SEO Optim Blog

The purpose of local listing in leading search engines such as Google, Yahoo, etc., is to boost our visibility in the local area.  In the long run, it will add weightage for specific keywords and thus help to push the website to the top slot of search results. One of the basic and primary task in SEO is to do local listing in leading search engines.

The normal tendency of users are to find people in their own vicinity.  When the user searches with the city name, search engines list the local business profile in their area with a map, which helps the user to find the directions and distance of the service provider from their area.

The below is the brief overview on major search engines and see how local business listings are done,

Google Local Listing:

It’s a part of google maps. Adding local business is something you mark your business profile on google maps.

URL to add your business on Google – http://www.google.com/local

Bing Local listing

As like Google, Bing also makes an entry to maps when user add their listing.

URL to add your business on Bing – https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx

Yahoo Local listing

Like Google and Bing, Yahoo doesn’t provide local listing on the common Yahoo search, but it has separate section on the left pane to optimize the search in local listing.

URL to add your business on Yahoo – http://local.yahoo.com

Ask Local Listing

Ask and Yahoo looks similar. Instead on common search, they have separate URL to search for local listing. Ask.com has a separate text field to provide city name or zip code.

URL to add your business on Ask – http://ask.com/city

Even though it is one of the basic processes in SEO, you got to follow it up and make sure that is done.

If you are new to the concept of SEO, then you are just about to begin about the terms that are widely used in it.  For any online business website, SEO is like magic, to see your website in the first page of Google and Yahoo if you key in a business related keyword that you have chosen.  It is common sense to know that when you get your website listed in the first page for your business related keyword, you will be attracting a huge influx of visitors, who search for products that you deal or sell.  Thus, imagine the kind of business growth resulting from doing website optimization.

Let’s see some of the most frequently used terms by the SEO experts,

1. SEO – Search Engine Optimization.
2. PPC – Pay Per Click.
3. CPC – Cost Per Click.
4. SERP – Search Engine Results Page.
5. ROI – Return On Investment.
6. SMM or SMO – Social Media Marketing or Social Media Optimization.

1.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO):  The intent on performing SEO is to position our website in the first page of leading search engines in order to have easy visibility and thereby attracting greater volume of visitors and make considerable business growth.  SEO is also cost effective compared to other marketing strategies. SEO is done entirely on internet, it does not involve door-to-door canvasing or investing on big advertisements, etc.

2.  Pay Per Click (PPC):   The intent of PPC is to do online advertising for a business.  Through PPC, we make our advertisement to appear to targeted audience, and if someone clicks on the advertisement, it will lead to your website, from where you have a chance to convert into a potential customer.

3.  Cost Per Click (CPC):   CPC forms as a part of PPC. The main advantage of CPC is that you can fix the cost for a single click (helps to keep in control over budget). In fact, Google Ad Words has a CPC pricing system.

4.  Search Engine Results Page (SERP):  This is basically a tool which lets us know how the website is positioned or ranked in the search engines for a given specific keyword query.

5.  Return On Investment (ROI):  ROI need to be done to know what would be the returns from pursuing a SEO campaign.

6.  Social Media Marketing or Social Media Optimization (SMM or SMO):  Social media marketing is the trend of the day and it is fast catching up with the masses.  It is also proving to be a powerful when it comes to marketing, where person to person can share thoughts, give feedback, give ratings, etc. Social media could be split up into various categories such as Social News (Digg, News vine, Reddit, propeller), Social Sharing (Flickr, NetLog, SheToldMe, Tumblr), Social Networking (Facebook, twitter, Linkdin), and Social Book marking (Stumble, Delicious).

Content is the king as far as search engine optimization is concerned. The crawlers or spiders from the search engines visit a website and goes for the content, it is not worried by the color or the graphics or the appearance of the website, but it is only concerned with the content of the website.

I have seen some of the websites with great designs and attractive graphics, however, the content would be lagging. Always have keywords in your mind before preparing content for any website. Choose the keywords that would be widely used by the searchers and use them in the content. Add a blog section in your website and start writing blogs and articles in them around strong keywords so that when the spiders from search engines come to your website, it will pick those keywords and list them in their database along with the URL of website. When the searchers use those keywords which have been positioned in your website, the search engine would add your website in the search results – the relevant keyword and the corresponding URL. As time goes by, slowly your website would start climbing the search results. However, you have to write more articles, blogs, etc.

Where are the keywords found? The keywords are found in content, title, description, and the body of the content. Make sure that the website’s content is well written, easily understandable, straight to the point, informative, and grammatically correct as these points make an impression upon the visitor. If the content is not good, not easily understandable or having lot of mistakes, it will tend to create a bad impression and thus converting the visiting audience into potential customers would be hard.

If you find writing to be tough, hire a specialist, but before hiring you need to be doubly sure that the person has enough experience in writing good articles.

If you are a good communicator and possess strong writing skills, you can go ahead and write articles or content for the website. It will be interesting and fun. Just imagine that someone is going to read your content or article, gets interested in the product or service and makes a purchase!!! You will feel as if you had achieved something great, joyous of course ! ! !

Tips for good writing,
1. Use MS Word so that the spellings are auto corrected and basic grammar is right.
2. Refer to dictionary for words that may have more than one meaning and make sure that you are conveying the right meaning.
3. Write short sentences and avoid long sentences (more than two sentences).
4. Break into paragraphs.
5. Give examples.
6. The article should be interactive.
7. Give an intro.
8. Go for the theme – make it crisp without writing big stories.
9. Conclude your article.

Over a period of time, you could become an expert writer.