Each year we wait for this report and pour over the recommendations - it’s the best there is. In the report experts have come up with a list of factors that contribute to your local search rankings that will help you get much better exposure online and attract more potential customers and clients.

In a platform where literally millions of volumes of information is generated and produced, it’s easy for small businesses to get lost in the maze we call the World Wide Web. And while there is great potential for catching the attention of prospective clients and customers on the internet, it’s just as easy to become buried in the many obscurities.

Your goal, of course, is to avoid that. Experts have compiled a list of factors that will help you and your business become much more visible in local search rankings, so you can get better exposure and attract more potential customers and clients.

www.davidmihm.com, a website about all things SEO, has published their annual Local Search Ranking Factors survey in which prominent  bloggers, internet marketers, and other big names in the industry identify the most important factors in improving your local search rankings. The survey contains items, ranked from 1 to 58 in terms of importance, with an additional 11 stressing what mistakes you can avoid.

4 Key Takeaways

1. Get your Google and Yahoo local business listings up and keep them up to date.
2. Keep your website and directory listings addresses in sync. One address and phone number everywhere.
3. Enhance your local listing with customer reviews, photos, videos and the right keywords.
4. Get inbound links. Each one is a vote for your site. Find your local directories and add your listing. More is better.

Each point contains short explanations and opinions of the different experts who participated in the survey. First on the list is “General Importance of Claiming Place Page / Local Listing”, followed by “Business Address in City of Search,” and “Associating Place Page with Proper Categories”.

If you want to know more about how these factors can improve your online marketing strategy drop me an email.

See the complete report at: http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

We’ve also compiled a list of Business Listing Resources on the Pronto Marketing Support Forum to help you get going on building those inbound links.

Owning multiple domains containing keywords relevant to your business can boost your search rankings and help rake in significantly bigger traffic - right?  Wrong. It can actually prove to be much more trouble than it’s worth.

Many businesses mistakenly believe that search rankings will be dramatically improved if their domain name contains one or more of the keywords being searched for. However, experts say that the process that makes this work is actually very complicated.

An article on SEOmoz.org provides some valuable insights into the pitfalls of buying too many keyword-rich domains. For instance, the article says that Google is on the lookout for organizations that take advantage of domain names purely for SEO purposes. Depending on how severe Google’s almighty powers deem your offense to be, you could be meted out with some pretty serious penalties.

In the long run, experts say you’re wasting your time with this practice. There are number of complications that can arise, and the article explains in detail why having keyword-rich domains may sound good, but once implemented things start to turn sour.

To get a clearer view of the pros and cons (and there’s much more of the latter), visit

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/its-a-feeding-frenzy-for-keywordrich-domains.

It’s undeniable that social networks serve as more than just a medium for expanding your social circle these days. Considering their vast potential, businesses of all kinds are tapping into the social networking phenomenon. In fact, one site has been created solely for the purpose of expanding your professional circles specifically.

LinkedIn is a great way for professionals and companies - especially small ones - to put themselves on the map, establish more business contacts, and strengthen their professional networks. With a carefully crafted profile on LinkedIn, you and your services will get increased visibility since LinkedIn, which has a fairly high PageRank, allows you to make your profile searchable through search engines like Google.

LinkedIn showcases your credentials and accomplishments, so make sure that you include both previous and current information in your LinkedIn profile. This will enable searchers to immediately see your qualifications for the job. And since LinkedIn is built on connections, your professional circle of contacts (especially those who recommend you) improves your reputation and adds to your list of credentials.

All in all, LinkedIn is a quick and easy way to establish valuable contacts that will help your business grow. Creating a profile on LinkedIn is free, so you lose nothing by getting the word out about who you are and what you can do.

One effective way to boost your image online is to tap into popular social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter. The dynamics behind how these sites operate can help promote your brand and company by catching the eye of thousands of potential customers and clients.

There are many ways to use social networking sites, and one of the most effective is to tap into your existing customer base. You can put small banners or streamers on your website for customers to “Follow” you on Twitter and “Become a Fan” on Facebook. It’s a relatively inexpensive online marketing campaign that makes use of existing customers to help spread the word about your products or services to people they are connected with. And the more fans and followers you have, the more presence your company will have - creating an image of respectability and popularity among a large number of people.

If you’d like to explore this and other online marketing options, give us a call and we’ll be happy to develop a strategy that fits your particular needs

We starting to roll-out a few options for ConnectWise Integration within the Pronto manage websites. ConnectWise, and soon Autotask are key areas of investment for us as we work to integrate website activity into our clients core back-end systems and CRM.

If you want to read our internal newsletter Pronto Insider with the details you can find that at the Pronto Insider Archive on the Pronto Support Desk website.

If you have an questions let us know, if you want to talk about this you can schedule a call with me via my Tungle.me calendar webpage.

Derek

A lot of people think it’s easy to write for the web, and in a sense they’re right. It’s shorter than other types of copy, and operates on the principle that people who browse websites - prospective clients and visitors alike - have little time to spend reading tons of copy.

But therein lies the challenge. While short, it has to be sweet as well. It’s important that all the relevant information is contained in a short blog-like post that’s easy to read and understand.

So what makes good web copy?

• It goes straight to the point. Use less embellishments and flowery language, and speak in layman’s terms - not everyone is impressed with lots of technical terms and jargon.

• It’s broken down into bullet points, subheadings, or both, so that it’s less intimidating and more readable to people who visit your site.

• It’s visually easy to read. Even the spaces between text are important - don’t make your page look text heavy.

Getting your web copy right can do wonders for your website. If you need some help in maximizing your website content, we’ll be happy to help out.

Reference: http://www.marketingtechblog.com/web-design/readability/

Yesterday’s post went into some detail on search Page Rank and the role of good and bad link building. Today I got an email that is a perfect example of useless link building - that someone is paying for and maybe feeling good they get reports from their vendor of all the new links.

People Google is smart to this. If you’re going to invest; invest in quality links, from quality sites, that share a content relevancy with you.

Here’s the email I got…

Hi,

My name is Mark. I recently came across your website http://prontomarketing.com / through search engine and found it is informative for our website’s visitors.
I would like to exchange link with our websites CheapestRoomsLondon.co.uk and CheapRoomsLondon.co.uk.

As you are probably aware, reciprocal linking benefits both of us by raising the search engine rankings and generating more traffic to both of our websites.

If you would like to do the link exchange with us, please place our link on your website with the following details.
Title: CheapestRoomsLondon
Description: Find cheapest rooms to rent in London
Link: http://www.cheapestroomslondon.co.uk/
Title : CheapRoomsLondon
Desc : Find rooms with cheap rent in London.
Url : http://www.cheaproomslondon.co.uk/

Then, please inform me by replying to this email with your details (title and description) or use the following links to post your details. Youe links will be shown once we approve them within a few days.
http://cheapestroomslondon.co.uk/link-to-us
http://www.cheaproomslondon.co.uk/link-to-us

Look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,
Mark Jain

Every business wants to improve the volume and quality of traffic to its web site, so it’s no surprise that many of our clients want to know what they can realistically expect from SEO link building services.

One SEO service, for example, recently promised a client the following daily results for just $1,500 per month:

• Four to five confirmed back links from blog postings, forum posting and relative web sites
• Ten directory postings
• Five social bookmarkings
• Two article or press release submissions

We have our own opinion about this, but we always like to get different perspectives, so we spoke to Jane Copland, an expert in the field. Until 2009, Jane worked at SEOMoz, which provides expert advisory services as well as SEO tools. She now works for Ayima, a London-based SEO consultancy.

Jane told us the aforementioned SEO company pitch isn’t the worst she’s seen, as the numbers are low enough to be somewhat genuine-but that doesn’t mean our client should hire this SEO company.

The real test, says Jane, isn’t in the numbers or even in the price; it’s in the quality of the links and the content. So, if all the links and all this content are of a high standard, this is good deal.

Unfortunately, Jane doesn’t think the SEO company can achieve high-quality of links and content given the amount of daily work required. To explain why, she broke each promise down for us.

Back links

Jane says it’s tough to hit a target such as five high-quality links a day-with the emphasis on “high-quality.”

“It’s always a warning when someone guarantees link numbers,” says Jane, who oversees several large link-building campaigns. “When we do link-building, we have link targets, but we in no way guarantee we’ll hit them every month. Why? Because if we can’t find enough quality links to meet our number, we’re not going to resort to getting poor links to make up the numbers.”

She thus thinks the SEO company, when it refers to “four to five confirmed back links from blog postings, forum posting and relative web sites,” actual means blog comments-and that’s not good. “Many links like this are not followed, and thus contribute nothing to your SEO,” Jane says.

According to Jane, the promised volume, if it were of high quality, would get expensive, with the manpower to follow up on leads alone would requiring a budget of more than $1,500.

As a side note, Jane adds that you shouldn’t be taken in by the idea that 50 links on one blog or site in the sidebar/footer (which is referred to as a site-wide link) is the same as 50 links from completely unrelated sites around the web. “Fifty site-wide links from one site, and thus one IP address, are not 50 separate ‘votes’ for your site,” Jane says. “Site-wide links have their place in a natural backlink profile, but I would not want to see link-building companies passing these all off as unique links that count toward the overall link numbers they’re going for.”

Directory postings

According to Jane, the ten directory listings per day is realistic because the SEO company could submit the site to ten directories a day. But this, she notes, doesn’t take into account the quality of the directories-or even if the site is included. Directories, she notes, have an editorial process whereby sites that are reviewed can take a long time to get through the queue. “You want to be included in directories like this, where a person looks over submissions, to avoid being listed in directories that also link to spam,” she says. “This keeps you from being associated with so-called ‘bad neighborhoods.’

Social bookmarkings

According to Jane, the promise of five social bookmarkings is vague. “This could mean just about anything.,” she says.

Article or press release submissions

According to Jane, the quality of the two articles or press releases promised is a concern.

“Who writes these, and what PR firms do they use?” she asks. “If they submit a piece for syndication, how many good sources actually pick it up? If the piece is good, it should get picked up in a lot of places.”

As a reference point, Jane notes that if you use PRWeb and choose the option friendliest for SEO, it will cost $200 per release.

How to do SEO right

We agree with Jane, as well as her advice when evaluating an SEO company that makes promises like these: Request examples of previous work-i.e., case studies. “Most companies have studies that they can show to prove that their work is good,” says Jane.

Then, once you hire an SEO company, insist on monthly or weekly reporting that shows every link built, every page bookmarked and every article or press release written. “You have a right to see how your site is being marketed and how your money is being spent,” says Jane, who adds that if you request reporting, it will “become immediately obvious if the company is getting no-followed links or is putting out poor content.”

Interesting article in TechCrunch today:LinkedIn Deepens Integration With Twitter; Becomes A Full-Fledged Client.  There are getting to be more and more easy and smart ways for Managed Service Providers and other IT service companies to link up and leverage their social networks and company websites.

If you need a little help getting going we’ve developed some step-by-step guides in the Pronto Help Center.

On the surface, social media and social networking might seem to be just a fad with no real business value - but a deeper look into the issue has revealed that many organizations are seriously studying the potential business value of phenomenon.

According to a survey by social media news website SmartBrief, as much as 75% of businesses are now looking into learning more about social media. Furthermore, as much as half of their respondents indicated that they are already using social networking for their business, while another 30% are taking steps to start using social media.

Another survey by BtoB and the Web Analytics Association finds that almost half of their respondents are looking to tap into social networking for their own use, and almost 25% are even allotting additional budget for their company’s foray into social media.

These numbers are an indication that businesses are beginning to see that social media has a power of its own - it can increase their network of contacts, allow them to receive a wide range of feedback, and let them market themselves better. Of course, there are a few cons, such as the ability of social media to magnify bad news or feedback. However, most business people realize that in there will always be risks, and it seems at this point that the benefits of using social networking outweigh the possible disadvantages.

Many companies are taking bold steps to use social networking to their advantage. If you don’t want to be left behind, check out social media and see what it can do for your business.

Read more here:

http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2010/04/22/smartbrief-stats-how-business-leaders-view-social-media/

http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100412/FREE/304089975/1445/FREE