Everyday I open my personal Gmail account it is flooded with endless blogs, posts, and articles. Most of this is my fault because I belong to endless alerts that filter to my email each day. I could end this if I would just change my settings a few places but, their is an advantage to all of this, I get to read about all the subjects I love. Marketing, Local business models, branding and of course SEO and SEM. At least once each day I read a post titled “Is SEO dying?”
The following content in the “SEO is dying” posts usually reads something like, “With all of Google’s updates it is impossible to know what to do to get your website to be the number one spot.” This may be true Google is tough to master. The only people that truly know how to master Google work for Google. The whole argument going on now is that more back links (links to your website on another page) do not matter any more. Google is now filtering out the generic posts for more quality posts with meaningful content. I am sure there is some truth to it but, here is the bottom line. Most of the businesses I work with locally have zero content online other than their website. By selling online marketing in the local business spectrum, you, as a business owner, need some content online in other places. Go out out on manta, merchantcircle, yelp, twitter, facebook, specialty directories specific for you business (lawyers.com) and start your own blog to write about what you love the most, your business. All this stuff is free and it all creates links, it all creates content, and it puts your name out in as many places as possible making Google like your website more than your competition. The more you appear online the more Google will like you and it will reward you with a higher search ranking. If you feel like you don’t have the time to claim all these listings and write your own blog then you should probably look to hire someone to do so. If not, a little bit of time could be the difference between someone picking you online compared to your competition. It also could not hurt to go out and see where your competition is appearing online.
It just takes a little bit of time to get Google to like you especially for local business. Google yourself and see where you rank then put your name out online as much as you can. It will help, it is free, and you will get more business and if not, what do you have to lose?
