Jan 12
24
USB Credit Card Readers
So, what do USB credit card readers have to do with small business marketing ideas? Good question!
It used to be that if you did a search for USB credit card readers on Google, my client Total Merchant Services was nowhere to be found on the first page. They weren’t even ranking for USB credit card readers or credit card readers on the second and third pages (and beyond). In fact, Total Merchant Services wasn’t even in the top 100 results for their targeted keywords.
Do a search today, and it’s different. You’ll find their website, www.totalccp.com in the top five results (at the time I’m writing this post).
Keep in mind… this is for a non-geographic keyword. They rank in the top 5 all across the US and didn’t use a geo-modifier like “California” or “Miami.” These types of keywords are more difficult to be ranked for because they’re basically competing globally and not in a local area.
How did they do it? They hired me! I did search engine optimization (SEO) for their website and was able to drastically improve their ranking. As a result, they were able to sell more of their product. And I’ve done this over and over again for other clients as well.
Which leads me to you… Do you have a product or service that you would like to sell more of? Are their potential customers or clients that are searching on Google and Bing for your product or service? Start the path to the top of Google and find out how you can with my guaranteed SEO service. Talk to you soon!
~Brodie
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Sep 11
27
I’m a Graduate of Local University
Source: GetListed.org
I’m sitting here in the little town Burley, Idaho at the GetListed.org Local University conference (an all-day seminar about how to get listed in the local results/maps on search engines like Google).
Sitting with 100 other entrepreneurs and SEO’s and learning more about local search engine optimization is a great experience.
So, here is a small bit of what I learned or what stuck out to me:
- Nationwide, only about 20% of businesses have claimed their Google Places page.
During his presentation, David Mihm of GetListed.org asked everybody in the room to raise their hand if they have claimed their Google Place page. And sure enough, only about 20% did. Lesson? Claim your Google Places page!! - Phone books have been replaced by our computers and smart phones.
Mike Ramsey of Nifty Marketing also did an unscientific survey with the audience. He asked us to raise our hands if we use our phone for finding local businesses and services. To no surprise of mine, most of the group raised their hands. This is a similar result when I asked a group of about 80 business owners to raise their hand if they use a phone book on a regular basis. Only 2 raised their hand. I think that speaks for itself. - Ensure your domain’s WHOIS information is up to date.
Until 5 minutes ago, I was guilty of having out-dated WHOIS information. WHOIS is basically the contact details for your website domain registration. Check out what I mean by looking at Dox Marketing’s WHOIS page. Google scans these types of pages and takes the data into consideration in their search results pages. - Utilize an Editorial Calendar for your blog.
Matt McGee talked about a great strategy to help ensure your blog doesn’t go dead. He suggested to create an Editorial Calendar where you can map out the topics of your blog posts for the next year. These topics can include company, industry and local events as well as “evergreen” topics such as how-to’s and answers to FAQ’s. Considering this is my first post in over a month, I should probably take his advice as well. - Get more citations, links and reviews.
To be ranked better in the local/map search results, you need get more citations (your business contact info on other sites), links (hyperlinks on other sites pointing to your site), and reviews on sites like Google, Yelp, Bing, etc.
I hope this helps. Keep an eye out for more great content about local search engine optimization…
~ Brodie
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Welcome to another episode of Money Making Marketing Minute, I’m your host, Brodie Tyler. Today’s topic is about citations. What are they and how can they benefit your business?
Well first of all, let me give you an example by doing a search for “PF Changs Boise”. It happens to be one of my favorite restaurants. Right here, you’ll see all the listings for their main website. But right down here is the local restaurant, the address and the phone number. And this marker indicates their location over here on the map. If I do a search for “chinese restauants boise idaho” it brings me up a bunch of results. And PF Changs shows up right here as letter D. And again it correlates over here with the map. It also has their address and phone number here. Now, if PF Changs just did a little bit more work on obtaining citations on the internet, they might be able to move up in the rankings. So there’s room for improvement.
Now what do I mean by getting more citations out there? Yelp.com is an example. It has PF Changs China Bistro listed right here with their address and their phone number. That information on other websites like Yelp.com and other local directories… those are citations. The don’t have to have the domain or a link back to the website necessarily. They just have to mention the business, the address and the phone number.
Manta.com is another place you can find citations. Here is their business name, their address, and their phone nubmer. Local.com has PF Changs listed here again. And it’s a little bit different name, PF Changs China Bistro on Manta and just PF Changs on Local. But they still have the same address and same phone number. You can also visit the website directly from Local.com.
Another example of a citation is… Actually, on InsiderPages.com PF Changs should have a citation here but they don’t. So here’s one way that the can add their business to this website, create a citation, and by doing that over and over again hopefully they can move up in the search results.
This is an example of where the business is listed but there’s no link back to their main website. PF Changs China Bistro, the address, the phone number but no website link pointing back to pfchangs.com. And it doesn’t matter. This still benefits PF Changs. Google sees this listing. It legitimizes their location… that they’re listed in Boise, that they are local. And as a result, Google and Bing and other local websites will reward PF Changs for this citation.
Again, the more citations that you have the better you’re going to rank in the search engines. Thanks for watching this video and I’ll see you on the next one!
Welcome to another Money Making Marketing Minute, I’m your host, Brodie Tyler! Today’s topic is on Google Reviews.
Now let me show you what I mean. Let’s type in “mesa, az med spa”. I’ve been doing some work for this company, Vitality Med Spa, and you’ll notice over here they rank #1 and they have 14 reviews. If you click on this Place Page it will take you to this little web page that Google has for this company. It has their contact information up here. You can click here to write a review, their hours of operation, they have 14 reviews, a little description, some images, and down here are their reviews.
You’ll notice that if I go back a page they have 14 reviews. The next listing has 1, the next one has 6, the next one has 6… The more reviews you have on Google, the better you’re going to rank. It’s that simple. And I’m not talking about reviews on other websites like Yelp, or Local, or CitySearch, or InsiderPages. Those don’t count as much anymore on Google. They just made this change a couple of weeks ago where they’re putting more emphasis on their own reviews that they get on their own system.
The idea is to try and get as many reviews from your clients and customers and have them post it under their Google account and post it on your Google Place Page. I’ll give you a couple of other examples.
Let’s try “miami dentist”. Okay, so here you have a couple of paid listings up top and then listing A has 13 reviews. B only has 2 reviews, and everybody else doesn’t have any. So here’s a good example… the more reviews you have the more likely you’re going to rank in the #1 spot on the local results. And you’re going to get a lot more traffic this way.
Let’s try one last example. Here’s a keyword that I’ve been targeting for a client of mine. “Boise orthodontist” is the keyword. He ranks number 1. Notice how he has 2 reviews but nobody else has any. So he’s ranking #1 even with only 2 reviews. All other things being equal, the more reviews you have, the better you’re going to rank. I hope you found this information useful. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you on the next video!
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Welcome to another Money Making Marketing Minute, I’m your host, Brodie Tyler. I’m doing something a little different with this video… I’m taking it to my computer. I want to show you something on the internet. What I’m going to be talking about today is optimizing your title tag.
Now, what is your title tag?
First, this is Google. Let’s do a keyword search for organic anti aging skincare. Now this is one of the keywords that I’m optimizing for one of my clients. You see she’s ranked as #1 for that search term, organic anti aging skincare. And this is her title. That’s what shows up. She’s the one that can alter or edit her title. Google picks up on that and that’s what they publish. So it’s very important if you’re targeting a specific keyword to put it inside your title tag because that’s what Google reads.
Let’s click on it. You’ll notice up here on the tab it says organic anti aging skincare, and so it shows up there as well. One good strategy is to not only put your keyword inside your title tag but to put that same keyword in the content of your web page. If that keyword shows up in the content as well as the title, then that means it’s more relevant and Google is going to reward you for that.
So let’s take a look at the source. I happen to be in Internet Explorer. Go up to View, click on Source. Let me bring it over here. And this is the back-end code, the HTML. And if you notice on line 5 we have what’s called, title, right here. That’s the opening title tag, and the closing to it. Everything in between is the title. And the keyword that she’s targeting is organic anti aging skincare, so it’s right there. You can go to any page, view the source, and see what the title is, or like I said, you can see it up here in the tab.
Either way, you want to change the keyword in the title tag for every page. This one happens to be a little bit different. I clicked on Products and it says Organic Products, Anti Aging Products. And so those are the keywords that she’s targeting for this web page. And the more unique they are, the more relevant they are to the content on that site, the more likely you are going to rank better for that keyword.
So, do whatever you can to put your keyword in your title tag, whether you do it yourself with HTML code, or a CMS or content management system like WordPress… that’s an easy way to edit your title tag. Thanks for watching this video and I’ll see you on the next one!