Reasons to Target Local Keywords-Free Keyword Research
It may be called the World Wide Web, but if your business offers services specifically to people in your immediate area then it’s no good receiving an influx of traffic from Rio de Janeiro or Timbuktu, or even the other side of the UK.
That’s where it can come in handy to specifically target local keywords and phrases, such as ‘gardening services in Birmingham’, or ‘Bicycle repair in Liverpool city centre.’
While such narrowly defined keyphrases may not appear in as many search results pages as broader terms, they can help to ensure that the people who do arrive at your site are the ‘right’ people (which is, after all, the overall aim of SEO). It’s also worth remembering that ‘Bicycle repair in Liverpool city centre’ still contains the broader keyphrase ‘bicycle repair’.
Think globally act locally
Local keywords are also of growing importance when it comes to targeting Internet users who go online via their smart phone. According to a recent survey by mobile marketing firm JiWire, more than half of mobile phone users questioned said that they would be happy to share their geographical location data in order to find services and offers that were specifically relevant to where there they are. The survey canvassed the opinions of 2,800 consumers, and also found that 29% of those said that they currently use their mobile phones to find promotions within a mile of their current location.
As well as bringing more targeted traffic to your website locally relevant keyphrases are also less competitive on the whole. Going back to our example above, you might be competing with tens of thousands of other websites for the ‘bicycle repair’ search term, but only hundreds in the case of ‘bicycle repair in Liverpool city centre’.
By targeting local keywords you can increase the amount of traffic coming to your website from individuals and businesses in the local area. Of course, if you do also offer your products or services to people further afield, you’ll want to ensure that you do not alienate these potential customers by including broader content and references within your site.
Don’t underestimate how important that local market is. Organic SEO creates its own momentum. By tapping into the local business ads and getting your listing up the page rankings, your conversion rate can and will increase.
And never underestimate the power of word of mouth either. If your local customers like you, be sure that they’ll tell others.
Jonathan Celeste invites you to join the rest of his clients at the top of the Google mountain with a Search Engine Optimisation campaign from Onit solutions. http://www.onitsolutions.co.uk
Don’t take chances with you web presence. Get it right the first time. Use a team that gets results every time. Call us today on 0845 224 1015 for more information on how we can help your business grow.
How to Optimize Your Blog Title and Description for the Search Engines
Blogging is a very time-consuming business model, no question about it.
There’s a lot that goes into it: design and technical aspect of it, content creation, networking, bringing traffic, and plus, of course, SEO.
SEO can be a scary beast for many bloggers – anything unfamiliar will be.
However, as with all other things, it’s best to start learning SEO with the basics.
On-page optimization that is.
Things that are easy to learn, easy to implement and easy to control, since they are located right there, on your blog.
The two main on-page factors we will be talking about today are your page titles and descriptions.
Page titles are what you see at the top of your browser window when looking at any page.
For instance, when you are at Traffic Generation Cafe home page, you’ll see “Traffic Generation Cafe | Generate Targeted Website Blog Traffic.”
That’s my blog title.
That’s also what you see when you Google my blog. My blog title will show up at the top of the listing for my blog.
So how do you set your blog title?
The easiest way to do it is from your WordPress dashboard, go under “Settings”, then “General”.
You’ll see a tab called “Site Title”. Whatever you add to that section will become your blog title and will show up in the search engine rankings.
A couple of things to remember when writing your blog title:
1. First of all, don’t forget to do keyword research before adding your title.
2. Add your primary keywords at the very beginning of your title.
3. Don’t use any so-called “stop” words in your title, like “and”, “but”, “or”, etc.
4. Keep your title under 70 characters (that’s all Google cares about).
5. Use a character separator like ” | ” when dividing keyword phrases.
Let’s move on to your blog description.
The only time someone sees your blog description is in the search engine results. That’s what you see right under your blog title.
There are two ways to add a blog description to your blog: through your blog theme or via an SEO plugin.
Some WordPress themes have SEO capabilities, others don’t, in which case you’d have to go the plugin way.
To add your blog description via Thesis theme, for instance, go under Thesis Site Options, then Home Page SEO. You can add both your title and blog description and even blog meta keywords right there.
If you theme is well built and optimized – as it should be – you can find a similar function somewhere in the theme dashboard.
And what to do when you don’t have such options?
An SEO plugin to the rescue.
There are many choices out there, to say the least.
The most popular ones are All-in-one SEO Pack or WordPress SEO by Yoast. Both will work equally well for the task.
One thing to be cautious about when choosing the right plugin for your blog is to make sure it doesn’t conflict with your theme or slow down your blog.
Since Google made site speed one of search engine ranking factors as of late, it’s extremely important to make sure that whatever plugin you choose doesn’t put brakes on your site speed or else your SEO traffic will suffer.
Better yet, don’t use too many plugins to begin with – stick with the ones your blog can’t live without and use your theme functions for everything else.
And to learn more about on-page optimization to drive more search engine web traffic to your blog, take a look at this, Thesis Theme WordPress optimization post from Traffic Generation Cafe.
Free keyword research is a great option.
4 SEO Techniques: How to Rank Higher In Search Engines?
Do you want to get to Google’s first page but don’t know how? Do you want to gain organic traffic through quality content? Congratulations because you are looking at the right material. This article is made for those who seek website improvement in terms of how to rank higher on explore engines.
What are search engines?
Technically, a search engine is defined as a program built to search documents based on an entered keyword or phrase. It then displays a list of results related to your keyword. Results, also known as ‘hits’, are sorted by most relevant down to least relevant. Popular engine sites are Google, Yahoo!, Ask and Bing. In simpler terms, search engines provide copious information based on what you are looking for.
Why do you need to improve your search engine ranking?
High rankings in website engines are very important for your online business or campaign. If you want to get noticed, you have to get on Google’s first page. Ninety percent of internet users extract their information from hits listed on the first page. Only five percent click through the next page for more information. The remaining five percent or less comprise those who have the patience to browse the third and succeeding pages. Learning how to rank higher on search engines is synonymous with increased organic traffic which is also equivalent to increased readership and sales. Heavy traffic means massive income.
Getting on Google or Yahoo’s first page means you have to compete with established companies that share your keywords. Here are some tips to tip the readership scale on your side.
Choose the right keywords
It is important to choose the right keywords because they will affect your searchability. Pick keywords that are common or phrases that are embedded within the page. This will invite web crawlers to pick them up.
Get backlinks
Another way to gain traffic is through backlinks. You have to get inbound links as much as you can. You can do this by submitting articles on popular article directory websites or blog commenting on high ranking websites. Make sure you use keyword anchor text links or post links to your website using the full URL.
Use META tags correctly
META tags are the Title, Keywords and Description tags. Optimize your site by ensuring that every page has a new set of title and keywords. Do not over stuff your title or first sentences with keywords. Learning how to rank higher is equivalent to maintaining quality and excellent content.
Submit your site to search engines
You can also try submitting your site to search engine for better optimization, provided you have considerable amount of traffic. This may not effect if you have low visitor rates. This will certainly be useful once you get good traffic because web crawlers pick websites that are listed on explore engines.
Richard Murphy is an expert SEO specialist and provides the best tips on How to Rank Higher in Search Engines. Visit his website http://www.UltimateSEOGuidebook.com for more information about this and other SEO topics. Try free keyword research too.
