Today, my faithful blog readers (I’m sure there’s a handful of you out there and that I’m not just talking to myself) we’re going to talk about getting found locally for local companies. In this short post I’m going to use NorthSouthMedia as an example and the key search phrase will be “Ayrshire SEO Company“.

I’ve started using the region that I service the most, that being “Ayrshire” and also the service which my company offers “SEO“. Now, from digging around a little I’ve found out that there are 64 towns in Ayrshire with an overall population of around 375,000 and I want to be found everytime when someone types “SEO Company” for that particular Ayrshire town. Understandably, being in my line of work, it’ll be more likely that businesses, groups or entrepreneurial individuals would require an Ayrshire SEO Company rather than everyone in the region.

The proven, and still the best, approach for my company to target towns within Ayrshire is to build town based landing pages. Granted, this is time consuming, but if I want to be found for “Ayrshire SEO Company” and then all the towns that come under this regional umbrella – then this is the desired step of action to take.

What about duplicating content on town based landing pages?

Duplicating content is never a great step-forward but you can still getaway with it regarding localised landing pages as long as the competition isn’t great. However, that said, I prefer using unique content where I can, and plus you can always shake things up a little by using a coupon code for that town/area that will allow businesses/individuals to communicate with your site and benefit from the local offer you have on offer.

Is there anything else I need to know regarding localised results ?

You can create KML files and submit them to Google and these can be viewed in Google Earth and Google Sitemaps (read more from my interview with Dev Basu about KML Sitemaps).

Make sure you’re on-page SEO is targetted towards the locality your aiming to be found within. Title tags, Meta Data, Headers, web copy and internal linking structure are, as usual, a must. Finally, go after local directories and get links from these to your local pages. Use Google places for business listings and add as much information about your business listing as possible.

Finally, if I really wanted to push for “Ayrshire SEO Company” or any of the local town keywords I’d ask for reviews/testimonials from clients in that area and post them to their relevant page – reinforcing the authority of that localised page.

Hope this helps, your local Ayrshire SEO Company!

It will be cliche to say that the internet is vastly infinite. Across the planet, there are about 1.8 billion active web surfers who come online. Plus, there are probably billions upon trillions of websites that can be visited on a daily basis. If you are running your own website, shouldn’t you be doing something to make it to stand out from the crowd?

When you create your website, what are the factors that you consider most important?

Is it the color scheme, the graphics, number of pages, or the content? If you answered all of the above, then you are on the right track to creating a profitable site that people will want to visit. But what else can you do to get more traffic to come into your site? The answer lies in SEO and keywords.

Search engine optimisation uses tons of new methods and strategies to make websites more visible on popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Lycos, and many more. Day in and day out, these search engines release bots or spiders to crawl across the web and find relevant websites that they can index to include on search engine results pages (SERPs). If a website is indexed, and a certain web surfer makes a query that is related to that site (using a set of keywords or keyphrases), then you can expect its links to be displayed on Yahoo or Google’s SERPs.

But how can you make Google or Yahoo bots index your website more effectively?

This is where keywords are most important. Say for instance your website is about selling shoes for babies, then the most likely keywords that are relevant to your site include “baby shoes”, “shoes for babies”, “babies shoes for sale”, and so on. In this regard, you should optimize your content to use these keywords and other similar or related keyword combination. To get other possible combinations of words use Google Wheel (a pretty new tool) or the Google AdWords tool – choose “Ideas containing my search terms”.

Your site should contain adequate content, and it is best to integrate these keywords in your articles, keeping in mind relevance and good quality. Already too much? Oh, well… then take note that keywords should not be overstuffed into one page, as search engine bots can view your content as malicious or spammy, and this in turn prevents your site from getting indexed.

Let’s see what we already have:

• Write at least 500 words content on every page – make it interesting
• Include relevant keywords but not too many – 2-3 keywords per page
• Write your content for users not Googlebot

Now it becomes really hard! But who said it was going to be easy?

Where else can you use keywords? Besides integrating them into your sentences and paragraphs, keywords may also be used to tag images and other elements in your website. You should also use keywords to name the pages of your website, as this makes it easier for bots to go through every page to index its content.

Choosing the best keywords for your site does not only involve mixing and matching phrases and combos of words. You should do keyword research to determine how strongly used some keywords are compared to those used by competitor websites. A great tip would be to try (again) the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, which indicates how similar websites are using keywords compared to the ones you have optimized your site with.

Some other great tools for you to use to get good keywords will be:

• Keyword Analysis Tool
• Keyword Spy
• Keyword Tracker
• Keyword Group Detection
• Term Extractor SEO Tool

Keyword research should be done regularly, because trends in keyword popularity and strength tend to change in a short span of time. In this way, you can be updated with the best keywords for your site, so you can in turn update your content to drive more traffic.

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This was a guest post written by Vic Dinovici a Toronto SEO Consultant – if you would like to do your own guest post on North South Media then, please do get in touch.

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Today, I slapped myself on the wrist – hard – not because it was something that I had to do, or even wanted to do, but as a necessary step in stopping myself from letting something get so bad in the future. OK, I’ve been busy, so busy that I have rarely posted on this blog, but that excuse apart I should have really been keeping a close eye on my outbound links.

Like a victorian mother hooked on gin I fleetingly gave a second glance to my nearest and dearest – this blog – all the while the non-attention was having an adverse effect against my own rankings. My shame, apart from not posting as often, was to neglect an seo rule 101 : Keep an Eye On your Outbound Links!

Linking to bad neighbouthoods is bad, very bad! Linking to pages that are no longer available is just as bad. Linking to sites that look ok, then when your no longer checking your outbounds, and they pull the ol’ “301-switch-to-a-tasty-adult-porn-site” is, well, downright, ingenious of them and slap-on-the-wrist material for you for becoming lazy!!!

I’ve watched a few posts on this site go from a PR3 to grey, they still rank, except they nor longer rank on the 1st intended page but wallow on page 2 or heaven forbid on page 3 because my labour of love became just too laborious. Not anymore!

There are plenty of tools you can use to help you combat negative outbound links, Xenu is just one.

Remember, checking your outbounds is part and parcel of your sites homekeeping, don’t become a gin infested parent to a blog like I became, yous’e your nounce, check, check, check and keep the gin and the bad neighbourhoods at bay.

Make no bones about it, after reading Jennifer Osborne’s excellent post about ‘So, You want a Career in SEO‘ and reading the poor woman’s frustration in trying to find a suitable applicant for a SEO/Online Marketing position within their company have I ever wanted to post about a subject of considering a career path in SEO.

Looking back on my own fledgling career within the industry if I were to score my progress, in a control freak type headmaster fashion, I’d probably score myself with a B-.

Reason being, is that no matter how much you progress in this business, there is always another page to turn.

Having not ventured into the industry, till I was in my – almost – mid thirties, has helped me with a number of learning curves and also hindered my online experience in the same vein. Y’see, in my other life, I was never a geek, more sports nut, one of the boys, live for the weekend types. Then suddenly, due to my own doings, I’m flung in amongst people at university who are a million miles away from what I’m used to conversing with.

But you adapt!

Most of the online people I know, started off as something else, no-one ever thought off SEO / Online Marketing as a day job, even if they knew off its existence.

I have been many things in my short life, but as an SEO I can truly put my hands up and say that nothing I have done workwise comes close to making you feeling like a God one week and ready for pulling your hair out the next. It can be that emotional sometimes.

Believe me, SEO affects your thinking process, it takes over your dreams, renders you speechless in normal social environments as you grind over in your mind that next pr release or link building tactic or blog post. SEO gets inbetween the bits you didn’t know existed!

Then add a dash of clients into the mix and your truly rocking. It is the ultimate compliment/ responsibility, that a person, company or organisation is willing to pay you in advance for you to deliver what they seek.

Of course, gaining measurable rankings is only part of the journey. Influencing how a site works, communicates and sells to a person browsing is something that comes along eventually with the territory. It is a very potent part of your armoury. SEO is NOT just about rankings – Lesson #1.

So, if your seeking the ultimate in scunnerism, have an addictive nature, seek highs, like to put yourself on the line and like learning from a never-ending book then SEO /Online Marketing is for you. Just don’t expect much sleep! And don’t say I never warned you so … welcome to the best experience of your life.