What’s that saying about the key to having a successful business is your location? Oh yeah, “location, location, location.” Location is definitely important. But after you’ve picked your perfect location, the next important thing is advertising your location. The days of looking up a business in the Yellow Pages has gone the way of overhead projectors and parachute pants. Unless your customers are 50+ years of age, most people who look up a business go directly to a search engine. In fact, according to Google statistics, 97% of consumers search for local businesses online. That’s why as a small business owner, you need to make sure your business is listed on Google Maps, which pulls it’s information from Google Places. Listing your business on Google means that when a customer searches for your business by name, your business listing will come up at the top of the results page with … Continue reading
Tag Archives: search engine rankings
Helping Web Crawlers Help You: How to Create an XML Sitemap
You’ve got the perfect website, loaded with rich content, videos, banners, the works. Your business page is brimming with the latest and greatest in attractive design, ready to rake in new hits and seal the deal on new conversions. Despite it all, it isn’t working. Nobody can find your site on Google and the leads aren’t coming. Do you have an XML sitemap? If your website is like a book loaded with tons of valuable information, sitemaps are the table of contents. XML sitemaps tell search engine crawlers what kind of content is on your website and what it’s related to, so you can rank in searches for relevant, useful materials that might not be automatically indexed. Not only will XML sitemaps let you direct web crawlers to all of your content, but you can also list “metadata” for rich content like images, videos, news, mobile options, and more. Search crawlers … Continue reading
Client Profile – CivilWar.org: Removing SEO Roadblocks for Non-Profit Organization
CivilWar.org was looking to increase their fundraising efforts and to become the leading resource provider for Civil War history. Problem: Large-scale Competitors were Outranking Them for Many Key Terms Solution: To improve rankings for highly competitive keywords, Wpromote enhanced and optimized onsite content in the Resources and Battlefields sections of the site. The addition of multiple tabs, maps and keyword-targeted content to the Battlefields section of the site attributed to the dramatic increase in search engine rankings and website traffic for terms such as “battle of Gettysburg”. Problem: Google was Reporting Numerous Errors on CivilWar.org Solution: Wpromote updated and optimized all duplicate title tags and meta descriptions to include targeted keywords and follow Google’s recommended best practices. We repaired the canonicalization error, which now redirected the non-www version of the site to the www version, also helped reduce the number of crawl errors immensely. The Results Wpromote has dramatically increased … Continue reading
Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day: Sit Tight as Your Rankings Grow
We’ve all heard the horror stories about companies promising Page 1 results overnight. And though our case studies prove that we’ve done wonders for clients in the past, the bottom line is that SEO is a long-term strategy, not a quick fix. This is part of the reason our company provides a wide variety of services with both long and short-term results. Of course the biggest motivation behind digging in for the long haul is increased authority. Just like in the offline world where your brand is local before regional and regional before national, your online presence builds upon itself. With an online presence you have access to people all over the world, and so do your competitors. That’s why it is more important than ever to show yourself as a solid company. One of the ways to do that is by leveraging SEO and other online marketing tactics for … Continue reading
How To Get Your Business On Google+
You’re a small business owner and we know you have a lot on your plate. Everyone has hammered into your head the fact that your business not only needs to have a website, it also needs a Facebook page and a Twitter account. You took the time to create them. Your business’ social media needs are all taken care of, right? Not so fast. If you haven’t set up your business’ Google+ profile, you could be missing out on huge benefits, particularly when it comes to search engine rankings and getting your brand to the online world. With Google holding the lion’s share of Internet search traffic, setting up a Google+ profile for your business is another way to give your business a competitive edge. The good news is that Google+ is still in beta and most small businesses may not even be aware that it exists. That means you … Continue reading
How To Write SEO Content
Now that you’ve honed in on the best SEO keywords for your website, it’s time to start putting them to work within your content. There are three things to remember when writing SEO content with the aim of increasing your organic search rankings. Write High-Quality Content Last year, Google Panda update 2.2 changed the way Google identifies and filters webpages. The ultimate goal of the update was to do away with duplicate content. So although it seems obvious, it must be said: Don’t copy content from other sites. If you do, you run the risk of being penalized by Google. When writing onsite copy, stick to the basics: what product or service does your business provide and what makes you the better business to choose? Make sure your content is clear, concise, and well written. You loose creditability when your writing includes spelling and grammatical errors. If you have a … Continue reading