Category: Search Engine Tips

Got a special event coming up?

Post author By social media
Post date October 23, 2011

Use Eventbright.com. When you setup your event, Eventbright helps to spread the word. Your event details are shared with the search engines. And its made available to some other event sites, such as eventful.com.

While it is vital to spread the word on your event to maximize attendance, Eventbright offers several other benefits too….

– Eventbrite has a good calendar widget to include on your website. That way your website visitors can see your upcoming events.

– Easily offer online registration to your event and sell tickets online.

– You get automatic name badges and check-in lists.

– Free events are free on Eventbright. Are you collecting money for your event? Then there is a small transaction fee for each ticket sold. Setup is free. No monthly fees.

– As part of setting up your event, you supply your Website. That means your Event helps your ranking in the search engines. The more events you have, the more your ranking improves.

– Events can be shared on Social Media.

You can join Eventbright for free. Help people find your event and your website.

Search Engine Tips

Keywords in website folders and filenames

Post author By social media
Post date June 15, 2011

This tip goes hand in hand with the prior tip. Another popular way to improve your ranking in Search Engines is to use keywords as your page name, the name of your picture file, and even folder names.

For example…
Instead of pic4532.jpg as your countertop picture, use Countertop.jpg

Instead of using location.html as your page name, use Peoria.html or whatever city your office is in.

Instead of ‘category’ or ‘folder02’ as folder names, use a keyword such as ‘backpain’ or ‘waterdamage’. Use whatever keywords are appropriate for your site.

This is a great way to have the Search Engines index your site with more keywords.

You can see others using this. Go to google.com. Search for back pain.
You’ll see 6 of the search results showup because they had backpain as a folder name.

A very simple technique, and free.

Enjoy.

Search Engine Tips

Strategy to rank higher in Search Engines

Post author By social media
Post date June 5, 2011

A popular way to rank higher in the search engines is to purchase domain names that contain common keywords.

Domains arent required to be your company name. So you can purchase extra domains that point to your website.

These are not available. But they are examples of domains to show what is possible if you can find a domain with your keywords:

BackPain.com
HealthInsurance.com
Countertops.com
AutoGlass.com
StetsonHillsHomes.com

Why does this work?

One of the first steps a Search Engine does, is put your search words together to see if there is a matching domain name. Searching for “social media” will look for SocialMedia.com and also look for other domains with the words Social Media in it.

This doesn’t mean you’ll be in position 1 on page 1 of the search results. But you could be higher than your current domain name.

Try it for yourself. Search using these 3 separate words:

Discount carpet cleaning

Within the search results, you’ll see most every domain on page 1 of the search results has the word carpet in it. Some have both carpet and cleaning in the domain names.

Experiment with your keywords and search for available domains.

Purchasing a domain name is a cheap way to get your website to show up higher in search results. That is why this is a popular strategy.

Enjoy.

Search Engine Tips

Automatic Searches

Post author By social media
Post date May 26, 2011

Would you like to get an email when your company name is listed in the news, in a blog, a video, a discussion group, or anywhere on the web? You can, with the help of Google Alerts.

Google Alerts is a free monitoring service. You can search for anything;

find out what is being said about your company or product
monitoring a developing news story
keeping current on a competitor or industry
getting the latest on a celebrity or event
keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

Here’s how it works:

You enter the word(s) that you’re interested in watching
Google Alerts checks regularly to see if there are new results for your query
If there are new results, Google Alerts sends them to you in an email

If you want to search for an exact phrase, such as “Deer Valley Mechanical”, be sure to use quotes as I did here. Otherwise the search will look for; deer or valley or mechanical.

This is a great way to stay informed about specific topics. The info just arrives in your email daily. You don’t need to go searching for it.

Enjoy

General Tips Search Engine Tips

Do you have a LinkedIn Account yet?

Post author By social media
Post date March 4, 2011

Do you have a LinkedIn Account yet? LinkedIn is another popular Social Media site. Although it’s more “corporate” than Facebook, it’s still a huge group of people and companies, which is another audience for you to find potential customers.

And LinkedIn can help you with a backlink. As part of creating your profile, you can list your websites there. However, the Search Engines won’t see them until you take a couple extra steps.

Remember, sites that require you to login means search engines can’t see the info. Search Engines don’t have a login. So you need to tell LinkedIn that it’s OK to expose some of your info to the world and the Search Engines.

Here is what you do:
1) Login to LinkedIn
2) Along the top of the page is menu items. Click on PROFILE.
3) On the right side, click on CHANGE PUBLIC PROFILE SETTINGS

Here you can control what information is publicly visible. If you choose NONE, nothing will be exposed.

For me, I want LinkedIN to help market my skills and businesses. So I expose everything that I supplied. Remember what I said in the Facebook tip. I only provided info that I wanted to share publicly, so items I consider private like birthday and home address I don’t provide.

If there is a check in the box, that info will be public. Meaning anyone, including the Search Engines can see it. For backlinks, you need to ensure Websites is checked here.

Save your changes.

You’re not done yet. You need to add your Websites to your Profile. You get a maximum of 3 Websites. Click on PROFILE at the very top of the page again. Your profile will be displayed and you will see WEBSITES listed. Click EDIT or ADD to put your Website in your profile.

You’ll see 2 boxes to fill in for your Website:
1) A drop down list for Personal, Business, Blog or other. Choose OTHER and another box appears.
2) In that new box, use it to describe your site. In HTML lingo, this is called ‘Anchor Text’. Search Engines use this to index your Site. And you want the Anchor Text to be a good search keyword phrase.

How do you want the Search Engine to describe your site:
“Business Website” = http://BestChiro.com
or
“Need help with back pain?” = http://BestChiro.com

3) The last box is your domain name.

You can fill in the other boxes on this page, if you choose. But the Website boxes are vital to create a backlink. SAVE your changes.

Remember the Reviews and Testimonials tip?. While we are here on the profile, it’s helpful to know you can request a testimonial from other LinkedIn members. LinkedIn calles them RECOMMENDATION.

You will see ASK FOR RECOMMENDATION listed just above Websites. You can use it to ask your customers (who are LinkedIn members) for a review/testimonial.

That’s it to expose your Websites to the Search Engines and create a backlink for the Search Engines to count for you.

General Tips Search Engine Tips

Reviews and Testimonials are vital for your business

Post author By social media
Post date February 27, 2011

Reviews and Testimonials are vital for your business, as well as to help your Search Engine rankings. I say Search Engine rankings because Google Places is watching for your reviews. If you look closely at the Google search results, Google lists the Company name, website, and number of reviews found.

BrightLocal.com published findings from a survey they did. Key findings were:

67% of local consumers have consulted online customer reviews of local businesses.
58% of consumers trust a local business more having read positive online reviews.
69% of local consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

You can read the full article here -> http://www.brightlocal.com/blog/2010/11/29/local-consumer-review-survey-2010-part-1

You want ALL your Customers to write a review or testimonial on you and your business. Don’t assume they will. Be direct and always ask for a testimonial. There are many great places where your Customers can do it:

On your Google Places page
On Yelp
On your Facebook business page
On your YouTube channel
On your LinkedIn profile

Personally, I prefer that people post their reviews themselves. Sure, I could have them email me something or I could provide little “How was my service” cards. But in the end, I’m the one posting their words. And what would readers think? Did the review come from a real person? Did someone make up these testimonials? What would you trust more?

Hopefully, with each new Customer, you are collecting the Customer’s email address for marketing other offers and discounts. You can simply email your Customer a brief request to leave a testimonial. To make it even easier, you can provide links in the email to take your Customer to the specific pages where to leave their testimonial.

You should do your part as well. Did you have great service somewhere? Was some business or person a miracle worker for you? Did you buy an outstanding product? It would help them greatly, if you could write a review or testimonial. Don’t forget to put your name and website in the testimonial. Having your website included will allow the Search Engines to count it as a backlink to help you too.

Get started now. You can never have to many Testimonials.

Search Engine Tips

Search Engines LOVE video

Post author By social media
Post date February 4, 2011

Search Engines LOVE video. Particularly Google, since Google purchased YouTube in 2006. Right now there are over 900 million videos on YouTube.

While there are lots of other sites for storing and sharing Video, YouTube is the place to be for Video. It’s OK to use the other sites also.

Even if you don’t have your own Video there yet, you can create your own “channel” and select your favorite videos. Your “channel”, like your Blog, can be the distribution point to send your videos and backlinks to all the Social Media sites.

Your Channel Viewers can share your videos, subscribe to get your new videos, mark videos as their favorite, and write reviews.

In effect, YouTube has joined the ranks of being a huge Social Media site. And like the rest, it’s free also.

You can setup your own YouTube channel here–> http://www.youtube.com and click on CREATE ACCOUNT in the upper right corner.

Then when you have a Video ready, you simply click ‘upload’ to start the process. Many of today’s ‘flip’ type of Video cameras make it even easier to upload videos.

You’ll be surprised to know that amateur video is better than professional video. So don’t be afraid to use whatever clip you just created. Even if you just captured it with your cell phone.

Some people don’t want to be in front of the camera. That’s OK too. Many videos are picture slideshows with music or some other audio track. Or an instructional video of a person’s desktop with only the person’s voice.

Have fun with this one. Feel free to share your favorite YouTube video.

Search Engine Tips

You need backlinks

Post author By social media
Post date January 31, 2011

You need backlinks to your website. What’s a backlink? It’s a link on another website that points to your website. This is also known as ‘in coming’ links.

The number of backlinks is a popularity rating for your website. And all Search Engines count your backlinks when ranking your site.

Want to see how many backlinks you have? You can use this free Backlink tool.

Just provide your website name and you’ll see how many backlinks are being counted in the Search Engines. And if you like, also enter a competitor’s website to see how you compare.

You will notice that you need thousands of backlinks to seriously compete with the bigger websites.

You’ll also notice that the Google numbers are zero or significantly lower than the others. Google considers their backlink counts to be proprietary. So they purposely don’t provide accurate counts. Instead, Google provides a PageRank rating. You can see your Google PageRank.

Your website content and the number of backlinks to your website are the 2 most critical factors Search Engines use to Rank your site. So it’s vital to continuously build backlinks.

How? That will be in future tips.

Search Engine Tips

Make sure the Search Engines know about your website.

Post author By social media
Post date January 24, 2011

Make sure the Search Engines know about your website.

Each Search Engine has a page for you to submit your Website name (the domain name).

Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/

Yahoo: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit

MSN: http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx

It takes 2 to 4 weeks for the Search Engines to scan and index your site.

There are many other search engines, but most of them get feeds from one of these 3 primary search engines. So the 3 above are the only ones you need.

Search Engine Tips

Help your Customers find your Business

Post author By social media
Post date May 12, 2010

When prospective Customers are looking for you, they will typically use a search engine. And when you created your website, you probably submitted your domain name, to each major search engine for crawling and indexing your site.

Did you know that Search Engines also allow you to create a free Business Profile? It’s another great way for the Search Engines to help visitors/customers find you.

Take a look at GetListed.org

Here you can search for your Business Name and see what “profile” information the search engines have. There are also links to create your Business Profile, if GetListed.org isn’t finding it.