New Book on Building Link Popularity
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I’m pleased to announce the launch of my new ebook:
If you want to save money by doing SEO yourself,
this is an excellent resource. For more info Click Here
Optimizing for Local Search
Local search is becoming increasingly popular. If your business sells a product/service locally, make sure your website is optimized correctly.
You want to include:
- zip or postal code
- street City or town along with descriptive words like North, Southern, East-side, Central, etc.
- State or Province entirely spelled out plus the abbreviation
- Country
- Area code and phone number
- Landmarks - example: right next door to…
As search engine algorithms start using geo-targeting more and more, your website can appear higher in the listings for searches in your area.
Here are some good ways to optimize your site for local search:
- Include geographic keywords in your webpages near the top and bottom of the page. On the bottom of everypage where your copyright information is add your full address and contact details.example: ©2007 Zakaria Fine Linens. 1121 1st Street in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia V1T 1H2. 604-555-5555
- In your title tag you could have something like: Fine Linens by Zakaria in Downtown Vancouver BC
- On your contact page and FAQ page include your full address plus maps and directions
- In your salescopy you can add information like “Visit us in Downtown Vancouver, only 5 minutes from BC Place”
Keep a good eye on your statistics and see what keywords people are using to find you. Do they type in the city, state or area of town? If they do, look on your webpages for some more places where you can include that keyword. Of course, make sure that it looks natural and reads well for your visitors.
My prediction is that we will see big changes with the way search engines display local results in the next 2 years. Google is leading the way and Yahoo will definitely want to catch up.
Big News From Google
Google has announced that they are planning to unify
search results. Google Search, Video, News and more
all on one screen…
This move has huge implications for the SEO industy.
Read the article on CNN
With more on one page, obviously there will less room…
FAQ about SEO
What is the difference between ‘White Hat’ and ‘Black hat’?
White hat search engine optimization is the practice of playing by the rules and not violating the Search Engines’ Terms of Service. Black Hat SEO uses strageties that try to trick the search engines into giving you higher rankings.
Some typical black hat strategies are:
Splogging - Automatically creating a bunch of blogs full of ‘garbage content’ (random words that aren’t readable by humans.)
Spamming Blogs - ‘Automated backlink generator’ scripts that post advertisements on blogs in order to generate links.
Hidden Links and Text - Creating links and text on your site for seo purposes that is the same color as the background so that your visitors can’t see it.
Cloaking - Showing the search engines robots different content than what your site visitors see.
Many people end up trying black hat tactics because they are told that “it’s ok”, “everyone’s doing it”, ususally by someone who’s selling them some black-hat software. As the search engines’ technology is getting more and more sophisticated, they can tell when someone is using black hat and will delist them and ban their domain name.
Just like you wouldn’t build your house on quick-sand, why use black-hat when you can do things the right way and build on a solid foundation…
What do I need to know so that I don’t get accidentally banned from the search engines?
As far as your page content is concerned, avoid keyword stuffing. Having too many of the same words in your meta tags, alt tags or title tags is asking for trouble. Also, make sure that the keyword density on your page for your targeted keywords are less than 13%.
Be careful about who you link out to from your site. If you are linking to a website that Google considers a ‘link farm’ or has been banned, your website could be penalized.
To check this, look at your link partners’ sites and see if they have some page rank or if they are ‘grey-barred’ (the page-rank shows as grey, instead of white). If the website is brand new, it will be grey - but if it’s an established site than that means they have been banned.
If you find that you are linking to a site that has been banned, take off your link immediately.
