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The tough thing for most small business owners is coming up with stuff to write about. A common thought is, “Who really cares what I have to say?”. The most important thing is not necessarily what you say, but that you say something often. The more posts you write, the more content there is for Google to list.

I recently wrote an article on our Facebook page that gives you 5 things that you can blog about.  These topics are great for ANY type of business.  Whether you are a dentist, a personal trainer, or a financial consultant, never run out of things to say again.

Read the rest of “5 Things You Can Blog About To Promote Your Small Business”…

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If you do a search on Google for just about anything, at the top of the page you will see a local map with 7 local businesses featured.  These listings have a link to the businesses website as well as a link to a “More Information” page.

Just recently Google started showing these “Local Listings” even when searches did not include a local keyword in the search term.  For example, you use to have to search form ‘computer repair maryland’ to see the map.  Now Google figures out where you are located and displays the map even if you don’t put the word ‘Maryland’ in your search.

The great thing about the Google Local Business Center Listings is that it is FREE for a business to get listed.  All you have to do is set it up.

Introducing our Step By Step Guide to Creating Your FREE Google Local Business Listing.

We would like to email you our guide to creating your Google Local Business Listing.  Simply leave your email address in the box below and will email it to you within a few minutes.

Don’t wait another day to do this!  You competition has done it already.  Everyone is using the internet to search for local businesses.  Every day that you are not coming up on the first page of Google you are losing customers.

Leave your email address below right now.   Then check your Inbox for the free guide.

Don’t worry, we won’t ever give your information to anyone else.  We hate spam as much as you do.

As part of an ongoing internet marketing campaign for a client of ours, ” Garland Davis DDS Family Dentistry “ , we created a new website.   The site is http://TeethWhiteningLaurel.com .

Less than 48 hours after the site went live it holds the #1 position.  That itself would be great, but it gets even better than that!   Keep reading…

Immediately after the site was live on the web we began the process of ‘marketing the site to Google’.   Some of the things we do to get Google to notice a website or a page are…

Phase 1…

Social Bookmarking – Create posts and comments about the website on 20 – 30 social bookmarking and social networking sites.

Mini Blog Posts - Create short blog posts or articles on several very high page ranked sites that we have access to.

Article Marketing – Create an article based on the keyword we are targeting. We then submit that article to several hundred article directories/libraries.

Phase 2…

Bookmark the Bookmarks - We then go back and create bookmarks and links to the all the Social Bookmarks, Mini Blog Posts, and the Articles that we create in Phase 1.

Phase 3…

Ping Away – Finally we want to make absolutely sure that all of the search engines and web directories know about each of the Phase 1 AND Phase 2 pages.   To do this we ‘Ping’ each of the search engines and web directories to give them the location of each of the now hundreds of backlinks, articles, blog posts, etc… that we have created.

As of this writing, if you do a Google search for ” Teeth Whitening Laurel “ you will see our main site in the number 1 position.

It gets even better!… Some of the mini blog posts that we made have made it to the first page as well!

Less than 48 hours from going live we hold the #1, #2, #6, #8, and #10 positions on the first page of Google for our target keyword “Teeth Whitening Laurel”.

And It Get’s Even Better!

Everything we just talked about is only a very small part of the overall ” Custom Internet Traffic Generation System” that we have put together for our client.

We do this same type of thing for them every single month.  Every month we work to get our clients ANOTHER first page listing on Google.

Most SEO companies work to get your main website noticed and ranked on Google.   Faster Digital works to get you MULTIPLE first page listings.

Ready to get started today?   Want to learn what we can do for your business starting right now?

Contact Bruce right now at (240) 547-9457.   Or email us via our contact form.

Go ahead, call or email so that we can start working for your business today.

We used the base phrase “personal training” as the starting point.

This list is ranked in order of ‘# of daily searches’ for the exact phrase.

The competition for these keywords is extremely high.  You should use a geographic modifier to eliminate most competition.    This means adding something like ‘ columbia md ‘  or ‘ maryland ‘ to the end of the keyword.

Use the keywords several times in your blog posts or articles.   Also use them in the title of the post.  When using them in the article be sure to use them in a ‘conversational tone’.  Don’t just stuff them in.  Google doesn’t like keyword stuffing.   Don’t piss Google off.

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Keywords, Keywords, Keywords

The first phase of any search engine optimization project is researching the keywords. Before you start to optimize, you must determine which keywords will pull the most traffic for the least amount of effort. You can do this by purchasing a subscription to Word Tracker, or any of the many other paid keyword tools. However the best way to do the keyword research is completely FREE.  We are talking about using the Google Keyword Tool to search “aggregate search” records for all possible keywords for which you could potentially optimize your blog. (do a Google search for “Google Keyword Tool” to find the tool )

Record all of the keyword results you receive from the Google Keyword Tool.

Your next step will be to analyze Google to find out how many competing pages there are for these keywords.

You can do this by searching for each of your new found keywords on Google. Not only will you want to record the search return data in terms of numbers, but you will also want to look at the top competitors for those keywords (i.e., are the PR 9 home pages or are they a deep page for an unranked site?) Optimal keywords for search engine optimization purposes will have high search counts, a low number of competeing sites, and low-quality competition in the top slots.

Optimize Those Web Pages

Your next step should be to perform some ‘onpage’ optimization of your webpages. You can do this by using your selected keywords as titles and headers on different pages of your blog.

You will then want to fill those pages will good information about the keyword in question.
Keep in mind that Google is looking for high quality, relevant content to display when someone searches.   Each page should focus on 1-3 keywords.  You must use the keywords in a ‘natural conversational tone’.  DO NOT just jam your keywords onto the page.

Links, Links, Links

The last step in your search engine optimization campaign is to perform ‘offpage’ optimization, or link building.

You can do this by submitting links to directories that contain a selected keyword in the link title.  This is called the Anchor Text.

For example: Let’s imagine that I own CNN.com.   If I was creating a link to it I would want to have the text for the link say…       “Visit CNN For The Best News”        I would make that text into a hyperlink that points to http://www.cnn.com.         The “Visit CNN For The Best News” would be the ‘Anchor Text’.

Another very effective method of building links is through posting comments on other peoples blogs.  Do a search on Google for “dofollow blog list”.  A link that is ‘dofollow’ is a link that Google follows and counts as a vote for your website.  Look for blogs that are related to your business type and then leave comments.   Make sure the comments are good high quality comments related to the specific blog post.  Otherwise they will get deleted.

Here’s a hint for leaving comments.   When you leave the comment the site will ask for your name and website address.  In the comment that you leave your name will be a hyperlink back to your website.  BUT…   DON’T put your name in the name box.  Come up with a ‘pen name’ that includes your keywords.

I would use something like…  “WebMarketingGuru”  The link would be to my website:  http://fasterdigital.com.   This would create a hyperlink in my comments that looks like this…

WebMarketingGuru

So now the link back to my website has the anchor text of “WebMarketingGuru”.  If I do enough backlinks like this Google will start to think that FasterDigital.com must be a website about the “Web Marketing Guru”.  If someone searches for this, they would display my site in the results.   Pretty cool huh?

Patience, Patience, Patience

Getting lot’s of traffic to your website or blog is not difficult.  It does take time and lot’s of patience.  Just make sure that you don’t end up spending all your time working on building your website or blog up.  Remember that you do have a business to run.

Do What You Do Best

Many business owners are beginning to realize that they don’t have enough time to do all that is required to get traffic to their website.  They are turning to professional internet marketing companies.  At first glance it may seem that this is too expensive, but when you look at the excellant returns that a professional marketing campaign can bring you, it becomes a no brainer.  Let the marketing gurus take care of the marketing, you go do what you do best…   RUN YOUR BUSINESS,   SELL YOUR PRODUCT,    SELL YOUR SERVICES!

Contact Bruce today to discuss how Faster Digital can work with you to get your website listed at the top of Google, get more traffic to your business website and most importantly…  Get paying customers to your business.   Reach out to Bruce – The Internet Marketing Guru here… (Notice the ‘Anchor Text’ in the hyperlink!  I really do follow my own advice!)

What are your dreams, goals, plans for 2010 and beyond?

We want to know. Leave a comment below…

Importance of Keywords

The Importance of Keywords

If you’re thinking about building your business website you’re going to need to know a whole lot about keywords. People don’t always realize the importance of keywords to their small business website. They are extremely critical to your online success.

A keyword is a word or phrase that people type into a search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc…) hoping to find websites, information and resources that they want or need. If you don’t use keywords correctly there is a good chance that no one will ever find your website when they’re searching for it.

If nobody can find your small business website your internet marketing efforts will not attract any new customers. It’s vitally important to the life of your business that you research keywords properly and know exactly how to use them. There are many resources online.,and we will discuss some of them in future posts, that will teach you how to get the most out of keywords. Here are a few tips to help get you started.

First of all, you’ll want to make your keywords as specific as possible. Let’s say you are a dentist. There are a lot of people online looking for the term “dentist” but if you go to Google or any other search engine you’ll find that there are so many websites that already use the term “Dentist” that your competition is too steep.

A better choice would be “best dentist in Laurel maryland” or “laurel maryland cosmetic dentist”. Even though less people will be searching for these terms, you will have a better chance of ranking on the first page of Google for them.

A keyword such as “best dentist in Laurel maryland” is called a ‘long tail keyword’. Not because of the length of the keyword, but because someone that is searching for “best dentist in Laurel maryland” is probably ready to book an appointment. Long tail keywords are words that searches would be using when the are ready to purchase.

Another great reason that you would want to use “best dentist in Laurel maryland” is this. Let’s say you were able to rank on the first page of Google for the single keyword ‘dentist’. You would probably get thousands of website visitors per day. Sounds great! The problem is that 99% of the visitors would not be from the Laurel, Maryland area.

You are almost guaranteed that someone searching for “best dentist in Laurel maryland” is someone in Laurel Maryland who is looking for a dentist.

More website traffic does not always mean more business.

The more specific the better with your keywords. This is true especially when it comes to doing localized internet marketing. There are millions of dental websites listed on Google to compete against. However there are only a handful of ‘Laurel Maryland Dental websites’ to compete against.

Try to use keywords in your website domain name, on your website, on your blog, in articles, on Youtube and pretty much everywhere else you can. I have written this article based on a few main keywords. Can you tell from reading it what those ‘long tail keywords’ were? Leave a comment below letting me know what ‘long tail keywords’ you think I was going after when writing this post.

Everything comes back to keywords when you’re working on the internet. Do your research and find keywords that work well for you. Use them as much as possible and more and more people will be looking at your opportunity and that means more money in your pocket.

Stay tuned….
Now that you know how important keywords are to your online marketing efforts we need to talk about what tools you use to find these long tail keywords. I will post about that in a future blog post.