What if you suddenly need to look up a local business? With a smartphone, no matter where you are you can get online and start searching for it. Many technologies already offer to search locally; they can even show where you are “right now” on an interactive map, and then show the businesses around you that fit into the category you are researching.

How great would it be if a customer enters your office or store, and says he just found you on the web via his mobile phone while driving around? This possibility ought to encourage you to market your site locally on the web.

Start going this road before everyone else, because soon it’s going to be really busy. People are going to search the Internet with their mobile devices more frequently, especially for something local. Before long, it might be too late for you to get in on the action.

In order to start marketing locally for cell phones, here is a list of major resources to help you work with the top three mobile search engines:

http://mobile.yahoo.com/go: This includes local listings arranged by distance and ratings, pulled out from the Yahoo Local database.

http://www.google.com/mobile/: Google’s local solution for mobile devices, which offers local search results for particular device models.

http://www.livesearchmobile.com/: Live Search Mobile by Microsoft provides click-to-call listings of local businesses.

Shavkat Karimov, Internet Marketing Manager, mobileStorm
“Every problem comes with a solution”

Previously I suggested that you include your phone number on your website, but many companies make one mistake: They place the number as an image, not as text. I suggest adding phone numbers, (and local addresses) as text, because it makes you much more easily found on the web. For example, imagine if a former client only has your number, or only remembers part of your address. Your business can still be found on the web by using this information in a search query.

Another tip I want to expand on is testimonials. Positive reviews of your services or products should be in the most visible area of your site. In addition, it would be more effective if you link to an external authority resource, such as a review site, where there is positive feedback placed for your company. This will indicate credibility and openness to potential clients. There are plenty of local review sites out there, and you can ask your current customers to leave feedback on them. (I’ll be giving a list of these kinds of sites at the end of these series, as promised.)

Are you blogging? Did you know that a blog is probably one of the most effective SEO tools available today? Search engines love blogs because they update content frequently; they are specific to their areas of expertise; they are well-categorized and sorted; and they know the subject matter. If you have the time and resources, start blogging. This will help your business website get more traffic, show your local audience your great expertise in what you do, and will eventually result in more sales.

There is another thing to consider: The more local you are, the more successful you are. When it comes to choosing the right keywords for local optimization, remember that “California plumbers” is not as good as “Los Angeles plumbers,” which in its turn is not as good as “South LA plumbers.” The point is that the more targeted your marketing is, the more sales you’ll be making. Think how you would search for anything local, and optimize your campaigns accordingly. Cities are better than states, large neighborhoods are better than cities, etc. And some people search locally with zip codes, so why not add an optimized page to target these people as well?

Think carefully when you choose the local keywords for which you will optimize your pages. The keyword suggestion tools I referenced earlier will tell you that “things to do in Denver” would have about 10 times more searches than “Denver tourist attractions.” Many sites miss much traffic by targeting the wrong keywords.

And to make sure that each locally-oriented page that you have created is indexed by search engines, add those links to your sitemap with different link anchor texts.

Social media sites can be very useful in online local marketing. People always try to find someone local through these sites. So if you are represented in many social networking sites, you get local traffic to your website from these pages. The same rule applies to local discussion groups and communities. They all contain highly-targeted traffic that you can effectively use in your favor, with almost no competition and with no budget.

Next time we’ll talk about mobile local search marketing. Until then,

Shavkat Karimov, Internet Marketing Manager, mobileStorm
http://www.seomanager.com/

If you missed my previous posts about local search marketing strategies, you can find them here and here. After you get caught up, check out the following additional suggestions.

Create a directory—or better yet, a portal—devoted to your location. You can base it on your own site or have it as a separate resource. If your marketing budget allows it, you might want to consider buying such an existing portal. This solution is great even though it takes time and can be costly. It will allow you to drive targeted traffic to yourself easily. And then you can sell to this audience all day long.

Create a newsletter about local news related to your niche, as well as news about your own business. This will definitely increase conversions or revenue. Even a monthly newsletter can bring great results—there’s no need to bother the people on your list too often.

A great idea is to always include your local data in your signatures. And I don’t just mean email signatures, but also in blog post signatures, forum signatures, signatures used when you write articles for external resources, etc.

The web is increasingly moving towards video. People like watching information rather than reading it. So it’s time for you to get involved. Start making videos about your local business, place them on your own site, and also promote them through a good number of video resources available on the web. (A comprehensive list of video-sharing websites can be found here.) By the way, a little-known fact is that video results in the general search results page (SERP) are clicked much more than the text results, no matter what position they take on the page. Little video windows do stand out from boring texts, and that alone attracts people to click on them. (Read more about this fact here.) Because of this, it may be worthwhile to use a solution that posts a video to all major sharing sites at once.

One more interesting trick you can use in local marketing: Offer a locals-only discount. This is especially good if most leads you get are locals anyway. They’ll feel special and that will increase their signup chances for you. When I planned to go to Sea World in Orlando, I was pleasantly surprised that there is a permanent discount to Florida residents. Of course, I purchased the tickets right away.

More strategies are coming soon! Until then,

Shavkat Karimov, Internet Marketing Manager, mobileStorm
“Every problem comes with a solution”
SEO Consulting

There are many good offline strategies for your local presence online. Since local businesses are getting more offline leads rather than online (for now; this tendency is slowly changing in favor of the Web), you might use the following methods to drive online traffic.

Local events: Monitor significant events in your location. Then act fast with SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay-per-click advertising) campaigns in order to benefit from the buzz they create, which makes people search for information about these events online. This will move traffic towards your business’ site.

Business cards, posters, and other printed materials: Add your website address along with your physical address. Be creative enough to intrigue people and make them want to visit your website for more information.

Most-visited place in your area: You should advertise/promote your website at busy places like the local mall. Offer to sponsor some events put on at the mall. Keep in mind that the mall has a site as well, and try to work with mall management to get your URL posted on its site.

Current customers: Do you promote your website to your current customers, and encourage them to share your site’s URL with their friends and families? One way to do this is to run an online referral program, or by offering online-only redeemable coupons.

Talk about your website to your suppliers or partners: Think how can they help in your online marketing. Some could add a link to your site on their “partners” or “clients” pages, for example.

Local newspapers and magazines: Send them press releases with news about your business, including your website’s URL. These papers also have websites that publish news, which could result in backlinks that drive traffic to your site.

Until next time,

Shavkat Karimov, Internet Marketing Manager, mobileStorm
“Every problem comes with a solution”
Business Web Directory

Let’s start with your business name. Does it say where you are located? If you operate nationwide or worldwide, it’s not important, but what if your location is valuable for your business? Which name would help you more: “Angel’s Flowers” or “Burbank Angel’s Flowers”? If it doesn’t harm your style and image, try to make it easy for anyone to understand your location right from your name.

If you are unsure of what keywords are most used to find your business, utilize keyword research tools and find a handful of terms that best describe you company’s goods or services.

Obviously, add your location and contact information wherever possible on your website. A footer area would work well for including your business address and phone number.

Also, add your business information to all the major search engines; general, niche and local directories; maps; classifieds; and local portals. (Later I will give a list of all these websites with their descriptions.) Now, for some secrets on using these sites as part of your local marketing campaign.

First, don’t just submit your website—keep it current and constantly update your information if possible. Moreover, in the title (and description and keywords) include your local and vertical (industry) keywords in order to be found quickly by prospects.

Most yellow pages and local directories list sites and businesses in alphabetical order. In this instance, there is no need for heavy SEO: Just change your title to something that starts with a letter that comes earlier in the alphabet, and you’ll have a priority over other sites. It is even better to start with a number, since these usually come earlier than letters in listings’ order.

It might also make sense to pay for priority placement (a.k.a. featured listing) on these sites in order to gain more traffic and leads.

Try to get a separate directory listing for each of the closest cities in your area where you could provide your services. Sometimes you will not qualify for separate listings for certain cities, so it might make sense to have different titles and different phone numbers and addresses for each such listing. You can even use P.O. box numbers as a solution. I also suggest that you create a different website for each location and optimize it locally. If your services are global, creating separate entities would help as well, while you can use a single toll-free phone number for all your units.

Next is more of an “offline” strategy, but it does have one online marketing advantage…. Remember the No. 1 real estate principle of “location, location, location.” It’s vital for your local business. If nobody can find your office or shop, no matter how hard you market it, your efforts might not pay off. So make sure you are located closer to busy areas of town, even if it’s expensive to do so. As for an Internet marketing advantage: On online maps, your listing will be more visible and will have more chances to be clicked on.

Current local directories use a system of ratings in order to provide more value for searchers. These user ratings are vital for your business. There is a way to lightly influence the rankings. First, you can ask your relatives, friends, and even colleagues to write some positive feedback for your entry. You can ask your clients to leave some comments on the local sites as well. Also, you need to respond to anyone with negative comments and try to resolve the issues raised there. This will show that you care.

You can also offer discounts and coupons within your listing(s)—perhaps ones that consumers can get via text-message (SMS) or email. This will attract them to your item rather than someone else’s, especially in this economy.

We will continue with more local marketing strategies in upcoming posts. Stay tuned!

Shavkat Karimov, Internet Marketing Manager, mobileStorm
“Every problem comes with a solution”
Business Web Directory

This series will include:

• An explanation of local web marketing and its advantages.
• A number of strategies that you can implement for success in local search.
• Offline neighborhood assistance in your online initiatives.
• Ways of finding and using effective local keywords.
• Mobile solutions for local marketing.
• A list of local search engines and directories to which you might want to submit your website, in order to get more local exposure for your online business.

As you can see, this topic is broad and requires a marketer’s devotion. In turn, the benefits to be reaped are great if you seriously work on it.

Let’s start with the definition of the term. Consumers in the past found local businesses through print yellow pages and other means. While those mediums still exist, local search engines, specialized directories, and web-based “yellow pages” are becoming much more popular.

Some interesting facts about local search:

• According to comScore, approximately 1.3 billion local searches are performed each month in the United States.
• ComScore also says that 82 percent of online users are conducting local searches.
• The top five local search sites are reaching about 55 percent of the general Internet audience, according to ComScore.
• The Kelsey Group estimates that the sector generated $3.4 billion last year, and that the market could grow to $13 billion by 2010.

Local search can be an effective part of your online marketing plan. Why?

• It is a good traffic source that many marketers forget to utilize; the competition is not as strong as in the general search area.
• In many cases it’s completely free (or at least cheap), and this cost effectiveness increases your ROI.
• It results in high conversions, especially when your business is truly local.
• It is indeed relevant.
• It helps you to dominate your local market while increasing brand awareness locally and online.
• The number of locally-concentrated sites and blogs will only increase, so it’s good if you are represented on all maps and local sites as early as possible.

I hope these arguments will encourage you to take the local search seriously. Get ready for upcoming posts! Next up: A discussion about exact local search marketing strategies, which can help you to beat your online competition big-time.

Until then,

Shavkat Karimov, Internet Marketing Manager, mobileStorm
“Every problem comes with a solution”
Business Directory

I write lots of articles on search engine optimization, Internet marketing, and even website usability. All these tips can help bring your website to top positions in search engine rankings, and also increase conversion rates and revenues. However, it is always useful to get information directly from the source and compare your knowledge with it. Luckily the search engines are kind—and smart—enough to provide us with such information. They want to help us out in our SEO efforts, and this in turn benefits them, since better-educated webmasters will play the game fairly.

Recently Google published its “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide,” which outlines all the SEO basics and even gives hints on how to make your website Google-friendly. Though the guide is filled with promotions of Google’s (mostly free) services, there are real-life examples of SEO best practices. For someone who doesn’t know much about Internet marketing, especially its technical elements, this can be quite helpful.

One critique: “Although this guide won’t tell you any secrets that’ll automatically rank your site first for queries in Google (sorry!), following the best practices outlined below will make it easier for search engines to both crawl and index your content.”

But don’t take my word for it. This information is available for free and you can download it here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

Another great new addition is Google’s Webmaster Help Forum, a place where you can ask questions and get answers quickly from other website owners—or even Google employees. This forum is at: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en

If you were wondering about how your web resource could become a Google-friendly site, most of your questions might be answered here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8522

Finally, important stuff about Google and webmasters’ interaction can be found on this page of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

While Google brags more than 70 percent of all searches in the world, other smaller search engines also try to offer guidelines to website owners and webmasters. Below are three useful links provided by Yahoo.com, Live.com, and Ask.com:

• Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html
• Live Search Webmaster Center Help: http://help.live.com/help.aspx?mkt=en-us&project=wl_webmasters
• The Ask Website Crawler FAQ: http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml

Happy learning!

Shavkat Karimov
Internet Marketing Manager
mobileStorm, Inc.
Every problem comes with a solution
Business Web Directory

One more important technical question: How does your website load? If it doesn’t load fast, research why not. Internet users don’t wait for sites to load—they just don’t. The average user doesn’t spend more than 30 seconds on a website.

With a regular broadband connection, the average site’s homepage should load within 10 seconds and its internal page should load within 15 seconds. You need to make sure your site meets these requirements. There are lots of ways to ensure this.

The code of your website should be clean and free from errors. Always validate it through http://validator.w3.org and if you use cascading style sheets (CSS)—which you should be—
validate them at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/. Thus, you’ll be confident that your website is W3C compliant.

Your code should also be “light”—don’t use anything that might make site’s code “heavier.”

Make sure that uncommon plug-ins are not required to view elements of your site, otherwise the website will be very uncomfortable for your visitors.

Avoid dynamic URLs. Use the .htaccess file’s rewrite mode to make sure all of your site’s URLs are SEO-friendly, i.e. static and keyword-rich. Consult your hosting company and hire a programmer to do some customization work for you if you don’t know anything about how to implement this.

Test, test, and test! Test it in all web-browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari); with both PC and Mac; with mobile phones and other Internet-access stations; with different screen resolutions (1024×768, 1280×1024, 800×600) and color schemes; when using additional online tools and add-ons to view the site; and how it would be seen as a screenshot or in a frame. Also ask yourself, “How does the site perform for visually impaired users? How are DHTML menus working? Do flash or action script elements load fast?”

You can’t make your site look technically perfect for absolutely everyone, but you should try to do your best.

Collect information from your visitors. You can do this automatically by using different sorts of web analytics tools like Google Analytics; or by using different marketing strategies, such as offering free products (white papers, software demos, etc.) if visitors fill out a simple contact form. Ask them website usability questions, such as what’s easy and what isn’t. The more you know, rather than assume, the better you can make your site look and function for all visitors. In addition, using web analytics is vital for other purposes. You should be aware of what’s going on with and on your website, so you can act fast when something is wrong.

Hope this information helps in creating and managing technically strong websites. Good luck!

Shavkat Karimov
Internet Marketing Manager
mobileStorm, Inc.
Every problem comes with a solution
Business Portal and Directory

As a universal principle: Make sure everything works as planned in all the major web browsers.

First, determine your servers’ capabilities. Do you have any bandwidth limits? Bandwidth is another term for website traffic, operational as well as “coming from” or “going to” activities. What is the cost for extra bandwidth every month? How much web space do you have with your hosting package? Are these enough for your website function and load fast? What operating system do your servers use—Linux, Unix, Windows—and is it the best option for your site? Are there any pre-installed scripts and content management systems that you can try? Are there any limits on using certain types of scripts and tools (CGI, rsync, SSH access, wild cards)? Do you have access to the server logs, and stats to analyze your website traffic sources, visitor types, and other useful data?

Keep your website’s major files in the root directory of your server. This is really good for both WU (website usability) and SEO. Place the codes in separate files for security reasons, and also for SEO purposes. If you use Java scripts, make sure they are not placed in the same file of the page; just add a code snippet, which will call the script from another file for execution. When it comes to SEO, this technique of placing everything separately will not only let your website function faster, but will also give you a bit of a search engine ranking advantage.

Website security is a critical issue, and you need to use secure web servers. You should password-protect your major back-end files and directories. Also, back up your website files and databases periodically. Do multiple backups. Control your site’s traffic and try to note anything suspicious. Keep your own computer free from Trojans and viruses. Don’t allow people whom you don’t fully trust to access your computer. Be in constant touch with your server’s support people and warm them right away if you notice any danger to your website.

Do not assume that all users will have the same browser features, or will have set the same defaults. Some users select larger fonts, and some users may turn off backgrounds, or use fewer colors. You should find out what settings most of your visitors are using. You can do this by analyzing your website traffic. You can also specify on your site what browser, resolution, font size, etc. with which the site is best viewed .

Lots of Internet statistics can be checked here: http://www.thecounter.com/stats/

You also need to use a set of webmaster tools by Google, which can be found at http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/. These are free tools to diagnose your site and better optimize it for Google, set parameters, and generate statistics. They can be very helpful in making your website technically friendly.

Shavkat Karimov
Internet Marketing Manager
mobileStorm, Inc.
Every problem comes with a solution
SEO Consulting Services

Make sure to check out the robots.txt file of the site you are about to get a link from. The page that will be linking to yours shouldn’t be excluded in the robots.txt file.

Try to get links from sites located at different Class-C IP addresses. This is important when you are having a massive link building campaign.

It makes sense to pay for links when the link is indeed worthy. Even when monthly fees are involved, don’t avoid this opportunity. Look at the page’s pagerank and again, make sure the page is relevant to yours.

Get links from authoritative websites that are actively supported. These should have nothing under construction. Also make sure these sites don’t seem not to have been updated for a long time.

Keep in mind that the links you are gaining are coming from sites using the same language as yours. If your site is in English only, get the links from English-language sites.

Try to avoid links that would be labeled as “sponsored” or as ads. Also, don’t get links from pages that already have more than 50 external links. In many cases it would be just useless.

Avoid sites/pages with scraped content, link schemes, too many contextual ads, popups, and intrusive advertising. Also avoid link farms, web-rings, link-exchange programs, poor and weak directories, FFA (free-for-all) sites, guestbooks, classifieds, hacker, pharmacy, gambling, illegal, offensive, or pornographic websites.

Make sure you are not just getting the same links everywhere. Always use different keyword combinations in the link anchor text. Be creative and at the same time make it all “natural.”

The pages you are getting links from should already be indexed by the major search engines, otherwise your link won’t be picked up at all. Type in the page’s URL into the search field of a search engine to see if it’s indexed.

And finally, keep everything under control, especially when you work with a team . Track all submissions and note the links becoming active. Correct the newly appeared links if needed. Follow up when necessary.

Shavkat Karimov
Internet Marketing Manager
mobileStorm, Inc.
Every problem comes with a solution
SEO Consulting