First consider how much the advertising will cost you per click. This all comes down to how popular the search terms are and how many visitors a website receives. Search engines typically require bids for particular places in the ad spots on particular pages. If you bid too low, you’re outta luck. If you bid too high, then you’ve got the spot but you’ve out-priced yourself. You’ve got to find a happy median, which takes time and careful analysis.

Also consider the fact that with PPC advertising, you could be charged for multiple clicks by the same users. Software like Google Analytics will typically alert you if this happens and you will need to contact the search engine to get your money back. Make sure your marketing company monitors this so you won’t end up spending extra dollars for the same person over and over again.

Keep in mind that search engine optimization (SEO), which is cheaper to implement, also works just as well as PPC advertising. Many times simple SEO may generate the same, if not more, people to your website than a banner ad. It may be beneficial to implement SEO marketing first before starting a PPC campaign to see just how well you may be from keyword searches alone.

As with any traffic driving tool, PPC advertising just drives traffic to your website. It can be rather chaotic determining how much of the traffic is actually useful traffic (that is people who are consuming your product or service). If only a few of the ten thousand clicks you paid for actually bought into your product, then you may need to re-evaluate your SEM campaign.

Using analytic software such as Google Analytics is the best way to monitor how effective your SEM campaign is working. While some companies may have great success with PPC advertising, be sure to evaluate the real cost of the investment to determine if it is a necessary endeavor.

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.

Local search is something that people have always been doing, but it’s presence on the web has been increasing over the number of years as people become ever more interested in what is happening in their local communities.

Part of the reason for this growth can be attributed to the number of reasons including economy and expansion of Internet in rural communities. People are not traveling as far from their homes due to tightening of the purse strings. Instead, they’re searching for products, services, and activities closer to home. Rural families and schools are also getting access to internet in areas of the country where internet did not exist before and are now able to search outside of the phonebooks and traditional media.

Mobile marketing campaigns have also added a depth to hyper local search. Cell phones can be taken anywhere and with the expansion of mobile search, searching for a great restaurant or a car repair center is only a phone call away.

Google honed in on this concept of hyper local search back in 2003 and created a patent for its geo-targeted advertising, giving advertisers a chance to localize their advertising to a specific target market. Google knew the importance of local advertising, even back in 2003, and was able to leverage this information and become the largest search engine on the Internet.

Businesses who utilize hyper local search with their websites have an enormous opportunity to tap into consumers who may have been overlooked before. In fact, they may be able to arouse trusting, loyal customers who buy their product over and over again.

Hopefully, you’ve never said this, but if you have, there may be hope for you. Every person with a website wants someone to view their site (otherwise what’s the point?). While it’s exciting in the beginning to see how many views your site is getting, it can taper off after a while, especially if you don’t see any return on investment (i.e. ROI  or advertising effectiveness).

This is when ‘where the pay clicks are coming from’ ideology starts to count, especially if you have products or services you are selling through your website. If you’re a small business in Whatitsname, Arkansas and only cater to people in Whatitsname and the surrounding area, you probably don’t care about clicks coming from the United Kingdom or Outtherein, Nebraska. Why would you want to pay for clicks outside your target market? You want something that is more local: hyper local.

People who are not your target customers generally exit your website as soon as the first page loads. This leads to something called “bounce rate.” Ideally, you want to own a website with a low bounce rate, that is few people exiting the site soon after it loads. A low bounce rate typically means that people are viewing the content on your website and interacting with it in a positive way.

Ideally, if your website is correctly search engine optimized (SEO) and linked properly for search engines to rank effectively in their lists, then you should be getting your target customers who have interest in your business. SEO is a way of artfully implementing search terms people are using to find information into the content of your website. A search engine will scan your website for search terms and if they match will page rank your site in its results.

It’s easy to be sucked into catchy marketing companies that create websites, but many times these companies will ask for thousands of dollars just to create the site without actually helping you market it.  Before you make the investment of creating a search engine marketing campaign, be sure that your target customers are within reach and actually viewing your website.

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 advertising solutions have been about one thing, eyeballs. That is how people determined what they charged for their advertising product. The more eyeballs the better, right?

Well, local search engine optimization has changed that and turned it on its head. With the ability to optimize a website to show up in the search engine listings when people search for specific items in your local area you can receive higher converting visitors to your ad or website at a lower cost.

Why pay a newspaper thousands of dollars for an ad that you are not sure that anyone even cares about when for much less you can optimize your real estate website to be in the first page of Google search results when someone searches for the exact subdivision you are selling a house in.

With the economy, and especially real estate in a very tough downturn finding more cost effective, high converting, marketing solutions is very important. Being able to use local search engine optimization to target people searching for the exact location you are selling a property in is the best way.

If you are not thinking about this it is likely that your competitor is. With more and more people becoming more web savvy people are understanding that the search engines are not a technical subject anymore, they are your marketing tool. They have taken over for the newspapers and billboards of the past.

I you are interested in marketing your real estate website to the people searching for exactly what you are trying to sell then contact us for local search engine optimization.

There is no law that prohibits your business from operating multiple web sites or owning more than one domain name. However, most local professionals utilize a single domain name for their internet marketing strategy. This approach is based on the conventional wisdom that you want a single brand representing your business. While a single brand strategy is important for focus, to achieve reach it is best to develop local landing pages all built around a network of geo domains.

Not All Local Searches Start With Google

The goal of any online marketing plan is to cast a wide net, providing the reach necessary to find potential clients. Not all internet users start their local search on Google. Yahoo and Bing have a small, but significant, local search market share. Yellow Page companies, like YellowPages.com, YellowBook.com, and Superpages.com have converted former print yellow page customers to users of their online directories. Vertical Directories, including Lawyers.com and TheKnot.com, have developed a large following by blending editorialized content with local directories.

The key point is that the local search universe is fragmented. To reach potential customers in your local market, you will need to consider all potential sources of traffic. One source, that is underappreciated by most small business owners, is direct navigation traffic.

What is Direct Navigation?

There is a growing number of internet users who view the address bar in their web browser as a local search engine. The address bar is the text box at the top of any web browser that contains the domain you are visiting. If a user is looking for a Louisville photographer, they may type LouisvillePhotographer.com into the address bar to see what appears. The expectation is that LouisvillePhotographer.com will display information, either a directory or the website of a local photographer, that is relevant to their search. If you own this geo domain, you can take advantage of this highly targeted traffic.

Advantages of Direct Navigation

There is data to suggest that Direct Navigation traffic converts better than traditional Search Engine traffic. Considering the dynamics of both searches, that would make sense. When a user conducts a local search on Google, they are presented with many options to consider. Paid local advertisers, listings overlaid on Google Maps, and free local listings could give the user 25-30 links on a single page. Most users click a few links and browse the results. The breath of this experience results in less time spent on your website.

In contrast, direct navigation users have a deeper experience since they are viewing a single website. This depth allows them to focus on your message, resulting in a better understanding of your services, background, and skills. With only a single business to consider, there is a greater chance that the user will fill out your contact form or call you.

Next Week – Part 2 – Geo Domain Economics

But as you can imagine the usage of the white pages has dropped drastically as well, for a couple main reasons:

• Mobile phone growth and applications
• People searching online for people rather than picking up the book

Although the second one is obvious and the first one is as well for the most part, I think the part that many people miss is that since the majority of cell phone numbers are unlisted you will not find them anywhere, online or off.

Well, AT&T has figured this out and without much fanfare has killed the publishing of the White Pages sections in many phone books.

State commissions typically only make it a requirement for the phone companies to make the directory listings available NOT actually requiring the printing of them, unless required.

So what happened when they did this?

A couple quick points of reference, in Milwaukee, where this was first tested in September of last year there was a less than 2 percent request rate to actually get a copy, LESS THAN 2 PERCENT. If that is not a statistic to take note of I am not sure what is.

In Austin and Atlanta the request rate was 3 percent. Think about that a bit, the delivery rate before was 100 percent, but only 3 percent actually wanted them. Waste much????

To read a bit more about this check out Madison.com

Have you ever watched “The Amazing Race” on CBS? The reality show features two person teams racing around the world, performing a series of cultural tasks before they are given a clue to their next destination. During certain legs of the race, teams are given the option of pursuing a “Fast Forward” that will allow them to skip all tasks and go directly to the check-in station at the end of each leg. The “Fast Forward” doesn’t guarantee that the team will win the leg, but it gives the team who secures it a big advantage over the competition.

In Hyperlocal SEO, owning Geo Domains can give your business a significant leg up over the competition.

What are Geo Domains?

Geo Domains are domain names comprised of two subparts: A Geographic Name and either a Product, Service, or Piece of Content sought by internet users. Examples of Geo Domains include:

• WeddingsInBaltimore.com
• BaltimoreChiropractors.com
• MiamiPhotographer.me
• AtlantaNews.net
• TampaBayJobs.pro
• ChicagoRemodeling.TV

Why are Geo Domains Important?

Geo Domains are important because search engines, like Google and Bing, prefer legitimate businesses. Search engines recognize that domains, tied to high search terms, are valuable resources.  The more competitive the search term, the more valuable the geo domain. Owning a great Geo Domain implies that your business is legitimate and worthy of strong consideration.

In your market, there could be hundreds of competitors all vying for top placement. If you are a Chiropractor in Baltimore, and a user searches for “Baltimore chiropractors”, Google must decide which 10 Baltimore chiropractor sites to display to the user.   To determine which Chiropractor sites are more important than other Chiropractor sites, each search engine uses a proprietary set of rules to filter the results.

One rule common to all search engines, is that a well constructed site, built on top of a geo domain, will rank higher than the same site located at a non geo domain name. In our example, a site located at BaltimoreChiropractors.com will have an excellent chance of displaying at the top of the search results for “Baltimore chiropractors”.  Why?  The answer is that only one chiropractor in Baltimore can own BaltimoreChiropractors.com. Since you had the foresight or resources to acquire this valuable domain name, then your business is viewed as more legitimate than a competitor who is targeting the same local search term.

Dot Com domains are not the only domains preferred by the major search engines. While BaltimoreChiropractors.com and BaltimoreChiropractors.net see the greatest SEO benefit, over time, sites built on alternative extensions like BaltimoreChiropractors.pro, BaltimoreChiropractors.me, or BaltimoreChiropractors.TV can take advantage of Google and Bing‘s preference for geo domains.

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.