular threads (topics) are still open for posting, then you can jump into that discussion and gain exposure if you add legitimate value to the discussion
  • Your profile page on those platforms (Reddit and others) also can help your overall search engine rankings due to getting links from a high-authority platform
  • You may be able to get your phone to ring faster with new business IF (!!) you “play nice” on each platform

Using the “laser hair removal Dallas” example, let’s open one of the Reddit threads/discussions. In this case it is the most recent one which Google listed, in this case a discussion started roughly four months ago.

A few things to note here:

  • The thread/discussion was pulled by Google from the r/Dallas sub-Reddit. This is the largest group dedicated to the City of Dallas, with supposedly 407,000+ members who have joined this group.
  • The replies to the person’s original question don’t have any links in the replies.
  • Note that in these first replies, no one is posting from a company-branded Reddit profile.
    • This doesn’t mean that you can’t do so
    • It is just an observation that perhaps a happy customer (client) of yours may post a reply to an open thread (discussion) in a relevant sub-Reddit on your behalf
    • This is virtually no different than having a happy customer leave a review for you on Yelp, Google Maps/Business, Facebook, TripAdvisor.com or any other review platform

The Benefits Of Taking This Action Step For Your Local Marketing

There are several benefits to doing this kind of value-addition marketing:

  • You, or a happy customer/client, can jump immediately into the discussion and get exposure on this hyper-relevant topic
  • We know it already is “ranking” well in Google as the thread which appears in the 3 options under the original “Discussions and Forums” section we saw earlier
  • You can begin to earn trust in your business locally by those who have notifications set up to be made aware when others participate in this particular discussion
  • The 407,000+ members of this one sub-Reddit (the r/Dallas group) could provide you with roughly one-eighth of 1% of that number as possible first-time awareness of your business. In this case 1/8 of 1% = 0.125%. 0.125% of 407,000 people = 509 people (rounded).
  • Being even more conservative, reducing that number to less than half still equals a potential 250 people who will be first introduced to your business…..

…. so you had better know how to “play nice” inside Reddit! Otherwise your business can gain some backlash and negative publicity at the local level!

What Is Considered Playing Nice Inside Reddit? Is It The Same For Other Forums Or Platforms Which Google Currently Rewarding With Page 1 Rankings?

Great question! The answer is both “Yes” and “No”.

Starting with the “No” first, one local-oriented platform where you can post content without a lot of concern for “playing nice” is a site like Patch.com. You can’t be a “sleazy salesman”, but you are allowed to post basic ads, upcoming event listings, and standard business profiles provided that Patch has a local section of its website dedicated to your geographic area. Learn more about Patch marketing here:

SEO And Marketing Your Local Business On Patch.com

Reddit and the other “Discussions and Forums” platforms, however, require you to play nice and add a tremendous amount of value & expertise on the topic. It also helps if you reward others’ contributions by liking their posts, replying nicely to their comments, and sharing some value you found.

Just like Facebook, you have some choices on Reddit:

  • You can post SEO keyword-optimized content, with links to your website or other website properties (such as YouTube, social media, or even press releases), on your own profile. This would be like posting content on your own Facebook wall/page, and not in a group.
    • You are still subject to people leaving comments, but they would have to find your specific post or know about your Reddit profile first
  • If you decide to post in the more heavy-volume sub-Reddits, then this would be like posting in a Facebook group relevant to your desired audience.
  • This can be both a good and bad thing, so always err on the side of being “nice” and conservative with your postings once inside a group which you didn’t create from the ground up.

Here are some ideas of how to add value in your reply to the original poster as well as those who replied to the original post’s content in a high-volume sub-Reddit group. In no particular order:

  • Compliment the original poster and/or someone who has replied in the sub-Reddit
  • Clarify any topic if there is confusion, and do so in a nice way. Always double-check before you click the “Submit” button!
  • Cite authoritative sources. In the example of laser hair removal, consider citing a small snippet & include a link to a source such as the American Academy of Dermatology website page discussing laser hair removal (example by clicking here)
  • Remember that your post may be read by someone months later, long after the original discussion’s participants already have found their preferred local service provider. This is fine!
    • You want to build trust in the eyes of ANYONE who reads the thread/discussion
    • Just as you found the discussion via the first page of the search engines, so too may someone find the exact same discussion the next day (or even the next year!) after you participate in the conversation
  • Share helpful multimedia such as news clips, relevant YouTube videos, podcasts, infographics, or anything else which is helpful to the original conversation
  • At first, DON’T place a link to your website inside your actual comment/reply. Instead, just have those links in your profile.
    • Most Reddit users are intelligent enough to click on your profile to learn more about you if they find your contributions to be valuable to them

A slightly modified approach to all of this is recommended for the non-Reddit forums which appear in Google’s page 1 search results. Earlier we saw that City-Data.com and Quora appeared; but, for the most part, it has the same approach – just with minor modifications.

Note that your Reddit profile does permit a small amount of text which allows for a business description (1-2 sentences) plus your phone number and business address. The latter is only if you want people to visit your business location.

Can This Be Outsourced Or At Least With Minimal Time Involvement From The Business Owner Or Employees?

Yes. However, any local SEO consultant who uses Reddit and the forums intelligently will want to protect your business from harm as a first priority. There will need to be some conversation on a consistent basis so that any replies made to your business Reddit profile, uploaded by the consultant, are accurate and valuable.

For example, your SEO consultant or agency may not know a single thing about laser hair removal! Therefore, in the early days of your working with the consultant, there will be some questions about trusted sources of information so that the consultant then can craft replies and make initial posts (on your Reddit page’s profile or in the high-traffic groups) with specificity. The last thing you want in Reddit is to come across as rude, not intelligent about your own business, and seem like a “hard selling sales person”.

That may get your profile banned by Reddit, or at least kicked you out of the high-traffic sub-Reddit where your prospects are spending time… especially the city-specific ones with larger membership numbers!

If you need any help with this, or any other local search engine optimization and lead generation needs, then you are welcome to contact us here:

Contact Us

Thank you for your time and we look forward to speaking with you soon.

Filed Under: reddit, search engine marketing, SEO
August 4, 2023 by

SEO for Local Businesses Using Virtual Lands, NFTs, Web3, Metaverse and AI

At the time of this post (early August 2023) most local businesses couldn’t care less about anything pertaining to Web3 such as metaverse, virtual lands, NFTs, and AI (other than being scared of it). Most don’t even use or possess any cryptocurrencies or altcoins or digital tokens. Despite the rise of these new technologies, the average local business owner only cares about getting more phone calls, email leads, text messages, walk-ins or newsletter/social media subscribers to help generate new business.

Much like in the first part of the 2010 decade, most local business owners don’t understand the “WHY” they need to spend time, money, or other resources on those new technologies. “Decentralization”, “community”, “DAOs”, and other web3 topics are just nonsense words to them at this point in time… and that is fine! This is because no one yet has explained to the local business owner — all the way from a pizza shop owner to a criminal defense attorney to a plumber to a dentist — how these technologies generate a return on investment of time, money or other resources.

Back in the early 2010’s many local business owners didn’t understand why they needed Facebook business pages, Google Maps pages (even for directions and reviews), Yelp pages, LinkedIn business pages, nor other social media properties. Up until now, web3 topics have no relevance in the mind of the average local business owner. This is because the web3 enthusiasts haven’t yet even explained how such technologies even can do something as basic as boost existing search engine rankings.

That begins to change for you right now!

ice cream sundae - used for metaphor regarding web3 technologies and local business owner SEO and lead generation

What Does An Ice Cream Sundae Have To Do With Web3 And Search Engine Rankings?!?!?

Most people at least understand the concept of “fundamentals” and “nice to haves”… and one of the most universally-understood ways to show an example of this is an ice cream sundae!

If you owned a local ice cream shop then chances are you almost never have anyone come into your shop to buy JUST the “nice to haves”. Odds are that no one has ever come in JUST to buy sprinkles, hot fudge, cherries, or peanuts….

… but virtually everyone has come into your shop to buy at least a scoop of ice cream or a cake with ice cream as the main component!

In this case the “fundamental” thing people want from your shop would be the ice cream, and only a certain percentage of people want all the “nice to haves” or “add-ons” like fudge, nuts, whipped cream, etc.

In the case of using new web3 technologies to help any local business owner generate more business from prospective customers and clients, the main focus (as of August 2023) is to give that business owner the “fundamental” benefit of increased search engine rankings for main local keywords. In our example, increased SEO rankings are – for now – the “ice cream” because this can lead to new phone calls and emails.

The “nice to haves” or “add-ons” would be benefits in the future such as:

  • The ability to add a 3D building onto the virtual land plot
  • Adding Artificial Intelligence (AI) “avatars” to interact with prospective customers inside the 3D building
  • Tie-ins with AI tools for automation, local competition analysis, avatar creation, and other AI benefits
  • Other “metaverse” interactivity, including paying for local advertisements on 3D buildings for local landmarks
  • Increased value of the metaverse/virtual land (as mentioned in this April 2023 article from the Dallas Observer)
  • Selling digital t-shirts for metaverse avatars
  • Treasure hunts in the metaverse to “mine resources” and otherwise have a “gamified” experience
  • Ability to purchase metaverse digital assets with cryptocurrencies
  • Etc.

example of virtual land web3 NFT to be used as part of larger local SEO marketing efforts

Virtual Land For Local Business Search Engine Ranking Improvements

One thing the average business owner CAN understand is not ranking high enough in the search engines for desired keyword phrases; and, therefore, missing out on prospective phone calls or other leads. This post will introduce one of the first ways that a local business owner can see search engine ranking increases (aka “web 2” searches) by leveraging one of these new web3 technologies which any local business owner can begin to understand conceptually.

That method is virtual land in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT). All this means is that it represents digital ownership on the blockchain, much like the ownership title to your home or commercial property is registered with your local county.

Virtual land represents a piece of the earth where his/her business operates, much like one understands an online map which represents the location of the office or store. At this point in time, there are several “metaverses” which represents either fictional worlds or represent all (or most) of Earth. Our situation requires us to focus on the Earth-based virtual lands; and at this time there are four (4) main metaverse platforms which don’t require any Virtual Reality goggles or headsets of any kind:

  • Earth2

In order to help your local search engine rankings for the last part of 2023 and beyond, we are going to narrow your focus to the virtual land NFTs available in the last two options: Next Earth and MyLand

Why?

Solely for the SEO benefits, at least in the short-term.

Next Earth has partnered with another company in order to have a “1-2” approach:

  • The virtual land (NFT) allows for a description which permits links to your website and other web properties
  • Generate new “business layer” pages which can be indexed by the search engines AND help push up your local search engine rankings

Later in 2023, and into 2024, the business layer component also will allow access for 3D buildings, AI automation tools, and other “nice to haves” mentioned earlier in the section on ice cream!

MyLand doesn’t have the partner company, nor the AI integrations, yet. You can place a link, however, in the description of your land and begin the link building/SEO benefit. Integrations for 3D buildings, digital avatars and more already are available for the platform should those be of interest to you.

So What Is The Real Use Of Virtual Land, And How Does It Make My Phone Ring Within The Next Month Or Sooner?

Great questions!

When it comes to local search engine rankings, the search engines have their own algorithms for what they deem to be A.R.T. or R.A.T. or T.A.R. The combination doesn’t matter as all that those letters mean are:

  • A = Authoritative
  • R = Relevant
  • T = Trustworthy

Links from authoritative websites, surrounded by relevant and geographic-specific content, will help your search engine rankings improve in most cases. When you purchase digital real estate (virtual land) which represents the land where you operate some or all of your business, then you have to add important content to the pages which can be read (and crawled/indexed) by the search engines.

There are several steps to this, so if you aren’t familiar with the following then be sure to contact us for help (email us here):

  • NFTs and OpenSea.io
  • Web3 wallets like MetaMask
  • How to format links
  • Synchronizing one’s virtual land (digital real estate) NFT with a partner business layer for the SEO benefit
  • Link building to the NFT URLs in order to get them indexed by the search engines and pass along more authority
  • Formatting the SEO title and description tags properly

If done properly, hopefully you soon will notice an increase in your search engine rankings for keyword phrases most relevant to the SEO title, SEO description, links, and other content you added to your virtual land.

So How Does This Differ From Just Another Online Maps Listing Like Google Maps Or Waze Driving Directions?

Another great question!

At its most basic level, virtual land (digital real estate) which represents land where you operate a business is actually LESS functional than Google Maps. Some will permit reviews, some won’t, and you have less control and flexibility than Google Maps (aka your Google Business Profile listing).

Additionally, one of the prominent SEO authority websites (Backlinko) recently updated its list in 2023 to include roughly 170 ways to generate backlinks and traffic to a website.

So why would anyone spend money on this virtual land?!?

Yet another fantastic question too!

Your goals when it comes to online marketing, besides generating new business, are to accomplish any combination of the following:

  • Save time
  • Save money
  • Increase precision
  • Generate new revenue / profit avenues
  • Scale your business quickly
  • Reduce liability
  • Improve brand awareness and turn customers into loyal “fans” like a sports team’s loyal fan base

Unlike practically all of the 170+ current backlinking and traffic-generation methods mentioned in the Backlinko article, virtual land (digital real estate) and other web3 links (POAPs, NFT profiles, and even web3 websites) are the only ones which offer the “add-ons” like the ice cream sundae mentioned earlier!

These “add-ons” to virtual land/digital real estate NFTs and their associated SEO business page functions can help you achieve your “big picture” goals about saving time, increasing customer awareness and engagement, generate new revenues, being on the cutting edge of technology, and other benefits. In particular you either right now can, or very soon will be able to:

  • Get Artificial Intelligence (AI) content generation tools which can automate your blogging & content marketing efforts to save you time and/or scale the amount of content you can share with prospective customers/clients
  • Add in 3D buildings where you then can design a virtual office in whatever manner you want with interactive images, galleries, and more.
  • You can give prospective customers a better understanding of your business/office/store location such as proximity to major roads and highways, where to park, and more. That way the person can get a better understanding, using his/her digital avatar, of what is around your business location.
  • Soon you will be able to create AI avatars of yourself – or a spokesperson for the business – in whatever voice you would like. You then will be able to put that digital representative for the business inside a 3D building and answer commonly-asked questions, much like the “FAQ” pages you see on many websites.
  • You can convey information in a different format in order to make it easier for a prospective customer or client to understand the problem you are solving and/or to visualize and “experience” the final outcome. For example, a local tax professional can create a “relaxing spa day” in the virtual land metaverse — and attach that to his/her 3D office building — in order to convey the benefits of tax savings and deductions which the tax professional might be able to provide.
  • Soon people even will be able to place online orders for customized items, like custom furniture, after having visited the metaverse 3D building on your virtual land. The prospective customer can mix/match colors, flooring, wall colors and see his/her digital avatar sitting on the digital furniture in order to “test” how that person might look to others when he/she invited friends or family to the house.
  • Much more to come soon

All of the above are current, or soon-to-be-released, “add-ons” or “toppings” to the main goal (the “ice cream”) of getting increased leads coming from the search engines. No other existing SEO backlinking methods offer this range of additional benefits in the short-term and longer-term.

The associated business pages which are synchronized with the main virtual land page (NFT) also can be used to test new areas of town if you buy virtual land plots in new areas. This might work if you need to test an online market and want a lead generation website or other web property. Click this link for more on that topic.

This Sounds Great…. But Do You Have Any Proof That Any Of This Has Worked?

Yes!

In late July/early August 2023, a chiropractor in Dallas needed help. He wanted more search engine exposure for one the wealthy Dallas suburbs which was just under five miles away from his office. He ranked #10 (bottom of page 1) in Google for the keyword “chiropractor SUBURB TX” as well as #10 for “chiropractor SUBURB Dallas”.

Within 5 days he jumped up 5 spots in Google for both keywords as a result of the search engine optimization on the virtual land NFT, the business page and land page associated with the underlying virtual land NFT, and link building efforts to boost all 3 of those properties. Yes, he even got a phone call to schedule a consultation from the suburb he wanted when he hadn’t heard from anyone in that suburb previously.

This is considered a good “win” from the search engine perspective for several reasons:

  • Not only are there numerous chiropractic clinics in the Dallas area, each with their own websites, there also are potentially dozens of social media properties, local business directories, chiropractic / medical directories, Yelp and similar review sites, and blogs which all are competing to be #1.
  • There are many SEO professionals serving these Dallas area chiropractors who all want to be #1 as well!
  • The city has over 2 million people plus the neighboring suburbs, so the competition is fierce for first-time phone calls or emails for such a service.

Over time there will be more case studies added to this website and the LinkedIn page.

What Is My Next Step?

If you are comfortable taking action on your own then start with the Next Earth and MyLand links mentioned earlier, and use the promo codes if provided to save on your first virtual land purchase. Then learn more about how to format the links & SEO tags and then how to synchronize your land with any third-party business layer pages like Next Earth has. Once all are live and look good, then do your social sharing and link building (or even tiered link building) to the new properties in order to get them indexed in the search engines.

You then can study the mechanics and strategies for the “add-ons” such as 3D buildings, AI automation tools, and adding digital avatars. You also can join the various Discord communities or follow your preferred virtual land platform on the major social media sites + read their respective white papers.

If all of the above seems too daunting, or you just don’t have time, then schedule a consultation with us. We can discuss the real world situations you are facing including competitors’ recent online marketing actions, how your prospective customers think and what they need, and where you are in local search engine rankings for your most appropriate keywords. After that we then can customize a game plan which is appropriate for your specific needs, budget, and any constraints.

Thank you for reading all of this and feel free to contact us with your questions either via the email contact form or the LinkedIn company page.

Filed Under: nft, SEO, virtual land, web3
June 22, 2023 by

SEO And Marketing Your Local Business On Patch.com

This page will use Dallas Texas as the example city for various ways in which local businesses can market their products and services on the Patch.com website. There are several ways in which a local business can see an increase in new customers or clients by using the features inside (and outside!) of Patch in intelligent ways.

First, let’s compare Patch with sites like Craigslist and NextDoor:

Craigslist

Service listings in Craigslist now typically require a monthly fee (roughly $5/month) for service business classified ads like HVAC, roofing, and even licensed professions like tax returns and real estate. This is different than it was in the past. However there is no targeted zip code/regional advertising other than the flat monthly fee.

Craigslist doesn’t permit reviews and it doesn’t have a “social” component to its features. You can list events for free, but you will have to pay to get exposure in other regions if your business crosses Craigslist’s regional boundaries.

NextDoor

Nextdoor has very basic free listings for businesses such as this Dallas-area business. Your business is allowed to add a logo, some pictures, hours of operation, a website link, and a small business bio. You will have to pay to get exposure outside of a small radius around your physical office/building/store location. Nextdoor users are allowed to leave reviews, but business owners have minimal option to reply to those reviews unlike Google Business Profile (Google Maps) business listings.

So Why Use Patch?

Patch, at the time of this post, is more powerful at the local level than most people realize. It has the ability to offer some nice benefits to any local business owner:

  • Free to join
  • You can have two listings -> one “personal” and one official “business”
  • Your services can be added as “Classifieds”
  • Your company’s events can be promoted locally
  • Paid advertising options within Patch exist (see more here)
  • The classified ad service listings, if optimized properly, can rank in Google on their own for local keywords
  • You are allowed to add an image with your classified listings (not all classified ad sites permit this)
  • The links inside your business profile and classified listings can help power up your main website, Google Business listing, YouTube channel and other web properties to rank higher in the search engines
  • You can follow other local businesses and like/share their postings, thus raising awareness of your business once they see you engaging with their content
  • Local news keeps you updated on happenings in your area
  • You can post local news (not just service listings) and start to build trust in your company from other local Patch users

Combining the above, you can increase the chances of your business gaining new customers/clients and building goodwill in your local market.

Examples Of This Working

This local Dallas sports bar offers a stage with large screen, DJ booth, microphone system, and more in case a private party wants to rent the restaurant for an awards event, live music event, or even a large birthday party. Their Patch listing ranks #1, even above Maps, in Google for those seeking such a venue:

If you post an event, the links inside the description can be used for “off-page SEO link building” to help send traffic to the inner pages of your website. The goal is to use relevant, authoritative and trustworthy websites to point links to these non-home page portions of your website in order to boost those pages higher up in the search engines.

Patch is interesting in that even after the event has concluded, it keeps the original listing live. This means that the power of those links doesn’t go away once the event is finished. This listing is still live even though the event concluded a few weeks ago (from the time of this post):

Your listing on Patch even can rank well when people go the search engines and look for a wider geographic area. In this case, local training classes for “Dallas Fort Worth” are ranking #1 in the organic listings (just under the Maps listings) in Google despite the Patch listing only being posted in the “Dallas” community:

Sometimes you need to increase your company’s brand name plus the city in which you are located for increasing search engine authority that your business is a legitimate local company. Here is one such example where this was done, especially for a business with office out of the home:

Some times you may be entering a niche within a highly-competitive local market. Bathroom remodeling in Collin County is highly-competitive with the County’s overall revenue potential for quality contractors, so this niche (shower glass doors) is using Patch to begin to enter that market and start getting phone calls:

Occasionally you get a unique situation such as this driving school located on the Garland-Richardson border. The main instructor also is approved by Texas DPS to be an off-site “third party” driving test location. This is so that people won’t have to wait for weeks to take their driving tests, especially in high-population areas like Dallas and Garland.

If you are expanding into a new region, you also can use Patch to test (probe) and see if you need to invest heavily in pay-per-click for a new niche. In this case, a video production company with a Downtown Dallas address wants to enter the niche (“podcast video recording”) in a suburb of Dallas – in this case McKinney. The Patch listing ranks #1 in Google after the “Sponsored” paid ad section of the search result.

What Else Can Be Done With Patch?

In addition to ranking in the search engines and using the description of your profile & classified ad service listings for SEO link building, here are some first step suggestions:

  • Engage with the local businesses and active people in your geographic area. Do this to start to build awareness and trust in your company.
  • Post any open-to-the-public event that you are hosting or promoting. Using the sports bar example earlier, they should use Patch to promote the nights when they have boxing, MMA, or major professional or college sporting event watch parties.
  • Test new niches and/or markets with an ad to determine if your Patch listing will rank in Google quickly (like the podcast video recording example above). If it doesn’t rank on the first two pages in the search engines after a week, then your “probe” indicated that you likely will need to invest more into SEO hard costs like link building, content creation, on-page SEO development and possibly something like a paid press release.
  • Do some low-cost advertising within Patch to reach neighboring areas. Using the sports bar example again, they are located on the border of Dallas and Irving/Las Colinas. Currently they are in the “Dallas” Patch community due to their physical address, so they should consider paying to get exposure in the “Irving” Patch community for their services and/or events.
  • ** An advanced technique is to consider any listing on Patch (your business profile or one of your classified service ads) which links to your website as a “Tier 1” web property. In competitive local markets you can boost both your Patch listing as well as your main website with intelligent “Tier 2” link building, CTR traffic, social sharing and other advanced off-page SEO techniques. Contact us for more details about your specific needs.

Finally, be sure to geo-tag your images with appropriate latitude/longitude, meta data in the Properties field and more to help your efforts. You likely spent time and/or money on your photos and graphic designed image files, so take a few extra steps to give each image file the best odds of helping you. Once geo-tagged you can use these image files where appropriate, such as on your Patch business profile and your individual Patch classified listings.

While Dallas Texas was used as the example in this post, the action steps mentioned are applicable to most areas of the United States. In some cases, you can reduce website costs if you only care about getting quick wins in the search engines; but please note that you can lose your rankings overnight if your Patch profile gets deleted. It always is best for you to have a fully-optimized website which you control all aspects: domain registration, website hosting, content, SEO optimization, images, other multimedia, and control the access as to whom can make changes.

Thank you and hopefully you found some benefit in reading this far! If you need help with your local internet marketing then Contact Us to schedule a call. We then, together, can customize a game plan to help you achieve what you would like to do in order to grow your business.

Filed Under: classified advertising, Event, internet marketing, link building, local marketing, online marketing, SEO
February 21, 2020 by

Medical Practice SEO, Online Marketing And Lead Generation

Case Study For Medical Practice Search Engine Optimization, YouTube Marketing, Pay Per Click, Facebook Ads, And Lead Generation

medical practice online marketing seo lead generation

This post will show the case study results of a multi-month campaign to help a medical practice (in this case a women’s health center in the Midwest United States) increase website traffic and phone calls.  The doctor wanted to target women, with a special emphasis on those seeking help with all things related to pregnancy.   This particular area of the country also faces a significant challenge with women in child-bearing ages who are currently using or struggling from the withdrawl symptoms of opioid and painkiller use before/during/after pregnancy.

The latter is important to know as it was part of the YouTube video ad campaign targeting.  The goals of course were to get more immediate phone calls; but the goals also were to improve search engine rankings and increase social awareness of the doctor’s multiple office locations within roughly 20-30 miles of each other.

 

SEO For The Medical Practice

Several services are performed at his center including OB/GYN services, mammograms, pregnancy care, and much more.  He also performs specialized women’s health surgical procedures.

The SEO efforts worked significantly well for the searches done in/for the towns where he had his various office locations.  Here are just some of the Google ranking results (“SERP’s”) for many of his desired keywords:

  • OB GYN CITY 1 (#1 in the Maps rankings and #3 in the organic results)
  • OB GYN CITY 2 (#1 in the Maps rankings and #3 in the organic results)
  • pregnancy care CITY 1 (#1 in the Maps rankings and #1 in the organic results)
  • pregnancy care CITY 2 (#2 in the Maps rankings and #2 in the organic results)
  • women’s health care CITY 1 (#1 in the Maps rankings and #1 in the organic results)
  • women’s health care CITY 2 (#1 in the Maps rankings and #1 in the organic results)

 

skeptical woman

If you are making decisions for a medical practice and seek guidance on how to gain exposure to your digital/online web properties which have your practice’s contact information (not just your website) then you likely want to know where situations were not as “rosy” or didn’t work out like expected.  That is a healthy (no pun intended!) way to approach any case study you encounter, like the one you see on this page.

So what went wrong?

There are 10 towns nearest to his 3 main office locations which have median household income (according to Census data) of $50,000 or more.  While his website mentioned those towns, he did not have unique pages set up for each of those desired towns – let alone those unique pages having unique content and optimized SEO tags specific to that town.  This hurt his SERP’s (especially in Google) for the same keywords mentioned above.

Here are the results for two of those nearby, higher-median-income towns:

  • OB GYN HIGH INCOME TOWN 1 (YouTube video ranks #4 and “Areas Served” page of website ranking #7 organic)
  • pregnancy care HIGH INCOME TOWN 1 (YouTube video ranks #2 and “Areas Served” page of website ranking #4 organic
  • women’s health care HIGH INCOME TOWN 1 (#1 in the Maps rankings and #1 in the organic results)
  • OB GYN HIGH INCOME TOWN 2 (no rankings anywhere on page 1 of SERP’s)
  • pregnancy care HIGH INCOME TOWN 2 (website’s “Areas Served” page ranking #10 in organic results – bottom of page 1)
  • women’s health care HIGH INCOME TOWN 2 (no rankings anywhere on page 1 of SERP’s)

 

TAKEAWAYS FOR SEO FOR THIS MEDICAL PRACTICE

There were several things which could have been done better to help him rank in the organic rankings in the SERP’s for the nearby towns.  These include, but are not limited to:

  • Build out high-income town-specific pages, each with unique content on them specific to that town.  Then optimize those new pages for relevant keywords and the town name
  • Create more video content, optimized specifically for that town, and embed it on the new town-specific page
  • Geo-tag stock photos (or photos he provided of his practice locations) and upload them onto the new specific town page
  • Double check with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools for any errors or other issues preventing these new pages from getting indexed and crawled
  • Create custom Google My Maps with driving directions from the specific high-income town to nearby landmarks, including driving directions to his office locations and more
  • Get testimonials from patients in the specific town and embed on the new town-specific page
  • Possible schema markup for that particular town’s new page
  • Alt text with the specific town for any image embedded on that page
  • List of services for patients in that specific town such as pregnancy support groups, etc.

 

Had the above been done then he likely would have seen an increase in relevant website traffic from the towns he wanted.  Even if the town specific pages had a lower conversion rate than the rest of his website (hopefully not, but just staying conservative for this example) then he still would have noticed an increase in phone calls from the higher-income towns.  This is because the volume of relevant traffic visiting his website and/or videos (or medical/doctor directory listings) which would be ranking well would be so significant that even a lower-percentage conversion rate (calls or emails) would have generated new patient appointments.

We also could have added more outbound links on his new town pages which would have linked to his directory pages on Healthgrades.com, Zocdoc and other places with favorable reviews.

 

Google My Business (Maps) Results For This Medical Practice

This was very favorable for the 5+ mile radius around each of his office locations.  The statistics and metrics given to us for the Google My Business listings (sometimes mistakenly referred to as Maps results/analytics) for his three main office locations showed several favorable benefits over a 3-month period:

  • Nearly 900 phone calls coming to his two main phone numbers which he used (the same two phone numbers applied to each office location as he had a centralized phone service).  It is unknown how many spam/telemarketer calls came in, but even if it was 2/3 of the time (being vastly exaggerated for this example) this would mean he still received 300 phone calls (1/3 of the 900) from possibly legitimate patients.  Of course some would be for current and previous patients, but he still saw an increase in new patients as a result of his favorable Maps/My Business results in the “Snack Pack” (3-pack) of maps results showing for the local Google searches.
  • We didn’t see as dramatic a pickup in calls from Bing, but there was a steady flow of calls each month coming from Bing
  • We didn’t see many click-to-call metrics coming from Yelp, but this was because we didn’t emphasize Yelp that much during this project
  • He saw several hundred “clicks to website” (as defined inside the Google My Business analytics/metrics reporting) and several hundred clicks to get directions to his various office locations.
  • He received some reviews on his Google My Business/Maps locations.  While he received several favorable reviews on Facebook, not as many went to Google to leave positive reviews.  This is an area where he can improve upon in future months

 

Additionally, his two main office locations (of his 3 in total) showed a dramatic increase in the generic searches where his listing appeared, versus just “branded” (practice name) or individual name (such as his name of “Dr. XYZ”) queries.  This means his various business listings, especially for the two main offices, started to gain significant increases in awareness for searches/queries being done within a 10 mile radius of each location for phrases like:

  • “ultrasound near me”
  • “pregnancy doctor CITY 1”
  • “nearby mammogram facility”
  • etc.

google my business maps lead generation seo online marketing

So why did this happen?  What was done right?

Several things were done to help him improve:

  • Double-checking for correct category, business address, hours of operation, etc.
  • Adding all of the services, surgery types, and other benefits of his practice
  • Including links to his listings on Healthgrades.com and other medical professional directories
  • Geo-tagging the images and then choosing the correct category after uploading into the GMB listing
  • Same for raw video files (uploading the raw files, not just the YouTube videos)
  • Sharing content on the updates as “micro” posts (like a mini-blog) and value-added content
  • Doing link building and social sharing of the micro-website (a business.site URL) which automatically comes with all verified GMB listings
  • Intra-linking the Google-provided properties with other Google assets
  • Other advanced GMB tactics

 

WHAT ELSE COULD HAVE BEEN DONE?

There were several additional things which could have been done to get him even more exposure, thus more prospective patients:

  • More geo-tagged photos and raw videos, especially for the advanced services and surgeries he offers
  • More quality citations, especially from local county-specific and medical-specific business directories which would permit the addition of his practice’s name, office address, phone number and website
  • Building out the high-income town-specific new pages and sharing them on the GMB updates
  • Taking the individual URL’s (links) for each post/update we made and sharing those links on high-authority web 2.0 properties like a Tumblr blog themed about women’s health.  This would have been even better had we claimed a previously-used high-SEO-authority Tumblr name for the blog and re-purposed it to be about women’s health!
  • Using even more of the GMB advanced tactics
  • More link building to the micro-website
  • More Google business reviews with the names of the towns and/or services provided in the text from the individual reviewers

 

YouTube SEO, Advertising And Other Marketing For Medical Practices

This was as close to a “home run” as we could get for the practice, especially for the limited budget we had regarding YouTube.  Like many doctors, he spent way too much on the videographer services (worrying about lighting and the staff worrying about makeup and wardrobe issues) rather than the big concern which was syndication and exposure to his video content. 

Earlier in this post you read that his YouTube videos ranked well in Google organic results (not just YouTube results) for desired local keywords.  The videos which ranked were just 30 second slide show videos with some stock music and just using stock photos and his logo!  While we tried to help him see the bigger picture, vanity and ego played a role here.  He only provided less than $100 for YouTube ads, but we maximized the exposure for what we were allocated; and had he spent less on videographer concerns – and more on getting his video content seen by the right audiences (e.g. women ages 18-24 looking up other pregnancy-related videos in YouTube within 10 miles of each office location) then his phone likely would have been ringing even more!

medical doctor youtube marketing seo ads paid views online video

 

Nonetheless, here are the results from the YouTube marketing he did:

  • Ranked #1 or #2 organic (in YouTube searches) for almost all of his desired keywords for the towns where he has office locations
  • Ranked #1 or #2 organic (in YouTube searches) for over 50% of his desired keywords for the 10 higher-income towns he wanted which were not the towns in which he has office locations
  • Has generated nearly 2500 views on his channel across all of his videos (slide show videos, him speaking on video, his staff speaking on video, and testimonial videos).  Virtually all views came from the counties where he wanted to attract new patients
  • The 2500 views does not even factor in the views of the raw video files in his Google My Business/Maps listings, nor does it factor in views of his videos when uploaded as raw video files on the Facebook pages for each of his office locations.  The number of “views” factoring those would be over another 1500 views.  The 2500 views is just restricted to views in YouTube either organically, as a paid ad/view in YouTube (targeting women 18-35 in his desired counties), and when the video ranked well in main Google searches.

 

WHAT ELSE COULD HAVE BEEN DONE?

The big thing on which he “missed the boat” regarding YouTube is that he never did a thorough video of any kind (him speaking, animation character speaking, slide show video, etc.) talking about the very difficult topic of women dealing with opioid and painkiller problems before, during or right after pregnancy.  The reason why from a marketing standpoint (besides the desire to help these women and innocent babies who would be dealing with all forms of their mothers’ opioid problems) this was a missed opportunity was:

  • We could track that women ages 18-24 in his 4-5 desired counties were watching other YouTube videos on the topic of opioids & pregnancy
  • Many of those videos were on channels which permitted ads to run (typically a video ad before the main video started)
  • Those ad spot opportunities were very inexpensive, sometimes as low as 2-3 cents per “view” (where a “view”, in YouTube ad’s definition, is 25+ seconds of watch time when running as an ad)

 

This means that if he gave us just another $100 to spend, plus just one video speaking directly on the topics of maternity and opioid challenges, then the doctor may have been able to:

  • Get upward of 3000 views (25+ seconds or more of watch time per “view”) from women ages 18-24 in his desired geographic areas.  This would be calculated with a “view” costing him 3 cents, then he would have spent $1 to get 33 “views”.  A $100 ad spend then could have generated 3000+ “views”, possibly more.
  • We could have targeted specific keywords, entire YouTube channels, or even just specific videos which permitted ads to run in front of them like this one:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbeVhMye9NQ

His video also could have been added to a new YouTube playlist on the topic, with his video at the #1 spot (plus a description including a link to his website and phone number), and several videos from authoritative news and medical YouTube channels confirming the issues regarding opioids and pregnant women.

That new multi-video playlist (with his video appearing first) then could have been:

  • Embedded on his website pages
  • Shared on the Google My Business updates/posts section
  • Shared on his Facebook pages
  • Received low-cost paid traffic via Google Display Network ads (an advanced technique here)
  • Included inside a press release about the topic
  • Sent to relevant prospective patients via email
  • Several other ways to show that his words in an opioid-specific video were then being backed up by authoritative other videos (like the PBS News Hour link mentioned earlier)

 

Nonetheless, his YouTube efforts produced solid results and still are ranking well to this day. 

ONE EXTRA BENEFIT TO YOUTUBE ADS

Unlike most other forms of online digital paid advertising, YouTube ads have an unexpected benefit!  That is if you have the videos properly optimized before running them as paid ads in YouTube, then once the ad spend stops… you still may gain long-term benefit.

What does this mean?

In essence, the “views” (25+ seconds or more of watch time when running as an ad in YouTube) coming from the desired geographic area — which match the keywords for which you are optimizing the video — basically help your video(s) rank better in YouTube and, ultimately, Google for desired keywords.  That is why his videos rank well in Google to this day for one of his nearby high-income town keywords.  The paid ads in YouTube came from that town to his slide show video and, once the paid ads/views stopped, the video had gained enough “watch time” and authority to be deemed “authoritative” enough by Google to still rank well for those relevant town-specific keywords.

This is one of the reasons why we fought hard to focus on YouTube ads as much as (if not more than) Facebook ads.  If the “homework” is done properly up front, then the amount spent on ads (views) could be less than Facebook ads… and you might get the long-term SEO rankings as an extra benefit!

 

Facebook Marketing And Ads

His Facebook marketing did okay, but his staff didn’t answer patient inquiries sent through Facebook either at all, or they were very slow to respond.  This hurt his Facebook efforts to gain a ton of new phone calls as women in his area’s younger demographic (18-24) just seem to refuse to pick up the phone and make a phone call to book an appointment.  Most chose to email or send a Facebook message.

Nonetheless, by sharing his videos and some helpful “social” content (like articles about what to do if you believe you are pregnant) and some Facebook ads, we were able to generate about 20-25 phone calls and inquiry appointments for him.

This wasn’t necessarily all that great, considering what could have been the case, but there was no active campaign to have his current and previous patients follow him on Facebook.  That would have been the “seed” to grow the universe to whom he then could share content, with the intent of some of those first-phase followers sharing his “value added” content with their friends and followers.  There were many missed opportunities, but at least the efforts generated new patients nonetheless.

 

 

Instagram, Yelp, Twitter, Tumblr And Nextdoor

instagram medical doctor marketing online lead generation social media

None of these were implemented due to time and budget limitations.  Still, each could have influenced many new prospective patients to call him for appointments as his practice offers a wide range of women’s health services for women of all ages.

Advanced software now can take the Instagram and Twitter and Tumblr platforms to new levels and each can benefit any medical practice across the country in customized ways.  Yes, these social and review platforms even can have search engine optimization (SEO) benefits despite their not being typically associated with SEO or SEM.

In this doctor’s case, Instagram would have been terrific as so many women between the ages of 18-24 use Instagram in his desired geographic areas.  Unfortunately, it is difficult for a third-party marketing service to “handle his Instagram” due to his state’s licensing agencies being stringent on content that is shared on social media.  The content would have had to have been managed primarily by someone on his staff, and there was no willingness to do so by someone with a marketing mindset in his offices.

To clarify, the “marketing mindset” refers to someone who understands that (while staying compliant with state laws and overall levels of appropriateness for the audience) the goal is to grow the practice’s patient numbers.  This would require the intelligent blending of any/all of the following:

  • Choosing the right hashtags to use for Instagram posts.  For example, at the time of this post (February 2020), the Instagram hashtag of #pregnancyannouncement has been used over 570,000 times (https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/pregnancyannouncement/).  Missing the boat on this hashtag and high-volume related hashtags (like #mothertobe and #amipregnant) could lose him valuable new patients from his area.  This wouldn’t even factor in using local hashtags!
  • Incentivizing previous patients to share/like the doctor’s Instagram posts.  This does not mean a monetary incentive, but more of a sense of community and feeling welcomed by the doctor and his staff
  • Choosing appropriate photos showing the overall good feeling his patients get when they arrive at his offices
  • Posts helping with the emotions women feel when they experience any wide number of challenges related to unfortunate health news
  • Attracting to the Instagram page the boyfriends, fiances and husbands in the geographic area to help them better understand women’s health so that they enhance their relationships and trust the doctor (and his team) to protect the health of the women they love
  • When (and when not!) to comment on a patient’s Instagram post, and what to post on behalf of the practice – both from a sense of being appropriate as well as state licensing/compliance agency requirements
  • Much more

 

RECAP

Thank you for reading this far regarding the case study.  There were some solid “wins”, some “losses” and a few missed opportunities.  This website name of “More Than SEO” was chosen for a reason, as you can see that much is required in today’s online marketing environment to grow a local business – especially a medical practice dealing with the high emotions and costs associated with one’s health.

In all, for the time expended and the ad budget given, we are happy with the results but know that so much more could have been achieved.  Either way, you now have a case study showing that medical practice online marketing and SEO is much more than just choosing the color and design of your practice’s website, throwing on the site a few images, and running a few Facebook ads!

We hope that you have a better understanding of your own business model now in order to grow your practice. 

 

FINAL THOUGHTS:  TRUST

trust hands

 

The biggest takeaway we want you to have is that marketing “trust” is now fragmented, even within the very same person you are trying to reach!

For example, if your practice was trying to reach women ages 18-24 in suburban America with a median household income of $50,000 or more then that woman has “fragmented” trust from a marketing perspective.  By this we mean she likely:

  • Doesn’t pick up the phone and call local businesses very often.  She will be more comfortable initiating contact via Facebook or Instagram or email.  Having her fill in complex contact forms on websites (while easier for you to manage) may not necessarily be in her best interest.
  • Spends time with friends online via Snapchat and/or Instagram
  • Won’t respond much (if at all) to local print advertising (e.g. local newspapers, flyers, and local print publications)
  • Might be on Facebook, but may not respond to ads
  • Will be watching videos of interest to her on YouTube
  • Will be making lots of “near me” queries in Google, perhaps via voice searches (e.g. “OB GYN near me” or similar searches)
  • May make home-related decisions on Houzz.com
  • May consult boards on Pinterest for several ideas, especially anything inclined toward static images
  • Will consult national websites for articles like those on Huffington Post or others
  • Uses apps like Poshmark and other apps to make decisions to buy/sell items locally
  • Will rely heavily on local reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc. before making a business decision or a decision regarding her health
  • Will check the reviews not just of the practice but also the social media of the doctor himself/herself.  That is why doctors now have to be more disciplined in their personal lives than ever before
  • May not listen to any local news on the radio
  • Likely doesn’t know or care about your local chamber of commerce
  • Etc.

In previous decades local “trust” was restricted to word-of-mouth referrals, local newspapers, radio, community publications, chamber of commerce, phone book ads, local TV stations, and a few other “trusted” sources.  The internet and social media and apps blew the door wide open so there now are many changes in how someone making decisions for a medical practice (typically in/above the age of 40) differs from someone a generation younger (18-24). 

The big thing is to “get out of your own head” and how you make decisions; and, instead, get “inside the head” of the people you want to become new patients.  Learn how they think, what they trust, and how they make decisions online.  If you do that, stay humble with your marketing, and offer great service (thus generating a consistent flow of favorable patient reviews!), you should see an increase in your business in the coming months.

If you would like help for your medical practice or other medical-related business (ranging anywhere from compounding pharmacies to revenue cycle management to medical equipment) then contact us here:

CONTACT

 

 

 

Filed Under: internet marketing, lead generation, local marketing, medical, online marketing, pay per click, SEO, small towns Tagged With: , , ,
June 10, 2016 by

Google My Maps Marketing And SEO Strategy

Benefits Of Using Google My Maps

One of the more unique tools offered by Google in recent months is its new “My Maps” functionality.   The ability to use for real world marketing, online marketing, SEO, boosting your YouTube videos, boosting awareness of your website’s (or other web property’s) images, inner pages and posts, and “Tier 2” link building is impressive.

 

What Is “My Maps”?

Unlike regular Google Maps, which promotes specific locations such as your corporate headquarters or store locations, this tool enables you to make an indefinite number of “maps” which you can customize and use to show the public several aspects of your business.   For example, you can create a custom My Maps map of:

  • Cities where your customers or clients are located anywhere around the world
  • Specific locations where you may have been a public speaker
  • Locations where you have been an exhibitor at trade shows
  • Event venues where you have performed or had your products (or services) used
  • Any other way you can think of displaying relevant geographic information in a visual manner rather than a simple list

 

Why Should I Consider Using This My Maps Method?  What Benefit Can It Give Me To Make My Phone Ring Or Otherwise Grow My Business?

These are great questions!

Since this is a Google-owned property, which you can access using your Google account that you likely already use for YouTube/Gmail/Docs/Blogger (Blogspot) blogs/etc., you will easily be able to create many of these maps.  The benefits are many, including the flexibility to highlight subsets of your business such as “Client Locations In 2015” (and you can do another My Map for a previous year like 2014) or some of the benefits mentioned earlier.

In terms of online marketing and SEO benefits, you surprisingly can get more benefit out of these My Maps than you may realize.  Here are some specific things you can do with these Maps:

  • Most people don’t know that these My Maps can rank on their own in the search engines, much like a YouTube video can rank on its own.  Be sure to do proper keyword research and put the keywords in the correct My Maps fields
  • In the description field include your business “NAP” (for citations) and your phone number, if appropriate
  • In the description field link to your website, your social media properties, and any other web properties that make sense to promote (e.g. a press release distribution account central location, YouTube channel, guest post that features your business favorably, etc.)
  • Embed optimized YouTube videos in the specific map marker locations to help with local SEO for videos
  • Embed optimized (including geo-tagged) images in specific map marker locations
  • Link to inner pages on your website (or other web properties) which are relevant to the geographic area defined by the map marker
  • Much more

 

What To Do With These My Maps Once They Are Created?

You can do several things with these custom My Maps, both with the direct link and using iFrame embed code.  You can:

  • Embed the My Maps iFrame code on your website, blog or other primary web property
  • Share the link to the My Maps URL on your social media properties
  • Share the link in any e-mail newsletter you have
  • Make a QR code to the specific URL and share the code on print materials at trade shows, business cards, or other marketing done in the real world
  • Have the iFrame code get embedded on third-party web properties to send traffic to the My Maps page
  • Many other ways to market the link to the My Maps page (URL)

 

If you would like help on creating, marketing, getting search engine marketing benefits, or getting real world benefits from these custom Google My Maps then you are welcome to contact us.   We can help you gain more exposure to the My Map as well as promote your website and other web properties.

 

Examples Of These My Maps

Here is an example of a My Map for an optometrist in Dallas who wanted to promote the neighboring businesses near his office location:

 

Here is an interior designer based in Dallas, listing the nearby cities and suburbs where she has clients:

 

 

Here is a DFW real estate agent who lists some North Texas new neighborhoods where the home builders are offering incentives for prospective home buyers:

 

Here is a Map of client location history for a defense attorney who specializes in health care fraud cases such as those pertaining the False Claims Act, CLIA, Medicaid billing, anti-kickback and similar medical industry situations:

 

Here is a My Map featuring some of the locations of a commercial modular construction manufacturing company’s recently completed projects across the United States:

 

And here is a ranch and farm real estate broker’s My Maps listing of counties and towns featuring recently sold ranches and agricultural properties in Texas and Oklahoma:

Filed Under: Backlinks, image marketing, lead generation, link building, local marketing, Mobile, my maps, QR code, SEO, video optimization, youtube Tagged With: ,
April 18, 2015 by

Link Building After The Penguin Updates

This is a repost of an article I was asked to contribute to Greg’s old SearchSimplicity.com website.  It is reposted in its entirety here.

Please note that SEO has changed since the time of this article (late 2013), so contact me for more up to date strategies.  Nonetheless there are some helpful tips here which are still valid.

————————————–

The Types Of Links Which May Be “Friendly” As Tier 1 Links In The Post-Penguin 2.1 Environment

Many people involved with SEO may have legitimate concerns in the post-Penguin 2.1 environment.  Even with solid strategies being employed before the update, many professionals have had their strategies rendered worthless or counterproductive since the first week of October 2013.  These strategies could have included posting inadequately-spun content on only one type of platform, having too high of a percentage of the link anchor text containing the exact keyword, placing content on properties with low authority (Page Rank, Domain/Page Authority, etc.), or having too much “spammy” link content on a third tier of a typical tiered-linking system.

There is much discussion about how to recover lost rankings for affiliate sites, client sites, personal websites and authority sites.  Such discussions have revolved around changing anchor texts on first-tier (Tier 1) links which you can control, using the Google disavow tool, getting more social signals, improving on-page loading times and making websites more mobile-friendly.  All of these are helpful strategies, but no single strategy is likely to be the “magic bullet” sought when a panic situation happens.

One strategy which can help you regain (or even improve) your search engine rankings is to create more top-quality (Tier 1) links which point directly to a page on your website.  Additionally, they have to be formatted properly and in “Penguin-friendly” ratios.  The reasons for this recommendation include:

  • You can be in control of the links, including changing or removing them if needed in the future
  • You can structure the wording of your anchor text and the words surrounding the links
  • Images, videos, infographic content, podcasts and other multimedia has the potential to be embedded and generate a quality link
  • Link building software (e.g. GSA, SENukeX, Magic Submitter) can be used to boost these new Tier 1 links, if created properly
  • Previous content, such as images or PDF content, can be used separately

The goal is to focus on value-added content, ideally which has some sort of “verification” factor to it.  For example, a video on YouTube has the ability to be pulled – or at least voted with thumbs down ratings – should it fail to provide the YouTube community with value.  Likewise, value-added comments on industry blogs must be approved by the moderator especially if there are follow-up comments.

Going forward, you have over 30 options for the types of Tier 1 links which have high likelihood of being Penguin 2.1-friendly.  What you want to do is focus on getting your anchor text ratios in order.

As a rule of thumb, consider a “1 for 10″ breakdown.  This means that for every 10 quality (tier 1) links you create, only one should have the exact keyword for which you want to rank, pointing to a specific web-page on your website (or other web property).  The other nine links can be broken down like this:

*  1-2 links can be longer tail keywords, perhaps containing the main keyword
*  3-4 links should be “generic” anchor text like “click here”, “visit this page”, etc.
*  2-3 links should be focused (if applicable) around brand names, names of people, etc.
*  1-2 links should be derivations of the URL (with or without “http : //”, using capitalization on the first letter, etc.)

Of course, you should use as much unique content as you possibly can.  If you choose to use spun content, make every attempt to have the originally unique content spun at the sentence and/or paragraph level.  If you can, include multimedia such as images, videos, audio files and other complementary material.

Here are the roughly 30 types of links which you may wish to consider for your next batch of properly formatted and created Tier 1 links.  You are welcome to add comments about these as well as strategies to create quality Tier 2 links to these newly created Tier 1 links.

POSSIBLE PENGUIN-FRIENDLY TIER #1 LINK TYPES:

1) Citations (business directory listings) like Yelp, InsiderPages.com, Kudzu, etc. — obviously for local (primarily)

2) Intelligent, unique comments on high authority sites such as industry websites and blogs (like SearchSimplicity.com) for national keywords/authority and on local newspaper, radio, TV and local magazine sites for local SEO

3) Guest posts.  These opportunities can be found using all of the appropriate search strings (e.g. KEYWORD + “guest blogger”)

4) Private blog network –> unique hosting accounts, unique/relevant content (including images & videos), unique themes, varied anchor text, varied plug-ins, and even varied platforms (not all just WordPress).  Be smart and careful with these!

5) The top 40-50 article directory sites based on Alexa/PR/Moz Authority.  Again focus on those which require some sort of verification before going live.  You also may post unique, helpful content on sites which even may pay you a little bit of money (e.g. Seekyt.com)

6) Paid press release distribution on quality generic distribution sites (e.g. PRWeb.com) or on industry-specific newswires. Obviously a release (with or without embedded video) may get picked up on other sites. If you want to be conservative, do not optimize the URL with a keyword in the anchor text.  Instead, go with a straight URL or the company name/brand name as the anchor text

7) Optimized videos on sites like YouTube + the YouTube channel

8) Podcasts w/ unique content and distributed on podcast directory sites which still have some decent PR/other authority. Also you may consider a channel w/ unique content on a site like BlogTalkRadio.com with consistently-added content

9) Niche directories which have authority. Examples: industry/trade association directories or local chamber of commerce

10) Competitor backlinks (AHREFS, BacklinkWatch.com or MajesticSEO) and then run through AHREFS for Domain/Page Authority (or through Scrapebox for page-specific PR) or those with high relevance

11) Relevant forums which have some authority on the root domain. Optimized forum profile page and optimized signature files ONLY for those forum profiles where there are actual replies or forum thread starts

12) Social media platforms with legitimate, unique content (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, plus any niche-specific)

13) Answers on sites like Yahoo Answers or similar high-authority answers sites

14) Manually created Web 2.0 pages with unique content and a decent profile page.  These are not necessarily SENuke or GSA SEREngines web 2.0 pages, but rather manually created ones which look like a real human created (or at least edited!) them

15) A service like AutomaticBacklinks.com which puts links on pages w/ PR and some measure of relevance (not always perfect, but okay a portion of the time)

16) Helpful, unique infographic images uploaded to infographic-sharing sites.  Also, you can provide source code to have people embed your infographic on their websites, linking back to your desired web page

17) Getting broken links on relevant sites cleaned up.  You can ask the webmaster to provide a link back to your web property; or, if appropriate, have the webmaster change the link from the broken one to your desired web property

18) Pinning relevant, interesting images on Pinterest and Instagram.  You also can upload, and link back to your desired web property, on image-sharing sites so long as the content is relevant and interesting

19) Interactive content such as quizzes, widgets and other interactive/dynamic content.  These can be added to sites like Quizilla and widget-sharing sites.  Make sure that the content is unique, timely and relevant.  Like the infographic content, you can provide source code to have people embed your infographic on their websites, linking back to your web property

20) Syndicating your blog content.  You can do this by syndicating your RSS feed, using WordPress services which share your content on other websites, sharing content via blog directories, etc.

21) Getting your content shared with volume on social news sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, etc.  This is different than traditional social media properties like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.

22) Links acquired from sources other than traditional “guest posts”.  These include assisting reporters through services like Help A Reporter Out

23) Links on sites which permit discounts, incentives, giveaways, etc.  Focus on those which require some sort of verification process to minimize being in a “neighborhood” with spam

24) Relevant comments on EDU, GOV, MIL and other “hard to get” domains.  These can be tough to acquire, so be sure that the time invested is worth the effort

25) Sponsorship and/or donation links on scholastic (EDU) and organization links.  Ideally, see you can get social media or industry (or local) press about the donation to generate further links

26) Networking to get links.  An example at the local level is to ask a local hotel to provide a link to a local taxi website if the taxi service provides the hotel’s guests with quality service

27) Have others post on your website and then have them share the link to the post on your website through their social media accounts

28) Uploading relevant software to software directories to get links.  Be sure that this isn’t spam software, but actually valuable content which can be given favorable reviews and/or be worthy enough of being shared on social media

29) Any other types of links which can be generated by providing content through networking like Buzzstream and/or Buzzbundle

30) If possible, create helpful tutorials and share them on tutorial sites

31) Share unique content via PDF or slide content on sites like Scribd.com, Slideshare.net and similar document-sharing sites.  Some e-book directories may qualify here; but focus on those which have the high levels of traffic and search engine authority to get a quality link

Additional quality links could be established by “paid reviews”/”paid blog posts”, classified ads (though most are temporary), getting other people to bookmark your content on their social bookmarking accounts (especially relevant ones) and a few other possible methods.

If you do not feel comfortable using any of the 30+ link types mentioned as Tier 1 links, then you likely can use them as Tier 2 links pointing to the Tier 1 links.  This allows for the customized indirect linking which Greg mentioned on his October 22, 2013 post.

Thank you for reading this far.  Feel free to comment on additional types of Tier 1 links which you believe which are Penguin-friendly going forward into 2014 and can drive direct traffic plus help with your overall SEO efforts.

 

Filed Under: link building, SEO
April 15, 2015 by

Repost – How To Use Youtube For Local Business Marketing

This is a repost from Greg’s old Search Simplicity website which no longer is active.

—————————————————————————————————————–


Local B2B Search Engine Optimization Using YouTube

If you are looking to get exposure for B2B (business to business) phrases in the search engines, then you may find that using YouTube is a great way to get started.

This is especially true if your current SEO efforts are either just getting started or your website is in the early stages of recovering from a Google penalty.

Since Google owns YouTube, you may be able to bypass some of the “sandbox” time, Panda/Penguin penalties or other situations which may have caused a drop in your rankings.

 

 

Local B2B Search Engine Optimization Using YouTube

This is applicable whether you represent the company wanting to be found for local B2B phrases or if you are a marketer hired by the company to help.

Just be sure that the B2B phrases you choose:

  • have some sort of demand nationally
    • you want search engine exposure in major metropolitan areas or for state-wide searches
  • are indicative of a possible qualified prospect
  • the audience would not mind seeing a video instead of an actual page with words

Regarding B2B keyword research, especially at the local level, you will want to rank for as many possible phrases that are relevant to the core product or service.

For example, if you are a marketer working on behalf of a commercial carpet cleaning company (this is deemed to be B2B because of the “commercial” intent of the searcher) then the searcher likely will want to see that your company serves the searcher’s particular area.

This also will work for smaller cities where the business population is growing.

You may want to rank for suburbs where you know that there are new office developments, medical buildings, and other commercial properties starting to get tenants.

The reason why is that people will be searching for B2B services because they may not be familiar with the businesses that serve their new location(s).

 

WHAT TYPE OF VIDEO SHOULD BE PRODUCED

A valid YouTube video could show before/after examples of your work, commentary on how cleanliness keeps morale up, how carpets being cleaned prevents losing customers, or any other topic which conveys that the cleaning company offers legitimate value.

Customer testimonials can be integrated into any YouTube video so long as you have legal permission from the customer.

Yes, even a “music slide show” video can be the video of choice when it adds value such as showing a “walk through” or “step by step” example of a process.  One example of a music slide show working in the Fort Worth Texas area is the phrase “parking lot repair Fort Worth”.

A YouTube “walk through” slide video shows up in the first few organic results.

For more advanced B2B services, you will want to showcase the “wow factor” your company offers.  For example, I am helping a friend who offers “experiential marketing” and “disruptive marketing” across the country.

His agency is based in Dallas, so he would like to rank well for the “Dallas” versions of the phrases relevat to those two topics.

Since Dallas is a growing business community, especially for major corporations, he wants to get in front of those directors of marketing & advertising who could find his skills beneficial.

We ultimately chose to use a video from a recent project where his firm helped the Perot Museum and the new donors for a specific wing of the museum.

Those donors are tied to the ownership of the Kansas City Chiefs NFL team, and their star running back was chosen to be featured as part of the interactive museum exhibit.

Even though his firm likes using Vimeo, for what his team says is quality-related reasons, we took a truncated video and optimized it for YouTube.

At the time of this posting if you were to type in the local B2B phrase, “disruptive marketing agency Dallas”, you would see the thumbnail to his company’s YouTube video (thumbnail is the NFL running back).

Over time, I want his video also to rank for other in-demand B2B local keywords such as:

  • marketing agency Dallas
  • interactive marketing Dallas
  • experiential marketing agency Dallas
  • digital marketing agency Dallas
  • (same as above except for “Fort Worth”, “Texas” and the nearby cities with good business growth and a population base of over 100,000 people)

The question is what to do with a video once you have one that conveys “value”.  The first question is what is deemed to be of “value”?  Here are some thoughts which might help convert YouTube viewer traffic into a possible B2B customer/client:

  • Intrigue
  • Humor (risky to use, but it works well if done artfully for one’s prospective customers)
  • Proving a fact and/or refuting a myth
  • Testimonials
    • Try to offer more in your video than just these because otherwise it can be perceived as too “sales-oriented” by your prospects
  • Introduction of new products
  • Elicit a business-minded searcher’s problem(s) and then show how your company’s product/service will reduce/eliminate that problem
  • Recordings of a lecture or interview which are useful to the prospective B2B client/customer.  Make sure that the inforation is conveyed in a way where it is easy to listen to the person
    • Do what you can to prevent a “bland” or “boring” tone!
  • Making your prospects aware of new cutting-edge technologies or legal happenings
  • Any other quality way to convey value to someone watching a YouTube video

From there, you can optimize the video (like on-page SEO) with at least these actions:

  • add the keyword into the actual filename of the video
  • add no more than 1-2 keyword phrases in the video title
  • have a good, lengthy, value-added description.  You can use an article that you might have had saved for article marketing purposes, and you can configure the article to read appropriately for a YouTube video description
  • Be sure that your keyword AND lots of related phrases (synonyms, antonyms, acronyms, industry jargon, etc.) are included in the description
    • Just stay relevant to the video and you should be fine!
  • Tags –> try to keep the number under 10.  Occasionally you will go over, but keep the tags under 10 if you can
  • Under the “Advanced Settings”, set all of your parameters; and then include the specific location of the company
    • Think of this as a “citation” that Google will use to match up with your Google Plus, old Google Places, Yelp, BBB and other local high-authority web pages which have your address & phone number

There are other on-page (“on-video”) actions such as altering the transcript, using the various annotations, etc.

The ones I listed should put you ahead of at least 80% (if not more) for most of the local SEO competition (in YouTube) for B2B phrases.

 

WHY DO THIS?

Remember that if you want to rank for lots of local business-to-business keyword phrases that you always can make more videos!  YouTube/Google also may reward you for posting lots of videos over time on your optimized YouTube channel.  This is because YouTube wants returning visitors to your channel so it can show YouTube-sponsored videos and/or ads.

Much like a local TV station, you want to have more than just 1-2 shows playing on “loop”.

The same applies to YouTube, so consider drip-feeding at least one video a month (ideally more frequently) for a minimum of six months.  Should your videos be free from complaints, lots of “thumbs down” or other negative social signals then you are proving to YouTube/Google that you are willing to be a contributor to the community.

Doing so will build your authority within the YouTube community and, over time, Google may reward you for those consistent and quality contributions.  Remember that you also can post your video on other outlets; but YouTube posting is one of (if not the) best methods to give your video exposure in the search engines.

From there, the next question is how does the YouTube video get traffic to it?

Here are several ways to get quality views to your video from local IP addresses.  I mention the last one in case Google one day is able to track “purchased views” then they could discount (or even penalize) any video optimized for local phrases that does have a large number of local views/likes/subscribes/etc.

 

FREE WAYS TO GET TRAFFIC TO YOUTUBE VIDEOS

  • Rank well in YouTube for the desired keyword phrase(s) and related ones
  • Share with your local e-mail list (if appropriate)
  • Share on your Facebook and Twitter pages, assuming that most followers are in the local area
  • Pinning the video on Pinterest and sharing on Instagram
  • Linking to the video in any free press release service you use, targeting the local area
  • Getting the YouTube video to rank well in Google for the desired keyword(s).  When this happens you likely will be # 1 or # 2 in YouTube and somewhere on the first page of Google for the same keyword at the same time.
  • Share on your personal (and company) LinkedIn pages
  • Share on other relevant social media profiles
  • Share on relevant local business forums
  • Obviously, embed on your website/blog in case you currently are getting local traffic to it through other means
  • If appropriate, share the link on various local classified ad sites (including your local area’s Craigslist section)
  • Add the link to the YouTube URL in your e-mail signature and any outbound marketing already going to prospective customers.  You can use a QR code in lieu of a long, ugly URL if appropriate
  • Other local free traffic to your website (e.g. links in the blog comments section on relevant local blogs, especially when you craft a well-written manual response)

 

 

PAID WAYS TO GET TRAFFIC TO YOUTUBE VIDEOS

  • Use the various methods of buying traffic within YouTube.  One way is to target your company’s competitors’ videos
  • Geo-targeted Facebook paid advertising (post “boosting”).  Be very precise on your interests-targeting here, such as industry trade publications and those who are members of a national industry association, who live within X miles of your desired geographic area
  • Create optimized landing pages on the company website with the YouTube video embedded plus any sort of call-to-action.  Use Google AdWords search network for this.  You also can use the Display Network if you know what you are doing.  You can re-target here
  • Yahoo and Bing PPC services
  • Other search engine PPC services (not imperative)
  • Paid ads on relevant geo-targeted business forums and/or ads on trade association forums, but emphasizing the local area you want
  • Purchase an expiring domain with relevance (and either industry-specific or geo-specific “authority”) to make your own “mini site”.  Embed the video and have a call to action for the person to contact your company
  • If appropriate, and if offered locally, consider having your local chamber of commerce send out the link to your video on any monthly/quarterly e-mail newsletters sent to all chamber members
    • Same as above for local business networking
  • Paid advertising within Linkedin
    • Be smart and careful with this AND be smart with your targeting!
    • LinkedIn ads can get expensive quickly, so be sure to monitor and track your spending and clicks very carefully

 

TRACKING

You can track the success much like paid advertising:

  • Look the number of views, clicks to the website, subscribers and other data provided to you by YouTube’s Insights for your channel
  • Track with Google Analytics or a similar service
  • Use a third-party automated lead management software which can track how many visit came directly from YouTube.  Such a service should be able to do much more, but this is important
  • Use link shortener URL’s
  • Include a tracking phone number, ideally a local prefix number
  • Opt-ins or other tracking from the specific landing page (e.g. “Pretty Link Lite” plugin for WordPress or similar)
  • Any YouTube video/channel likes, subscribes, shares, re-Tweets, and other tracked activity of social sharing

Doing all of this for local B2B phrases very well may help your company (or client) notice an increase in overall quality inbound traffic.

Hopefully you will notice that the extra traffic converts to sales or other methods to monetize first-time visitors, especially if you are offering significant amounts of value in the video and/or the page to which you send traffic from YouTube.

If you have questions then you are welcome to contact me.

Please help me to spread the word about this blog post by sharing it on your favorite Social platform.

Feel free to comment below, if you have questions. I’ll be more than happy to help, in any way I can.

Filed Under: b2b, lead generation, local marketing, search engine marketing, SEO, videos
April 13, 2015 by

Repost – Local SEO And Lessons From The Stock Trading World

Greg used to run Search Simplicity, a website dedicated to SEO and other online marketing topics.  This is a repost from a guest post he added to his site back in the early Fall of 2014.

 

Stock Trading Lessons Applied To Local SEO Search Phrases

The author’s views below are entirely his or her own and do not reflect the views of Search Simplicity

Can Stock Trading be Applied To Local SEO?

In the world of trading financial instruments, such as stocks, many market participants like to time their entries and exits using charts.

A common phrase used to describe the advanced study of using charts in the financial markets is called “technical analysis“.

The big question is, “What does that have to do with local search engine optimization?!?”

Great question!

With the underlying assumption (presupposition) that most local businesses don’t care much about “branding”, and instead just care only about new leads/prospects/phone calls/walk-ins and e-mails, a basic principle from stock trading technical analysis can help you get those new leads and phone calls rather quickly from the search engines.

This principle goes to the core of what SEO was founded upon:  keyword phrases.

 

In stock trading technical analysis, there is a principle called “Multiple Time Frame Analysis“.

Multiple Time Frame Analysis means nothing more than looking at a particular stock symbol or index (like the S&P 500) on charts, representing different time frames.

Doing so allows the market participant an opportunity to develop at least one (or more) competitive edge, in order to profit.  The typical “time frames” for any stock or index are as follows:

  1. Yearly charts – where every bar (or “candle” on some stock charts) represents the high/low/open/close price for an entire calendar year
  2. Monthly charts – where each bar/candle represents one month’s data of the four price points (high/low/open/close)
  3. Weekly charts
  4. Daily charts
  5. Intra-day charts (these could vary from 1 minute charts to hourly charts)

You are welcome to look at some of the various stock trading websites and stock charting software packages to get more familiar with these types of chart representations.

Remember that you are looking at the same stock (or index) at the same point in time, just represented in different time frames; and each may give you reason to buy, sell, initiate a “short” position (attempting to make money when a stock drops in value), or be “flat” (not have any position).

The lessons from the principle of multiple time frame analysis can be applied by anyone into Search Engine Optimization (SEO), including local SEO.

Please Note:
For the remaining of this article, let’s use the example of a competitive market, something similar to; Real Estate Broker in Lexington Kentucky (a major city) – (called “CITY” for the rest of the article) or very large suburb.

We can determine if, nationally, there is demand in the search engines for specific phrases related to any particular industry.

We then can assume that a certain %percentage% of people in the local metropolitan market will use the same keyword phrases to look for similar phrases, but at the local level.

Here is how the stock trading time frame charts principle could be applied in a similar manner:

1) YEARLY CHART = the major keyword which would be “Realtor CITY“.

All participants (the Realtors themselves and the clients they help find new homes, plus independent lead-generation companies) are aiming for this keyword.

It’s going to be highly competitive and, even if you reach the first page in (Google) the organic search results, you could possibly drop very quickly, depending on how solid your rankings are and well they’ve been optimized.

Nonetheless, by ranking on page number one, you’ll likely be generating LOTS of highly targeted leads, in a relatively short time frame.

Assuming that the Real Estate Broker has decent search engine visibility, a professional attitude, and does a great job in customer service then he/she may expect a certain percentage of the new customers to become repeat customers.

Follow-up methods such as email marketing, social media marketing, or other methods to keep the Real Estate Brokers name on the minds of (clients) home buyers, could generate repeat business or even a snowball of consistent, referral business.

This is just one very small perk of being in the top spots of Google!

2)  MONTHLY CHART = a modification of the word “Real Estate Broker“.

This could be “24 hour Real Estate Broker CITY”, “local Real Estate Agent CITY”, “licensed Real Estate Agent CITY” or any other similarly targeted search phrase , which has lots of demand (according to the Google Keyword Tool/Planner or other search engine keyword demand estimator).

You won’t have as much demand for this keyword at the local level, but the conversion rate (if you rank near the top) is very high.

Most people wouldn’t type in “24 hour Real Estate Broker CITY” or “licensed Real Estate Broker CITY” unless they have a specific reason for doing so.

The odds of the Realtors website (or other web property like YouTube video, Facebook page, Google Plus page, Yelp listing, etc.) generating conversions, are pretty good here.

Going after business-to-business (B2B) phrases works here as well such as “Real Estate Agent CITY”.

 

 

3)  WEEKLY CHART = a sub-niche of the industry which has lots of demand nationally.

For example lots of people go to the search engines to type in phrases related to certain aspects of Real Estate, like “home buyers”, “luxury homes” or “houses for sale”.

While there LIKELY will be (not necessarily) less demand for “buy cheap house CITY” than “Realtor CITY”, the person searching likely will convert into a phone call or e-mail.

It is then up to the person answering the call or e-mail to make the prospective customer feel enough reassurance and confidence to use the Real Estate company.

Please Note:
The niche (industry) you’re involved in doesn’t matter.

4)  DAILY CHART = low-demand, high-margin aspects of the industry.  In the plumbing industry, certain plumbers are licensed and experienced with high-margin needs such as foundation plumbing testing or backflow prevention.

There likely won’t be much demand for “foundation plumbing test CITY”, but the competition against that keyword likely won’t be very high.

The margins on what that phone call could generate a pretty impressive (!), so it might be worth doing some basic Local SEO for keyword phrases like these.

Make sense?

5)  INTRA-DAY CHART = esoteric aspects where there is some demand and/or modifying a keyword with a brand name.  For example, in the plumbing world some customers want a plumber who specializes in a particular brand of water heater.

They actually may type in “BRAND water heater repair CITY” or a similar phrase.

There isn’t much demand for these phrases, but they do have high “buyer intent”.

For the “Daily Chart” and “Intra-day Chart” type of keywords, you likely won’t need too many inbound, high-authority/quality links to get respectable rankings.

In these cases, make sure that the words are visible to the search engines (e.g. readable text and not just words in an image file) and take care of your basic on-page SEO efforts.

Place the new content on a new page or an existing page that can be accessed through the sitemap and navigation menu, or at least through properly-structured internal page linking.

Continue to earn quality links to your website’s home page and main inner pages, like Greg recommends.

You then will want a few social mentions of the page(s) with the new content such as the brand names and/or high-margin sub-niches.

Mix up Google Plus, a Facebook share, at least 1-2 Tweets for the URL and a few others like:  Pinterest, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Reddit (if appropriate for your industry), etc.

If the sub-niche is a new service (or product) being offered by your company then you may consider an online press release as it would be justified at that point.

For the “Weekly Chart” type of keywords, you will need some quality links.  If you have an official business address, citations always will be great to have as long as they are on high-authority web properties.

Some quality Web 2.0 properties, with unique content and relevant images and/or videos, should be a solid play.  You also can get links from a quality private blog network.

Yes, a REAL private blog network like Greg recommends… not one advertising itself for everyone in the world to join!

For the “Monthly Chart” and “Yearly Chart” major keywords, you will likely need a combination of really good on-page SEO optimization, high quality local citations, high quality links, a strong social media presence and social sharing signals, mentions on local websites (e.g. the local chamber of commerce directory and the BBB) and some properly-constructed tiered link building.  Greg’s suggestions for tiered linking in 2014 (and into 2015) should be sound for you to pursue.

When it comes to these high-competition phrases, you can consider it a “win” if one of your other web properties ranks as long as it has a link to your website and your phone number.

For example, if one of your YouTube videos or your Yelp page ranks # 1 for “plumber CITY” then consider it a win even if it is not your own website ranking.  Use some of the profits generated from the new customers to purchase more authority links and create some terrific unique content.

You also could purchase relevant websites or expired domains that have a clean backlink history AND search engine authority (Moz Domain Authority, Majestic Trust Flow, AHREFS Domain Rank, etc.).

Then convert those into value-added websites/blogs with links pointing back to your website, YouTube videos, Facebook page, chamber of commerce directory listings, etc.

Be sure to mix up the link text (called “anchor text”) using each grammatical version of the keyword no more than once or twice.  Also include lots quality links that have as the text:

  • your business name
  • relevant brand names (e.g. BRAND water heater repair CITY)
  • generic text (e.g. “click here” or “visit this page”)
  • URL (e.g. “http://www.YOURWEBSITE.com”)

Please note that you are NOT subject to a fixed number of five different types of keywords like the stock chart time frames (i.e. yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, intraday).

The big picture is to understand the core principle.  All it means is that you are not mandated to go after only 1-2 major keywords.

Since a local SEO effort is designed, first and foremost to keep the company’s phone ringing each month, be sure to get inside the mind of the customer.

Use the multiple time frame/stock chart principle as a shortcut to help make the phone ring by addressing the main reason someone looks up a local business category in the search engines in the first place:  the prospective customer has a problem and is looking for a business to provide a solution.

Keeping that in mind, take some time to understand (and quantify if possible!) the types of problems that encourage someone to go the search engines in the first place.

By addressing those problems/solutions on your website and other web properties, AND by “playing nice” with the search engines by not over-optimizing or spamming your website, you will be one of the few companies in your metropolitan area to take legitimate steps toward letting the search engines help make your phone ring with new customers or clients.

If you would like more information on this topic then you are welcome to contact me with your questions.

The “multiple time frame” core principle will be the same, but the actual process may vary depending on the type of new local customer or client you are seeking.

Filed Under: keyword research, lead generation, local marketing, Page One, search engine marketing, SEO, small towns
January 11, 2015 by

Making The Phone Ring Part 1 – Local SEO

phone

If you are a local business owner then you know that the bigger picture is that all online marketing actions (SEO, social media, pay-per-click, etc.) should focus on a few things:

  • Getting new first time customers/clients
  • Enhancing profitability for the business
  • Expansion of awareness/exposure if your “brand” is an issue
    • Although this always is taught first, getting new clients and becoming profitable should be any business’ goal, especially if the business one day wishes to sell the business to another party

A local business often faces a series of challenges when it wishes to grow and expand.  One of the biggest challenges is to enter a new geographic where it has no physical presence, even though the business knows that it can fulfill customer demand for the desired product/service.

There are over 20 online methods which can be considered by any local business owner wishing to grow and expand into a new geographic area.  Not all are “search” related, and these methods MAY be beneficial to your business.

You are welcome to review them and then filter them to which are most appropriate by:

  • What your prospective clients would deem as acceptable and appropriate for your business category
  • Then filter further the methods by what best represents the image you want to convey for your business (or that of your client)

Over the upcoming series of posts, you will become familiar with the basics of the 20+ methods.
Today’s post will cover the first method:

Traditional Local SEO

Please note that some of these principles may refer to something called “Parasite SEO” or “Next Best SEO“.  That is where you rank another web property other than your main website for the desired keyword.  Such a “parasite” property could be:

  • One of your YouTube videos or your company’s YouTube channel
  • Your company’s LinkedIn business page
  • Your location’s listing on Yelp
  • Your local chamber of commerce directory page (if you have a page dedicated just to your business)
  • Your specific page on the local BBB site
  • Etc.

Traditional SEO And Its Core Principles

Even though this post is about reaching new geographic areas, a brief history on traditional SEO needs to be discussed.  If you do not understand these, then you risk being “left in the dark” and have significantly-lowered chances of ranking in the search engines for the towns in which you wish to expand.

You also risk spending WAY too much money by making basic mistakes!

Traditional search engine optimization is based on several principles.  Those principles drive the need to consider the strategy as a viable marketing option because it can help make the phone ring, get new walk-in customers, or get new e-mail subscribers/social media followers.

Those principles are:

  • Your website is ranking at/near the top of the organic (free) search engine results for keyword phrases (user queries) which have some sort of demand AND possible “buyer intent”
  • The fact that the search engines are ranking you at/near the top is a tacit “endorsement” that your business (or that of your client) should be deemed more trustworthy than other options
  • If someone took the time to enter such a query (keyword phrase) into the search engine AND clicked the link to some page on your website (home page or other page) then there is a PRESUMED increase in likelihood that the person may take further action and contact you, show up at your location, purchase something from your website or join some sort of list that you control

Do people today make buying decisions from online properties OTHER than the search engines?  Yes they do.  There can be business review sites, social media sites, classified ads and other properties which can generate new business; and to say otherwise would be wrong.

Does a number one organic (free) ranking, however, still help you increase the odds of increasing profitability?  Most certainly!  This is because you are providing what people are seeking (e.g. a solution to their problems).

Why It Is More Difficult To Achieve The Same Outcome (A # 1 Ranking) Than In Previous Years

Ranking your business’ website (or your client’s website) however is significantly more challenging than it was even just 3-4 years ago.  The actual hard costs to anyone doing the marketing likely are much higher than they were from the 2009-2011 era.

Many of the reasons for this cost increase stem from the various Google Panda/Penguin (and other) search engine algorithm updates.  Here are just a handful of reasons why the costs went up and the difficulty to earn a # 1 ranking became much more challenging:

  • For a third-party consultant/agency to help a client reach a number 1 ranking in the search engines back in 2009-2011, most of what was needed was acquiring a volume of links which had the optimized keywords in the actual text of the link (aka “anchor text”).  It didn’t matter where those links appeared so long as you had a volume of sites pointing directly to your website.  On-page optimization, for some time, appeared to have dropped in importance.
    The consultants/agencies didn’t have to spend too much “hands on” time on a client’s website.  All they had to do was invest in “bulk link building” software and cheap overseas virtual assistants to pump out high volumes of links.
  • Google made its change in 2012 with the beginning of the Panda/Penguin and other updates.  These required the SEO professional (company employee or consultant/agency) to begin to evaluate where to start acquiring links from authoritative websites.  This required more “finesse” than just bulk-volume link building.  As in most industries, with the need for finesse comes premium pricing.
  • Some of the Google updates then forced the SEO professional to also prevent the “too good to be true” scenario from happening.  Many companies had links which were almost “too perfect” and were properly-optimized everywhere.  Google updated its algorithm to “slap” (drop the rankings for) websites which didn’t have a “link profile” which was more natural-looking.  Hence, the need for “de-optimized” links became more important.  Again, more finesse was now required.
  • The same thing later happened with the on-page optimization.  If a company’s website pages were “too perfect” and had too much properly-optimized content then it didn’t look “natural”.  The SEO professional now had to invest more time on the actual website’s on-page SEO factors.
  • A website’s structure and usefulness also started to become important for the rankings.  Google started looking at how long a visitor stayed on a website, how many pages the average visitor visited on the website, how “mobile-friendly” the site was, does it have Schema/Rich Text markup, and basics like a sitemap and privacy policy visible somewhere on every page.  Again, this required more time and hands-on attention.
  • The SEO professionals who then built their own TRULY private blog networks also got “slapped” recently because some of the way they structured the sites that they used to help clients.  Many of these outside websites were structured in ways which left blatant “footprints”.  Once the search engine algorithm picked up on these footprints, it was able to negate any benefit that these privately-constructed sites were bringing to help a client’s website rankings.
  • Finally, Google is starting to evaluate the quality of the content on OTHER pages which link to your page, not just the text of the link (“anchor text”).  The need for quality articles, videos, images and other media – on authoritative websites – linking back to your desired web page has started to skyrocket.  Again, with the need for quality – instead of bulk volume – comes higher costs due to the need for finesse and more precision.

 

A Helpful Acronym To Remember When It Comes To Online Marketing

All of the above, and much more, force a quality SEO professional (in-house or third-party) to understand better how to make a company’s website meet three basic measurements.  The acronym you are welcome to use can be “A.R.T.”, “T.A.R.” or “R.A.T.”  Those three measurements, at a “birds eye view”, are:

  • Authoritative:  Is the website attempting to rank # 1 authoritative for that particular keyword phrase (query)?  If someone from Google manually reviewed the # 1 ranking (instead of the robot/algorithm doing the “reviewing”), would that person deem the current # 1 site to be authoritative on the subject?
  • Relevant:    Is the website attempting to rank # 1 offering relevant, timely (or “timeless”!!) information that truly can benefit the website visitor?
  • Trustworthy:  Is the site, overall, trustworthy?  Is it free from spam, mobile-friendly, have practices in place to protect visitor identity, have full disclosures, and other security/reassurance measures in place?

Why Does Google Need All Of This?

The reason why Google – and any other major company in the internet search/social media industry – need to have so many hurdles and filters now to earn a # 1 ranking?  The primary reason is that they are publicly traded companies (see here)!

They need to generate revenues AND beat quarterly analyst estimates just like any other publicly traded company.  They assume that the harder they make it for the average business to earn a # 1 organic (free) ranking, the more likely that business is to resort to spending money on the paid advertising platform (e.g. Google AdWords).

That is the primary way that the search engine makes its money.  Remember that making a search is free to you, so they have to monetize each page somehow!

Pay-per-click advertising is a very viable strategy, and it will be discussed in a future post for local businesses.  Companies, however, which were used to getting traffic from the search engines – but had search rankings drop – typically “stampede” into pay-per-click in an attempt to make their phones ring. With any new marketing strategy, however, they are going to make mistakes and likely overspend.

Guess who benefits at that point?  That’s right, the search engine or social media platform!
That makes reaching their quarterly earnings estimates a lot easier!

The search engine companies have to make institutional investors (mutual funds, hedge funds, etc.) want to invest in internet companies as an industry overall.  They also compete for dominance within the industry itself.  Each search engine company (and social media company) wants mutual funds to consider its company to be the leader (from an investment standpoint) within the internet company sector.

All of this means is that they need to gain institutional investor market share on two levels.  To do so, they need to make their OWN platforms the most “Authoritative, Relevant, and Trustworthy” that they can.  By doing so, each attempts to convince the average searcher to use their platform exclusively over all of the other options… and hopefully click those paid ads on each page!

“Thanks For The History Lesson…. But What Does That Have To Do With The Website I Want To Rank?”

Great question!

Even though all you care about is using the search engines to help you expand your business into a new geographic area, please consider re-reading the above history.  The reasons why I recommend this are:

  • By understanding what is really going on, you likely won’t be subject to someone selling you a “black box”
  • You may be able to reduce your costs to expand into the new area
  • You will know what to post on your website (or other web properties you control) in order to get someone from the new geographic area to take action
  • You MAY be able to expand and get results faster than you expect
  • You can use pay-per-click budgets more artfully and get better data to then use for longer-term  SEO strategies
  • There is less risk (no guarantees of course!) that your website will incur some sort of penalty from the search engines

If nothing else, you also may be able to refute easily the false promises of the multitude of SEO solicitation calls and e-mails you get each week!  Use the above history to shut them down.  Hopefully, you will be removed from the contact lists of the substandard online marketing companies just looking to trap you in some kind of unhelpful, long-term contract.

Expanding Your Geographic Reach

With all of this history, here are some simple ways to make it possible for your website to gain exposure in a new geographic market.  For this, you will want to achieve as much Authority/Relevance/Trust as possible regarding the new geographic area:

  • If appropriate, add a new page to your website specific to that new market.  Consider this to be a “landing page” and add lots of beneficial, unique and helpful content about the specific new area.
  • Should a page on a local authority website for that area (e.g. that town’s city government page, the convention and visitors bureau website, or school district website) provide confirmation about your service then have an “outbound” (external) link to that content on your new region-specific page.  This way the search engines see that you are linking to something relevant and authoritative in order to make your page helpful to any page visitor.
  • Since you want someone in that new market to do business with you, consider some sort of incentive (if you are legally permitted) to have them contact you.   If nothing else, make it easy to have that person contact you.
  • However you can, get links from authoritative sites in that new geographic area to link to your new page.  If you have to make a small donation to a charitable organization in that area, and have them link to your new page, then do so.  Otherwise contact a quality local SEO professional who knows how to get local links.
  • Make sure that the new page is in your website’s sitemap.  This makes it easier for any search engine to index/crawl the new page properly and quickly.
  • If appropriate, syndicate an online press release with a link to the new geographic-specific page.  Use a quality press release distribution service and attempt to have something truly “newsworthy” to share so that the press release readers derive actual value.  That “value” can vary, but make sure it is worth someone’s time to read the release!
  • Hire a good SEO professional to help you gain further trust online in the new geographic market.  The SEO professional does NOT have to be local, but it should be someone who understands the principles of gaining trust in any local market around the United States.

Wrapping This Up

Thank you for taking a few minutes out of your day to read this post.  I hope that you now understand a bigger picture of search engines, from the perspective of the search engine company.
Remember that by doing so, you likely can:

  • Make your website (or parasite page) more authoritative, trustworthy, and relevant in the search engines and get your phone ringing more
  • Cut your overall marketing and advertising costs because you will be much more precise with your budget
  • Have higher odds of longer-term rankings because every time something is published on your behalf it is quality and looks natural.  This likely would cut your costs because you wouldn’t need to “stampede” into pay-per-click advertising and make high-cost mistakes in the process
  • If the quality is good you even may have people voluntarily share it with their friends and colleagues.  This cuts your costs to acquire a new customer/client

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about how a deeper understanding of this big picture can help your business grow by, hopefully, making the phone ring with new customers or clients!

Filed Under: lead generation, local marketing, search engine marketing, SEO, small towns
Next Page »