I just read a blog post titled: 4 Reasons Why SEO Won’t Work for You on Big Marketing for Small Business.

The points made in the article are extremely relevant, especially the 4th point about long-tail keyword phrases.

Case in point:

I just finished work with a client, AubrysPetCare.com, that took advantage of long-tail keyword phrases that are totally in alignment with her services. Besides my SEO implementation, my client created helpful pages and articles with these keywords in the titles on her website and blog, and she is now on page one of Google! We only launched the site a couple of weeks ago. And people are finding her and commenting on how much they like her site. Quality content combined with SEO is dynamite! Continue reading »

IT’S EXTREMELY BENEFICIAL FOR YOUR COMPANY’S VISIBILITY to have your business listed online. It’s even more important to claim your online listing if it already exists, because if you don’t, someone else can hijack your listing, claim it as their own, and redirect your potential visitors to their site. So here are the steps you need to take to create and/or claim your online listing.

Section I: Are you already listed?

Firstly you need to find out if you have a Google Local listing.

Step 1: Google your business name

If your business comes up listed beside a miniature Google map like the one below, then you already are listed in Google Local Listings and you need to check if it has been claimed yet or not, and whether the information is accurate (if your business is not listed beside a miniature Google map then skip this section and go to Section II: Create a Google Local Listing for your Business below). Continue reading »

I recently finished an intensive class in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) given by the Search Engine Academy Northwest. I am now certified with Search Engine Marketing Skills. As I develop websites for clients, I can now incorporate SEO right from the start. This means you don’t have to go to someone else and have them re-work your site to optimize it to get listed higher in online searches.

Virtual Main Street

SEO has become a very important component in web strategies. I like to use the analogy of a shop. If you have a beautiful boutique, but it’s located at the back of a cul-de-sac, no one will see it and you’ll get very little traffic. SEO helps to take your relatively obscure website and move it from the back street onto Main Street and brings in the traffic you desire.

Search Engine Optimization helps people find you quicker and easier by listing your website closer to the top of search results. The ultimate goal is to land at the top of page 1 in a Google search. But this takes time, effort, and patience. How and where you get listed depends on how your website is analyzed and indexed by search engine crawlers (software that looks at your website content and ranks it). A number of factors affect your ranking. Continue reading »