Link building can be simple and easy if you use the right resources. If you have the money, you can pay for pay-per-click advertising with banner ads on search engines or websites. This is a good way to generate buzz and traffic to your website that could build links. Paying for listings in directories is another popular way to get visitors to your site too.

If you have a small business or have a strict budget, you can create tags on similar sites on websites like Del.icio.us. People may follow the tags back to your website providing another opportunity for link building. Another free way to link build is to post your website in the directory listing on Craigslist or, if you have a substantial topic, creating a Wikipedia page that links back to your site. Forums are also another popular way to build links to your website especially if your site has a particular expertise about a certain topic.

Building business links can be as simple as submitting your link to relevant state and city government resources or joining the Better Business Bureau. If you have any business relationships with non-competing businesses in the your field, then you can request links from them to help build links in your community.

Public Relations websites are another great way to submit press releases about any upcoming news and topics relating to your website. You may have to pay to submit your press release to particular websites, but it’s a great way to get your name out in the industry.

Link building can be a tedious task, but is necessary to sustain the life of your website and get your name out in the local area. By building links of quality sites, you can be sure that your website is getting the amount of traffic you need to generate awareness of your topic.

Implementing SEO terms into web content seamlessly takes practice. Inexperienced writers will highlight words and use keyword search terms that seem out of place in the text. This can detract from the quality of your website. People are wary of websites that use bright bold texts and hard sell advertising, but people appreciate authenticity and simple, straightforward information. Using SEO terms in a simple, straight forward manner is an effective way to promote your website and get traffic.

You may be wondering how you can determine what SEO keyword search people are using. The best way to figure this out is to come up with a list of terms you would use if you were looking to come across a website (like the one you plan to create) with the information you need. Once you have created a list you can consult a program like Google AdWords Keyword Tool to see how many searches the terms you have are getting. Keywords that have a high number of searches are typically popular SEO terms. If you use popular SEO terms, then you can be sure that others are using them as well. This means more competition between your website and other sites with similar content as yours.

You generally want to choose SEO terms that have a lower amount of competition and that are as specific as possible. This can be a difficult median to reach, but is necessary to get the traffic you need to your website.

This concept could be visualized as a fisherman on a large lake dropping hooks on the far reaches of the lake hoping to hook a fish.  In my opinion wouldn’t it seem more important just to drop a line where the fish are? Of course that begs the question:  How do you know where the fish are?

The truth is the fish are all around you if you know where to look.  They are on Facebook, Twitter, they’re online looking in local search directories.  They’re typing in to their search engine “your city name” and “your business category “and if you’re not showing up in the search engine results, your being overlooked.

This is where thinking differently about your marketing, or  Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help.  If you have a catering business in Tucson AZ then being ranked for the term “Arizona Catering” in general is not that helpful.  For example if your business is in Tucson and someone from Flagstaff AZ finds you chances are you’re not going to get the call anyway as the customer is most likely looking for someone local anyway.   If however your website appears under the search term “Tucson Catering” and your business happens to do catering in Tucson you’re going to get a call.

In summary, rather than trying to set up your business’ website to attract hits based on non local search terms you should be thinking hyper-local.  You may even work to optimize your website to be found for a particular suburb of your city.    This does mean however that you want your business to be found in both the” city search” and a “suburb of your city search” too you just never know how targeted your next customer may be looking.

As a business the Internet is no longer an option, you must start going where your customers are looking. Online, in the search engines. Get found there and get the business back that print media can no longer send.

The thing we found was that there are well over one hundred people a month searching for variations of this companies name online yet before they had a website the company had no idea where they were going.

Think about this for a minute, there are people actively looking for your business and if your website is not optimized properly or if you do not have a web presence at all there is no way for your potential customers to find you.

The business I am talking about here was a very offline business, a drilling and blasting company, when we put the site together they really were just looking to have a small site setup online but we told them it would end up being their advertising online, their way of promoting their business. They were skeptical.

Not now, they indicated they are getting many calls from the site now, customers were looking before they just were not finding this company, who knows they may of been finding a competitor in local search listings. How much business does a business loose if someone is looking for them over and over again online but can never find them.

As search engine optimizers we tend to focus on keywords and search volume for certain search terms, in many cases a persons business is searched on enough that the value is in just being found.

Is your business being found online in all the places it should be? If not talk to us about local search optimization.

In the past it has always been about eyeballs, there was no targeting, at least not in the sense we talk about today. If you were to advertise in the newspaper or on the radio you were advertising across a large region and you bought the ad based on eyeballs or listeners even if those people had no interest in your product or even if they just happened to be passing through town.

This is the model most small business owners are typically most familiar with. The web changes all of this.

Now, with local search taking a larger role in online search queries making sure you are found when people search for a service or product in Bing, Google, or Yahoo is more important than any newspaper ad someone could run. And one statistic says a lot as well, 80 percent of people in one survey reported searching online to research a product or service then going locally to buy it.

If your business cannot be found online then it is likely they are not going to your business to buy it.

With local search and hyperlocal targeting you can make sure that when people search for your business online that they find your web presence. Making sure your business shows up in the Google local listings (or Bing and Yahoo) is very important, but with people becoming even more targeted in their search making sure you show up at a neighborhood level in major metros and even in rural areas can be very important if someone is looking for a local service or restaurant.

It is not about having hundreds of thousands of people reading the newspaper and possibly seeing your ad with the web, on the web when someone searches in the search engines they know exactly what they are looking for which means if your business can get that traffic to your website then the conversion ratio is much higher than you may be used to in legacy methods of advertising.

By building your website in a way that attracts the people searching in your local area you can make sure that the customers you are looking for find you and not your competitor. These customers convert, you want them to be yours.

We look forward to providing you with local search tips, tricks and news:

LocalSEOGuide.com

DavidMihm.com

Look for more info from us real soon.