Search Engine Optimization

Location based marketing has made a huge impact on the way local businesses are starting to approach their marketing strategies. Within the last year we have had numerous companies and websites spring up that allow you to let others know what local business you are at and what you like or don’t like there.

This GPS type of technology has created a whole new type of local social communication for your audience to participate in. Location marketing is quickly becoming the future of local search and will most likely play an even larger role for many businesses trying to reach out to their local audience. The great thing about location marketing is that you could actually entice customers to come to your store depending on your promotion.

Some things to remember when you are using the location marketing websites:

1. Customization:

Make sure to always customize your profile so that it reflects the branding of your local business in every way. Make sure your logo is not cut off so that your audience realizes exactly who you are.

2. Promotions:

You are going to need to dangle a carrot in front of your audience if you want them to really use your location based marketing efforts and show up at your business. Take the time to put together some good promotions where your location based marketing will work to your advantage.

3. Set Goals:

Set goals for yourself and your business before you start utilizing the location based marketing platforms to build your brand and get some more foot traffic coming through your door.

4. Engage:

Engage your customers to interact with you on and offline. Get your audience to perform some sort of action with you where your audience can see the interaction so they can also chime in.

Location based marketing is changing the way that local businesses are starting to interact with their community and their audience. The location based marketing efforts have not fully grown into their shoes yet but you can believe that they will very soon. Take the time now to learn the platforms and get new feet walking into your local business.

If you own a website or a blog at some point you have to try and predict the future. Yes, in order to really be successful online you might find yourself going to extraordinary lengths in order to really increase traffic and visibility for your website. Try to think about the largest businesses and events in your industry and take this approach.

Product Launches:

Try to isolate some of the biggest companies in your space and set up some Google alerts for all their news related chatter. Look out for chatter for new product launches that might have surfaced and start preparing blog posts surrounding their launch. If you can be one of the first to write a good blog post surrounding a product launch there is a good possibility you can get that post ranking for that specific search term way in advance. A new product is simply that, a new product which is also going to come with an entirely new set of search phrases people are using in order to find information about that product. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and try to anticipate typical search phrases that might be used around that product and schedule a plan of attack to launch a series of blog posts surrounding that specific product launch. If done right you could see a very nice influx of traffic right to your post.

Events:

New industry events fall into the same category. After every event you are going to get people searching for different keywords and phrases about that event before and after. Whether it is a keynote speaker, a particular vendor booth that maybe stood out or something that occurred at the event people will be searching for it. What they will be using to search who knows? It hasn’t happened yet but if you take this mind set and learn how to take this process for many things that happen in your industry you will be ahead of your competition as far as writing goes and over time you will generate some really nice web traffic to your blog or website.

This process might seem easier said than done but try it out whenever you can. If it is a sporting event try writing as the sporting event is happening and publish that post right before the end of the game. Your post will be one of the first lurking in the search results for that event while many reporters will wait until they get to the office the next morning.

Optimizing a website is a craft that many acquire after going through the motions time and time again, and gaining the knowledge to do search engine optimization effectively. It is not about jamming keywords throughout your website with having the hopes of gaming the system along the way. Put all that nonsense aside bring some marketing to the table and watch your efforts work much more effectively.

1. User Experience: Think about the user experience for a minute. If you jam keywords all over each page where the flow of reading is disrupted then how is your audience going to respond to that? In order for them to pick up the phone and call you they need to be able to read your copy with no interruptions and if every three words of your copy is a keyword they will most likely just leave your website entirely. There is a thin line between too many keywords and not enough so make sure you walk that line safely.

2. Targeted: Make sure you are picking keywords that fit the content of that specific page. What I mean by this is that if you sell headbands on a specific page target head band related keywords for that page. Don’t target wrist band related keywords as well because you want to rank for that keyword. Always keep things relevant when it comes to optimization because the search engines will respond much better to it.

3. Conversions: Optimizing a website is not just about search rankings and keywords. It is also about how people interact with your website. Content is great and all but what good is all that content if your traffic does not understand what they should be doing once they arrive at your website. Think about all the conversion aspects that need to be visible on your website for your traffic to actually convert into an action.

Approach the optimization of your website using a marketing approach rather than a ranking approach and your decisions will be centered on building your brand and converting your traffic rather than just jamming keywords into your website with the hopes of ranking in the search results.