Here is a video that will explain some very basic but important steps to help your website get higher rankings on Google. Chances are that your website designer may have left these out. Not good.
Here is video 2 in my website case study. I had a bit of a problem getting the site indexed and I believe it was a Wordpress issue. If you are using the newest version of wordpress make sure you check the privacy settings. Mine were set to block the search engines and I did not choose that setting on my own. I think that wordpress should get rid of that setting, don’t know why anyone would want to block search engines.
Once I did figure out what the problem was it took about 5 or 6 days for the Massage Lancaster PA website to hit the first page of Google. It is currently in spot number 7. Here is where I work my magic and get it to the top. Here is video number 2 in the:
I am working on a case study that I am documenting using video. Most local business owners are missing out on some very targeted traffic. It’s estimated that up to 80% of the population is now using Google to search for local business instead of the Yellow Pages. It’s only a matter of time before you will only be able to find your Yellow Pages in a museum.
I have selected a market here in Lancaster that has quite a bit of search volume each month. It is the Massage Therapy market. In October 2009 there were 1600 searches for the keyword phrase “massage lancaster pa”
That means that according to Google (and those numbers may be a bit inflated) that 1600 people used google to search for a massage here in Lancaster PA.
That is a LOT of traffic. Very targeted traffic. How busy do you think you would be if your website was at the top of Google and you were able to capture a good amount of that traffic?
Here is video number 1 in the
Today I wanted to take the time to discuss Craigslist. It used to be a very good tool for free advertising but lately has become a cesspool of very slimy marketers trying to trick people into making them money, let me explain.
There are c0mpanies out there that will pay marketers to get folks to submit information online. They are called CPA offers, or Cost Per Action.
You can get paid (usually under a buck) for having someone submit their zip code or email address and you can also get paid (sometimes as high as $45) for someone signing up for a “free trial” of a product or service.
There so called internet marketers are using Craigslist to post bogus job listings and telling the prospects that they need to submit some information or sign up for a “free” credit report as part of the application process. Then the marketer gets paid by the CPA company.
The job listings are completely bogus. Most legitimate companies will ask you to respond to the ad with a copy of your resume, not send you to some 3rd party website (unless it’s the companies corporate website) to fill out any kind of “free” anything.
Job searcher beware… If you come across a bogus job listing make sure and flag it so that we can get all these knuckleheads off of Craigslist.
I’ve been doing a lot of keyword research online for local businesses here in Lancaster PA and have been coming across some very shocking mistakes being made by so called “Web Designers” that have a business building websites for local businesses.
I wanted to discuss 3 key Internet Marketing must have’s that are crucial to your prospects finding you on Google when they are doing a search for your type of local business here in Lancaster PA or anywhere else for that matter.
They are as follows:
They may sound like Greek to you right now but allow me to explain.
It’s the blue line at the very top of your web browser and the first thing that Google looks at when trying to decide what your website is about. It should have your main keyword phrase you are trying to rank for, as well as one or two others. It is not where you should have your company name, or worse yet if it just says “Home” you should fire your web designer. It is also in blue lettering and underlined in the search results for each webpage indexed.
That is a description of what your webpage is about. It should be compelling, and it’s also a good idea to list your phone number so people who are used to searching in the Yellow Pages can call you without having to click through and locate your phone number on your website. If your website does not have a description tag in the html code, Google will just pull some info from your site and make it up for you. Not the best way to market.
This is written into the html code of your website and it is a list of keywords you are trying to get indexed for. It should have your main keyword phrase and just a few more, maybe 5 or 6 in all. You should not just stuff it full of lots of keywords. Looks like spam to Google.
There are lots of other factors that will help you gain higher rankings like having the keywords written into your content, updating your website frequently with good quality content, and building backlinks. The 3 items I’ve touched on are very basic, but you would be amazed that just having these in place in the local market could mean the difference between page 1 and page 50.
If you are thinking about using pay-per-click or PPC marketing like Google Adwords to promote your Lancaster PA business then you need to read this.
Most people that are using Google Adwords are paying way too much. The one hard lesson most people make when they first start using pay-per-click is that you can blow through a lot of money without even realizing it. Most business owners will sign up for an account. Write one ad and fill that ad group with every keyword they can think of that relates to their business. There are only 2 outcomes to this type of campaign management.
Google was built on and remains focused on one thing. Relevance. In Google’s mind when a person does a search query they want the most relevant results for the keyword or keyword phrase the user types in. That goes for the organic search results as well as the Adwords ads, so the more relevant your website and ads are the higher you will be ranked in the organic search results and the less you will pay per click.
There are lots of ways to lower what you are paying for your Google Adwords advertising.
One client of ours was using Google Adwords to market their packaging and were targeting the US. We were able to cut their costs by 70% and also raise their clickthrough rate from about 1% to 3-5% just by tweaking their ads and making them more focused.
The one thing you need to be doing if nothing else is split testing. You need to be running 2 ads per ad group and see which one gets more clicks. Then once you are sure one is better than the other you get rid of the loser and write another one to compete with the winner and run them again.
The best thing about advertising on Google Adwords is that everything you do can be tested, and the data speaks for itself. There is no guesswork involved. Your prospects will tell you by their actions what works and what doesn’t.
For more information or for an analysis of your current Google Adwords campaigns you can contact us at lancasterpamarketing@gmail.com
