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Search Engine Optimization Tactics: Local Search + How To Use Graphics and Flash

by customerparadigm

With the global economy struggling, acquiring new customers is
top of mind for most organizations.

Did you know that 50-70% of consumer and business purchasers
start with a search engine like Google? If your website doesn't
appear at the top of a search engine results page (sponsored ads
or organic search results), you're losing potential customers to
companies that do rank higher.

What can you do? I'll share with you my top strategies and
tactics that can help you acquire new customers via search engine
optimization and advertising.

1. Local Search Engine Advertising. For businesses that serve
specific geographic regions (i.e. Denver, Colorado), you can
create search engine ads in Google and Yahoo that only appear to
people in your area.

How does this work? A search engine like Google uses a
computer's IP address and other information to discover where
someone is searching (including city and state).

Why does Google care where a person is located? Google's mission
is to give their end users the best search results possible. So
if I need a someone to walk my dog in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, it
does me little good to receive a paid search result from Arizona.
This is a real example - my brother has a petsitting business,
and I've used local Google search engine advertising to drive new
clients to his organization.

Thus Google (and the others) tries to match search results to
the geographic location of the person searching.

How does Google make money? Google gives businesses and
organizations the ability to display paid advertisements
(sponsored results) on search results pages. These ads are
triggered by keywords you choose (more on this in a different
strategy).

You don't have to pay for your ad to display; you pay Google
only when someone clicks on your ad. The technical term is Cost
Per Click (CPC) advertising. The more relevant your ad (more on
this later), the less you have to pay for specific keywords, and
the higher up you will appear in the sponsored advertising
results.

Local Search CPC Ads. In Google Adwords, you can create an
advertising campaign that will target someone in a specific city
or state. You can even specify a 5, 10 or 25 mile radius from a
specific location (like your retail showroom or office). Below
your local ad, Google will place the name of your local area
(i.e. Denver, Colorado)... making it more likely that someone
searching in your area will choose your organization vs. an
out-of-town competitor.

Local CPC Ads are usually a more cost effective option than a
national search engine advertising campaign. As a general rule of
thumb, the more geographically targeted and specific you can be,
the less money you'll need to pay to acquire new customers. And
make sure you have conversion tracking code placed on your site,
so you can measure and track how much you're paying for each new
customer via local search engine advertising.

2. Don't Confuse The Search Engines With Graphics.  Search
engines are really good at reading text.  But they've very easily
confused.  And if Google gets confused when it crawls through
your site, you won't rank very high in search results.

Search engines, for example, can't read words that are contained
in graphics or flash animation. So if your company's name is only
contained in a graphic on your site, this content is 'invisible'
to a search engine.  Same thing goes for product or service
names.

The root of the problem lies with graphic designers.  Graphic
designers are really good at building graphics.  And don't take
this to mean I don't like graphic designers. (I employ a bunch of
them, but they know how to do SEO-friendly design.)

But most websites are designed by graphic designers who are
really good at building graphics, and less interested in Search
Engine Optimization (SEO).  It takes a bit more time to have
content placed in text, and use a stylesheet to format it so that
a search engine can read it. Especially when it's just so easy to
create a good looking graphic in photoshop.

Here's an example of a site that uses all flash (and is
invisible to search engines):
http://www.gelazzi.com/

While it looks pretty to humans, to Google the content is
completely invisible.  Here's how the site appears to Google in
it's cache:
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:-qvxrs72gygJ:www.gelazzi.com/+http://www.gelazzi.com/&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1
(You can see that there is no text or content that appears)

Even if you're not worried about organic search positioning, but
are doing paid search engine marketing (like Google Adwords),
it's important that the content on your site is easily digested
by a search engine.

Why?  Google Adwords ranks the pages on your website, and
compares it to your keywords and ad copy.  The more relevant
Google ranks the text on your site, the less you'll have to pay
for a sponsored ad on Google (and the higher your position).

In Summary: Don't confuse search engines by keeping your content
'locked up' in graphics.  It's a small little detail in the web
design process, but one that will pay dividends for a long, long
time with increased search results.

3. Title Tags & Why They Matter.  When you search in Google, the
search results on the next page each start with a blue underlined
link.

What displays in this blue link is usually what is contained in
the title tag of a web page. The keywords you placed in the
search box are usually boldfaced in the search results.

So, just what is a title tag, and why does it matter for search
engine positioning?

According to the World Wide Web Consortium (w3.org), the Title
tag was designed to help people "identify the contents of a
document."  When people view individual web pages out of context
(often via search), context-rich page titles help tell the
visitor a summary of the page.

Instead of a title like "Introduction", which doesn't provide
much contextual background, web designers should supply a title
such as "Introduction to Medieval Bee-Keeping" instead.

Google and other search engines use these rich contextual clues
as a way to hone its search results.

On a web page, the title tag is part of the HTML code.  Here's
what the code looks like on Customer Paradigm's site:
Title: Customer Paradigm: Website Design, Development, Email
Marketing, Content Management, PHP programming

Most end users won't see the title tag*. But  the title tag is
what a subject ine is to an email campaign: It entices the end
user to pay attention and open the page to read more.

Top Five Most Common Mistakes for Title Tags:

A. Untitled: When many of the popular programs create a new HTML
page, it puts 'Untitled' into the title tag.  It's up to the Web
designer to change this... and since most users don't see it,
sometimes they forget to change it.

B. No Title Tag: Like the "Untitled" tag, another key mistake is
simply leaving out the title tag. If you do a view source
(Internet Explorer: Right Click and select View Source), and the
title tag doesn't appear... then you don't have a title tag.

C. "About" Tag: Another common mistake for title tags is to have
the title tag refer to a section of your website.  But a title
tag that reads, "About" doesn't tell me much about what the
company or website is "About."  Instead, have it read:
Title: Customer Paradigm - About the Company: Website
Development & Marketing, Email Deployment and php programming

This is sure to get more keywords into the title tag, and if
you're searching for a company, you instantly know what they do.

D. No Company Name In Title Tag: We recommend putting your
company name at the beginning of the title tag, so that people
can quickly see your company's name when they search.

E. Same Title Tag on Multiple Pages: You should have a unique
title tag for each page of the site.  Why? As each page is
unique, you should have a title tag that describes it's unique
content.

* Here's where they might interact with the title tag:
 - The title tag is displayed at the top left of most people's
browser window.
 - Page titles are used as the default description for a
person's bookmarks when someone bookmarks a site.
 - Visually impaired people use title tags to summarize the
contents of a page before they have a text-to-speech reader read
the contents of the page.
 - These, along with Google's search results, are the only
places end users actually see the title tag.

Jeff Finkelstein is the founder of <a
href="http://www.CustomerParadigm.com">Customer Paradigm</a>,
Colorado that helps clients acquire, retain and interact with
their customers.  Customer Paradigm focuses on email marketing,
php programming, eCommerce Websites, Search Engine Optimization
and more.

Syndicated by Top Gazebos - www.topgazebos.net

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